Dating certainly one of lexical and you can phonological attributes
Next we examined relationships among the lexical and phonological properties of the signs in ASL-LEX to gain insight into how phonological, lexical, and semantic factors interact in the ASL lexicon. s = –0.14, p < 0.001. Although it is possible that this inverse correlation is driven by the relatively higher frequency of closed-class words which may be lower in iconicity than other signs, the negative correlation remains when closed-class words (i.e., words with a “minor” Lexical Class) are excluded (r s = –0.17, p < 0.001). This result is compatible with the early proposal that with frequent use, signs may move away from their iconic origins, perhaps due to linguistic pressures to become more integrated into the phonological system (Frishberg, 1975). Interestingly, the direction of this relationship was the opposite of that found for British Sign Language; that is, Vinson et al. (2008) reported a weak positive correlation between frequency and iconicity: r = .146, p < .05. Alternatively, the different correlations might be due differences in stimuli selection. Vinson et al. (2008) intentionally selected stimuli that had a range of iconicity values which resulted in a bimodal iconicity distribution while we did not select signs for inclusion in ASL-LEX based on their iconicity.
Regularity and you may iconicity z-results (SignFrequency(Z) and you can Iconicity(Z)) was rather negatively correlated along (look for Table 1), with more constant cues ranked given that smaller iconic; however, it dating try poor, roentgen
A number of phonological characteristics is very synchronised along with of a lot circumstances simply because the way they try defined (get a hold of Dining table step one). Such as for instance, each biggest location is made of one or more lesser towns and cities-high-frequency slight towns will hence almost invariably be discovered in the large regularity big towns and cities, and you can handshape volume try likewise connected with chose thumb and you can bending regularity. At the same time, all of the around three measures of Area Thickness is very coordinated with one another partially as they are similarly defined and you will partially since people BDSM Sites dating sites locals one to express four of your five sub-lexical attributes (Maximum Area Occurrence) commonly necessarily and display among four sub-lexical properties (Restricted People Occurrence). Eventually, all the around three Area Density tips is actually synchronised with every of your own sub-lexical frequency tips. This is going to make sense given that because of the meaning, popular sub-lexical attributes are available in of several signs.
Interestingly, the basic sub-lexical frequencies are completely uncorrelated with each other, with the exception of selected fingers and minor location which are significantly but weakly correlated (r = .10, p < .01). This finding suggests that the space of possible ASL signs is rather large as each sub-lexical property can (to a first degree of approximation) vary independently of the others. This property contrasts with spoken languages where phoneme frequency is correlated across different syllable positions. For example, using position-specific uniphone frequencies from Vitevitch and Luce (2004) we estimate that in English monosyllabic words, vowel frequency is negatively correlated with the frequency of the preceding consonant (r = –.07, p < .001) and positively correlated with the following consonant (r = .17, p < .001), and that onset consonants have highly correlated frequencies (r = –.51, p < .001). We speculate that the relative independence of ASL sub-lexical features is related to both the motoric independence of the manual articulators (e.g., finger flexion is unaffected by the location of the hand in signing space) as well as the relative simultaneity of manual articulation (as opposed to serial oral articulation). We note that these non-significant correlations are for sub-lexical frequency only; specific sub-lexical properties have been argued to co-vary systematically (e.g., signs produced in locations far from the face may be more likely to be symmetrical, two-handed, and have larger, horizontal, and vertical motions; Siple, 1978).