Symmetry and dominance: A cross-linguistic study of signs and classifier constructions

In this paper we analyze the phonological and prosodic properties of two-handed classifiers in three sign languages-American Sign Language, Hong Kong Sign Language, and Swiss German Sign Language. Our analysis is two-fold-first we examine the restrictions these forms place on handshape choice, and then we took at their prosodic and morpho-syntactic structures by examining the interaction between the temporal relations of the two hands and other prosodic cues, such as eye blinks. From the point of view of well-formedness at the word level, our work shows that: (i) in the majority of cases, two-handed classifiers obey the Dominance Condition of Battison (1978) while all other forms limit their complexity in a similar way at the featural level; (ii) different classifier types exhibit systematic behavior with regard to their internal handshape complexity, in particular with regard to a difference between whole entity and handling classifiers, and (iii) in the majority of cases, two-handed classifiers have the same timing properties as prosodic words. With regard to larger prosodic units, we have found evidence of the prosodic-syntactic interface at work in classifier constructions in a number of systematic ways involving intonational phrases. Two-handed classifiers can be divided into four major groups with regard to their prosodic structure, one of which was found only in Hong Kong Sign Language, while the other three exhibit a general pattern that applied to all three of the sign languages in our study. Our general findings reveal that the phonological structures and principles that hold true in non-classifier forms are also obeyed by classifiers to a large extent. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.