Lu Jenny C, Goldin-Meadow Susan
Department of Psychology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States.
Departments of Psychology and Comparative Human Development, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States.
Front Psychol. 2018 Jul 31;9:1276. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01276. eCollection 2018.
In everyday communication, not only do speakers describe, but they also depict. When depicting, speakers take on the role of other people and quote their speech or imitate their actions. In previous work, we developed a paradigm to elicit depictions in speakers. Here we apply this paradigm to signers to explore depiction in the manual modality, with a focus on depiction of the size and shape of objects. We asked signers to describe two objects that could easily be characterized using lexical signs (Descriptive Elicitation), and objects that were more difficult to distinguish using lexical signs, thus encouraging the signers to depict (Depictive Elicitation). We found that signers used two types of depicting constructions (DCs), conventional DCs and embellished DCs. Both conventional and embellished DCs make use of categorical handshapes to identify objects. But embellished DCs also capture imagistic aspects of the objects, either by adding a tracing movement to gradiently depict the contours of the object, or by adding a second handshape to depict the configuration of the object. Embellished DCs were more frequent in the Depictive Elicitation context than in the Descriptive Elicitation context; lexical signs showed the reverse pattern; and conventional DCs were equally like in the two contexts. In addition, signers produced iconic mouth movements, which are temporally and semantically integrated with the signs they accompany and depict the size and shape of objects, more often with embellished DCs than with either lexical signs or conventional DCs. Embellished DCs share a number of properties with embedded depictions, constructed action, and constructed dialog in signed and spoken languages. We discuss linguistic constraints on these gradient depictions, focusing on how handshape constrains the type of depictions that can be formed, and the function of depiction in everyday discourse.
在日常交流中，说话者不仅进行描述，还会进行描绘。在描绘时，说话者会扮演其他人的角色，引用他们的话语或模仿他们的动作。在之前的研究中，我们开发了一种范式来引发说话者的描绘。在此，我们将这种范式应用于手语者，以探索手动方式中的描绘，重点是物体大小和形状的描绘。我们要求手语者描述两个可以轻松用词汇手语表征的物体（描述性引发），以及用词汇手语更难区分的物体，从而促使手语者进行描绘（描绘性引发）。我们发现手语者使用两种类型的描绘结构（DCs），即传统DCs和修饰性DCs。传统DCs和修饰性DCs都利用范畴性手型来识别物体。但修饰性DCs还通过添加追踪动作来逐渐描绘物体轮廓，或添加第二个手型来描绘物体构型，从而捕捉物体的意象方面。修饰性DCs在描绘性引发情境中比在描述性引发情境中更频繁；词汇手语则呈现相反模式；传统DCs在两种情境中出现的频率相同。此外，手语者产生了标志性的口部动作，这些动作在时间和语义上与它们所伴随的手语整合在一起，描绘物体的大小和形状，修饰性DCs比词汇手语或传统DCs更常出现这种情况。修饰性DCs与手语和口语中的嵌入式描绘、构建动作及构建对话有许多共同特征。我们讨论了这些渐变描绘的语言限制，重点是手型如何限制可形成的描绘类型，以及描绘在日常话语中的功能。
