Identifying the Correlations Between the Semantics and the Phonology of American Sign Language and British Sign...

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Sign Language Studies

Background:

• Research has long noted non-arbitrary sign forms in sign languages, suggesting a pressure to link form and meaning.
• The extent and nature of this form-meaning relationship across different sign languages remain areas for investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the distribution of non-arbitrary forms in sign language lexicons using computational methods.
• To test if phonological similarity correlates with semantic similarity in the vocabularies of American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL).

Main Methods:

• Employed vector space models to represent sign language words in a multi-dimensional space based on phonological and semantic information.
• Analyzed the lexicons of ASL and BSL to quantify the relationship between phonological similarity and semantic relatedness of signs.

Main Results:

• A significant positive correlation between phonological form and semantic meaning was found in both ASL and BSL.
• This form-meaning relationship was strongest when sign language lexicons were clustered by semantic relatedness.
• Variations in the strength of these patterns were observed across different phonological parameters and between the two languages.

Conclusions:

• The study confirms a non-arbitrary connection between form and meaning in sign language vocabularies, extending beyond individual languages.
• Cross-linguistic differences suggest that while this connection is not entirely language-specific, cognitive and cultural factors influence its realization.
• Vector space modeling offers a powerful tool for large-scale analysis of sign language lexicons and form-meaning relationships.