Adverbial Morphemes in Tactile ASL - Gallaudet University

PDE – Steven D. Collins
Intellectual Context and Literature Review
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statements, conditionals, and relative clauses (Liddell 1980; Coulter 1978, 1979; Baker-Shenk
1983). At the discourse level, in addition to manual signs, there are also independent nonmanual
configurations such as tensing of the muscles around the nose, around the mouth, eyegaze
direction, and specific types of head nods that are used to provide turn-taking cues and
back-channel feedback for regulating conversations (Baker 1976; Baker and Padden 1978;
Nowell 1989).
Clearly, non-manual signals are a pervasive component of ASL. They accompany single
lexical items with the purpose of modifying the canonical meaning of the sign with which they
occur. They are involved in the licensing of null arguments. Their presence allows alternate word
orders and they are essential parts of sentence, clause and phrase types. Even at the discourse
level, NMS are crucial for conversing in acceptable and predictable ways. The prominence of
non-manuals in ASL strongly suggests that at least some of their functions must be carried out by
some other means in TASL.
2.2. Language Variation
In 1966, William Labov and his colleagues pioneered studies in which the focus was on
linguistic variation in relation to a multiplicity of social and cultural factors. Ethnicity, for
example, has played a central role in current discussions of identity, and was the focus of
Labov’s 1966 study of New York City English among Italian, Jewish, Irish and Black
Americans. It was also the topic of Gumperz’s extensive work on cross-cultural miscommunication
(Gumperz 1966). Labov’s work illustrated that non-linguistic factors could affect
the use of one linguistic form over another. In his groundbreaking study, he showed that while a
strict linguistic analysis could not account for optional “r” deletion in the speech of Lower East
Side New Yorkers, an analysis that took into account a person’s socioeconomic background and
their speech style, could account for this variability. Since Labov’s findings, sociolinguists have
found many types of linguistic variation that are correlated with external, non-linguistic
constraints. These external constraints include social and personal characteristics, such as age,
gender, education, and ethnicity, and also characteristics of the interaction in which speech
occurred, i.e., the formality or casualness of the situation, the context (a bar brawl versus a
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