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<TARGET "bre" DOCINFO AUTHOR "Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley"TITLE "Prosody on the hands and face"SUBJECT "SL&L, Volume 5:2"KEYWORDS "sign language, phonology, prosody, nonmanual behavior, nondominant hand, Prosodic Word, parenthetical, forward referencing"SIZE HEIGHT "240"WIDTH "170"VOFFSET "4">

Prosody on the hands and face

Evidence from American Sign Language

Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

Purdue University

The analysis in this paper deals with the prosodic cues that were present in a one-
hour lecture by a native signer of American Sign Language (ASL). Special attention
is paid to the interaction of the dominant hand (H1) and the nondominant hand
(H2), as well as to facial expressions articulated on the lower face. In our corpus, we
found that H1 and H2 interact in several prosodic contexts; we analyze four of them
here: Single Prosodic Word, Multiple Prosodic Words in an Intermediate Phrase,
Parenthetical, and Forward-Referencing. Our main finding is that, while the spread
of the nondominant hand (H2-Spread) is an important redundant cue to prosodic
structure, the primary cue is on the lower face. Our findings also confirmed posi-
tional cues and domain effects of H2-Spread in Prosodic Words and Phonological
Phrases that were previously found in Israeli Sign Language.

Keywords: sign language, phonology, prosody, nonmanual behavior, nondominant

hand, prosodic word, parenthetical, forward referencing

1. Introduction

In this paper we demonstrate that suprasegmental prosodic cues in American Sign

Language (ASL) provide important information about prosodic constituency and
about the meaning of utterances. This is one part of a larger study that investigates the
ways in which various suprasegmental properties of American Sign Language individu-
ally contribute to the meaning of utterances and to the criteria used to define prosodic
constituency. These properties include not only the interaction of the two hands, but
also eyegaze, lower- and upper-face nonmanuals, eyeblinks, and extended holds. Our
work will also demonstrate how these properties systematically interact with one
another in prosodic constituents.

Sign Language & Linguistics 5:2 (2002), 105–130.

issn 1387–9316 / e-issn 1569–996X
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
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106 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

1.1 Background on suprasegmental prosodic cues in sign languages

In this section, we want to provide some background on a set of phenomena that are
used to define prosodic categories in sign languages. We are assuming the prosodic
hierarchy of Nespor and Vogel (1986): utterance, intonational phrase (IP), phono-
logical phrase (PP), clitic group, prosodic word (PW), syllable (σ). In our study of ASL,
most, but not all, of the elements used for identifying prosodic categories in this paper
have to do with the timing of elements that are already present in the signal for
informational purposes. Identifying their prosodic role is based on how far these
properties spread (and in what direction) and with what they co-occur. The next sub-
sections describe each of the prosodic behaviors important in our study.

1.1.1 Handshape, movement and place of articulation

Previous work on ASL reveals that the preferred PW has one movement or a limited range
of movement combinations (Coulter 1982, Brentari, 1998), one set of selected fingers
(Mandel, 1981, Sandler, 1989), and one place of articulation (Sandler, 1987, Brentari,
1998). While not every word conforms to these constraints, even compounds (Sandler,
1989; Brentari, 1990) and borrowed words that enter the lexicon through fingerspelling
(Battison 1978, Brentari & Padden, 2001) confirm that these constraints are active in
shaping new words in the ASL lexicon. Nespor and Sandler (1999) have argued that in
non-final position, which they call the ‘weak’ position within a PP, handshape
assimilation is a marker of a PW combining a pronominal clitic and a verb.1

1.1.2 The interaction of the two hands

The two hands interact with each other while signing, but they are not unconstrained.
Battison (1978) was the first study of the interaction of the two hands in single signs,
and there have been several studies of the distribution of the two hands in longer
strings, and with respect to various phonological rules (Frishberg 1985; Brentari 1990,
1998, Nespor & Sandler 1999; Sandler 1999a,b). Battison’s typology of signs, shown in
(1), is assumed in this paper.
(1) Battison’s typology of signs (Battison 1978: 28):
Type Ø: 1-handed signs articulated in free space without contact (e.g. preach)
Type X: 1-handed signs that contact the body in any place except the opposite
hand (henceforth called H2; e.g. sour, government)
Type 1: 2-handed signs in which both hands are active and perform identical
motor acts; the hands may or may not contact each other, may or may

1.Nespor and Sandler (1999) and Sandler (1999a,b) have analyzed Israeli Sign Language, but their
conclusions can serve as a set of working hypotheses for other sign languages, including ASL.
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Prosody on the hands and face 107

not contact the body, and they may be in either a synchronous or alter-
nating pattern of movement (e.g. which, car, restrain-feelings)
Type 2: 2-handed signs in which one hand is active and one hand is passive, but
both hands are specified for the same handshape (e.g. short/brief, sit)
Type 3: 2-handed signs in which one hand is active and one hand is passive,
and the two hands have different handshapes (e.g. discuss, contact
(a person))

The hands have been assigned the role of dominant (H1) or nondominant (H2), based
on which hand (the left or the right) signs 1-handed signs and executes fingerspelled
signs. H2/H1 interaction is a advantageous place to begin to study prosodic effects in
the sign stream because it is readily observable and it appears to be more invariant
across signers, while some facial markers of prosodic constituency appear to be more
variable; Nespor and Sandler (1999) begin here. In larger units than the word, the
handshape of H2 (of all types of 2-handed signs) has been observed to spread regres-
sively (backwards) or progressively (forwards) systematically in two ways in Israeli Sign
Language (ISL). One way, called “Coalescence”, is argued to mark a PW and occurs at
the end of an IP and spreads progressively from the trigger to a single target, which is
an indexical, pronominal sign (Sandler 1999a,b). The other way, called “H2 spread” is
forward or backward spreading in larger units, that are argued in Nespor and Sandler
(1999) and Sandler (1999a) to be within the domain of the PP (or the ‘intermediate
phrase’ in Pierrehumbert 1980). In this paper, the entire range of cases of H2-Spread,
both the PW Coalescence cases of Sandler (1999a,b) and the PP H2-Spread cases of
Nespor and Sandler (1999), are referred to here as H2-Spread.
(2) Examples of Coalescence and H2-Spread in ISL2
a. Coalescence b. H2-Spread in PPs
(from Sandler 1999a,b) (from Nespor & Sandler 1999)
H1: store index]pw]ip persuade study…]pp]ip
H2: store persuade

A phenomenon related to H2-Spread, called “dominance-shift” has also been dis-

cussed in the literature (Frishberg 1985), but the assimilation of H2 in these instances
has heretofore not been addressed. Dominance shift occurs when H2 becomes the
primary signing hand for a string of signs, sometimes this occurs within a sentence, as
shown in (3), or sometimes throughout a longer string, such as when the two hands
are assigned specific characters in a narrative. It is a dominance shift because H2 is

2.The transcription for our examples may include all of the following, as appropriate for its
presentation: Upper Face (UF), Lower Face (LF), H1 glosses, and H2 glosses (H2). Blinks are
indicated ‘^’ in the H1 gloss, and H2-Spreading is shown by underlining from the target sign in the
direction of spreading, as far as the spreading continues.
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108 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

signing the 1-handed signs typically articulated by H1. When the dominance switches
occur, handshape spreading may optionally occur as well, whereby the H1 handshape
is held in the signing space while H2 signs an independent phrase or longer string. In
(3), the H1 handshape held is that of why, the interjected phrase uttered during the
dominance switch is only-one-me. H2 is then held during the remainder of the
utterance when dominance switches back.3 The parenthetical is only-one-me.
(3) Dominance Shift (from Frishberg 1985)
H1: army rush-at-us embarrassed why girl five boy five
H2: only-one-me
‘The soldiers came right at us. I was embarrassed because — I was alone — a
girl with five guys.’

This example shows something else that is an interesting phenomenon related to

H2-Spread; namely, that it is not only a phenomenon that occurs when 2-handed signs
are in the sign stream. Under certain conditions, the handshapes of 1-handed signs
spread as well; sometimes they act as a trigger of spreading in cases of switch domi-
nance. The handshape of a 1-handed sign is held on H1 while H2 continues to sign.
Moreover, some 2-handed signs can be realized as 1-handed forms, under conditions
of “Weak Drop” (Padden & Perlmutter 1987), a type of phonological deletion of H2.
The effects of Weak Drop could cause a 2-handed sign to behave like a 1-handed sign
in the sign stream (e.g., it might not block the spread of H2 because H2 is not obligatory
in such signs).
It has been reported in the ASL literature that the timing of H1 and H2 interaction
can have consequences for morphosyntactic constituency. Two kinds of cases involve
classifiers (Padden 1983) and determiners (Zimmer & Patschke 1990). In sentences
containing classifier predicates, Padden (1983) has argued that there is a difference in
syntactic constituency in (4a) vs. (4b) that depends on the interaction of H1 and H2.
Padden argues that (4a) is bi-clausal, while (4b) is monoclausal. In (4a) the classifier
construction ‘flat surface’ is signed alone, without the simultaneous articulation of
monkey; that is there is an interruption of the H1 sign stream while the classifier
construction is produced on H2. In contrast in (4b) monkey is simultaneously
articulated with the classifier construction.
(4) Differences in syntactic constituency based on H2-Spread (from Padden
1988: 217)
a. H1: tablea monkey CL: ‘small animal’+ jumpa
H2: tablea CL: ‘flat surface
‘There is a table and the monkey jumped onto it.’

3.No additional nonmanual behaviors were transcribed in this utterance reported in Frishberg
(1985), so we do not know where the blinks are or what nonmanual behaviors are involved.
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Prosody on the hands and face 109

b. H1: tablea monkey CL: ‘small animal’+ jumpa

H2: tablea CL: ‘flat surface’
‘The monkey jumped onto the table.’
c. H1: *tablea monkey CL: ‘small animal’+ jumpa
H2: *tablea CL: ‘flat surface’
‘The monkey jumped onto the table.’

Moreover, H2-Spread across CL: ‘small animal’+jump is required, as shown by the

ungrammaticality of (4c), where spreading does not occur. In the cases discussed in ISL,
the absence of Coalescence or H2-Spread does not make the utterance ungrammatical;
H2-Spread is optional when used for prosodic purposes. We have confirmed this
difference using elicitation data showing the presence and absence of H2-Spread in the
same prosodic constituent produces different grammaticality judgments, based on
whether the string contains an H2 that is a classifier construction or not. A full account
of these facts must await further investigation, but this type of data was our basis for
keeping morphological and phonological cases of H2 use in different data sets.
Another morphological use of spreading occurs when an indexical point used as
a determiner is signed by H2 (Zimmer & Patschke 1990). The determiner is signed on
H2, while the H1 signs a nominal. An example of this appears in (5).4
(5) Determiner use of indexical point
UF: topic
H1: most important what ^ attitude
H2: most important what ^ index
‘It’s the attitude that is most important.’

This phenomenon is very similar to Sandler’s Coalescence. Sandler suggests that

Coalescence occurs with a Type 1, 2-handed sign, followed by indexical point (locative
or pronominal) articulated on H1. In the NP+determiner cases, the indexical point is
articulated by H2. The difference between these two forms is in the hand that articu-
lates the indexical point — H1 in ISL Coalescence, H2 in ASL determiners — and the
following subtle difference of timing. Sandler claims that in Coalescence, the indexical
point appears “half-way through the articulation of the Type 1, 2-handed sign, and
[the indexical point] loses its syllabicity”. Zimmer and Patschke (1990) describe
determiners as occurring simultaneously with the noun.
In both the classifier case in (4) and the determiner case in (5), H2 is doing more
grammatical work than marking prosodic constituency. In order to keep our data set
free of these effects, we focused on forms that could not be confused with a morpho-

4.We should point out that not all determiners in ASL are simultaneous articulations of H1 and
H2, but these are the ones that might be confused with Coalescence, so we are only describing these
here.
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110 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

syntactic use of H2-spread. An example is given in (6) of such a case. sign-asl-

fluently and CAN are both Type 1, 2-handed signs, both signed in neutral space, and
neither of them has additional affixal morphology associated with them.
(6) Purely phonology use of H2-Spread
UF: brow raise/conditional
H1: sign-ASL-fluently can ^ go-ahead
H2: sign-ASL-fluently ^ go-ahead
‘If (one) can sign fluently, (he/she) can go-ahead (and enter the community).

In this paper we consider phonological cases of what Sandler calls Coalescence, such as
those in (6). H2 is not a separate morpheme all of the cases we present; rather, H2 is only
sustaining the handshape of a previous sign. The determiner and clitic cases were
deleted from our data set because H2 is used as a separate morpheme in these cases.

1.1.3 Nonmanual suprasegmentals

There is a small, but growing, body of work on timing effects and nonmanual
behaviors in sign languages, both of which are thought to be markers of prosodic
structure. These include lengthening effects, as well as lower face behaviors, eyeblinks,
and torso leans.
Lengthening: Perlmutter (1992) has discussed the rule of Mora-Insertion in ASL,5
and Miller (1996) discusses this operation in Langue des signes quebecoises (LSQ).
Sandler (1999a) has discussed lengthening specifically with respect to H2-Spread in
ISL, and has claimed that lengthening occurs at the right edge of a PP.6
Lower Face: The timing of gestures on the mouth and lower face has been investi-
gated in sign languages other than ASL. Bergman and Wallin (2001) argue that
Swedish SL has a set of noun classifiers based on the timing of the mouth gestures in
forms such as ‘man-CL:baby-c handshape’, in which a single mouth pattern extends
across the noun and the classifier. This is used as evidence that the two morphological
entities are part of the same constituent. Sandler (1999b) uses the spread of the mouth
pattern of the host to the clitic as supporting evidence that the two parts involved in
Coalescence form a single word. Boyes Braem (2001) has analyzed Swiss German SL
(DSGS) mouth patterns in early and late learners and found that mouth patterns are
important in phrasal constituents in this language. Early learners of DSGS extend
mouth patterns across more than one sign, as shown in (7a–c).

5.Perlmutter (1992) discusses this lengthening effect in terms of the word, but this domain was
shown to be incorrect in Miller (1996) for LSQ and in Brentari (1998) for ASL.
6.Sandler (1999) claims that reduplication is a PP boundary marker as well, but in our data all of
the instances of reduplication occur at the right edge of a PP that is also the rightward boundary of
an IP.
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Prosody on the hands and face 111

(7) Examples from DSGS showing the extension of mouth patterns across larger
constituents than the word (from Boyes Braem 2001)
mouth: a. aufpa---ssen b. au-------to c. do-------ktor
signs: aufpassen ich auto CL:b-hs doktor personpl
English: ‘I pay attention.’ ‘Car, CL:vehicle go_by’ ‘doctors.’

Eyeblinks: Wilbur (1994) has argued that there are two possible types of eyeblinks used
for linguistic purposes — inhibited eyeblinks, which are a boundary marker at IP, and
voluntary eyeblinks that are a marker of emphasis and occur throughout a final lexical
sign. We found evidence of both in our data, but the ones that are relevant to our
discussion here are inhibited blinks. These are short blinks that occur either just after
or only slightly overlapping with the rightmost sign in an IP. The predicted location
for these blinks is an “ungoverned maximal projection”. Because signing rate can effect
how many possible sites for such eyeblinks actually get them, such blinks were found
to be a prosodic, rather than a purely syntactic, phenomenon.
Torso Leans: Body leans have a variety of meanings, as shown in Wilbur and
Patschke (1998). These include (1) inclusion or exclusion, (2) contrastive focus, and
(3) affirmation. In our data, we found the contrastive focus use, and when it was
observed, this nonmanual marker co-occurred with eyeblinks.
We took as given the findings about eyeblinks at IPs and lengthening at PPs to
determine where the boundaries for these prosodic constituents occurred, indepen-
dently from H1/H2 interactions. What we want to know is whether a manual marker
— i.e. H2-Spread — would confirm this constituent structure. If this were the case, it
would advance our understanding of prosodic structure and confirm findings from
previous work using a linguistic marker that has attracted considerably more attention
in the literature over a longer period of time and is more stable across signers. But,
because we know about the differences in morphosyntactic structure that can arise due
to its differences in use and because H2-Spread is obligatory, rather than optional, in
some morphosyntactic uses, (as (4) and (5) show) we must be careful not to conflate
data sets that might be associated with distinct phenomena.

1.1.4 Positional factors in sign language prosodic constituency

We also want to determine whether, in our corpus, certain types of prosodic structures
co-occurred with specific positions in a phrase or sentence. We know that this
behavior, well-documented in spoken languages (see, for example, Zec & Inkelas
1990), occurs in ASL. Sentence-final position attracts phonologically heavy items
(Brentari 1998), morphologically heavy items (Fischer & Janis 1990) and focused items
(Wilbur 1999, 2000). In addition, IP-final position is called ‘strong’ in Nespor and
Sandler (1999). New evidence suggests that forms in IP-final position may include
redundant, inserted material to fill this ‘heavy’ position by double articulation — that
is, signing the form and then fingerspelling the same form ((8); Shay 2002). Sandler
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112 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

(1999a) and Miller (1996) observe that in ISL and LSQ, respectively, reduplication is
PP boundary marker, but in ASL this double-articulation occurs at IP boundaries.
(8) Phonological expansion in heavy position
UF: brow raise/topic
H1: [[carrot, potato, lettuce all]PP ^ [don’t-like [vegetables
v-e-g]PW]PP]IP
‘Carrots, potatoes, lettuce, all of them. I don’t like vegetables.’

The two forms vegetables and v-e-g are two variants of the same ASL word. If one
accepts that the heavy position is a position that allows for more phonological material,
a possible explanation for why these redundant 2-sign pairs appear together in this
position, and do not appear in other positions, is that the redundant form is inserted
to fill a larger than normal word-level template that is available in this position. The
ability to handle phonological heavy forms would also be a possible explanation for
why forms that are being lexicalized would appear in this position. Forms about to
undergo the lexicalization process are larger than the typical ASL word; they are larger
than the preferred monosyllabic template of ASL.7

1.2 Hypotheses

First, we hypothesize H2-Spread will be correlated with one or more nonmanual

markers for prosodic constituency. Second, we hypothesize that by looking at naturally
occurring data we will find more types of H1/H2 interaction, and particularly of
H2-Spread, than have been reported in the literature previously using elicited data.
We will argue that in ASL H2-Spread is not the primary marker of these constitu-
ents, but rather H2-Spread is a redundant marker of prosodic cues found on the face.
The findings reported here confirm some of the results of Nespor and Sandler (1999)
and Sandler (1999a,b). We also report on two cases of H2-Spread not previously
discussed in the literature, which contribute to utterance meaning.

2. Methodology

The primary corpus for this study consist of a 60-minute, videotaped lecture in a
natural setting by a native signer to a mixed audience of Deaf people and hearing people
who are ASL students. We target four suprasegmental phenomena — H2-Spread,
cheek tension (LFT), inhibited involuntary eyeblinks, and lengthening — defined in (9).

7.See Coulter (1993) and Brentari (1998) for evidence that the preferred word structure in ASL is
monosyllabic.
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Prosody on the hands and face 113

(9a–b) have been previously established as markers for PPs and IPs. The dominant
hand (H1) for our signers was determined observing the hand typically used by a given
signer for fingerspelling and for the articulation of 1-handed signs.
(9) Definitions of the four suprasegmental properties targeted
a. Eyeblinks: These are inhibited eyeblinks, as described in Section 1.1.3, first
argued to be an IP marker for ASL (Wilbur 1994).
b. Lengthening: This is the extended duration of the final timing unit (either
segment or mora) and/or movement at a PP boundary (Perlmutter 1992;
Miller 1996).
c. H2-Spread: An H2 handshape from a sign articulated on 1 or 2 hands is
assimilated either regressively (anticipatory H2-Spread) or progressively
(progressive H2-Spread) in the signing space, while the other hand contin-
ues with the utterance
d. Lower Face Tension (LFT): This nonmanual behavior involves general flex-
ing of a group of muscles at the corners of the mouth, which takes place
during mouth gestures of all types (Crossley 2001).

First, we transcribed our data with respect to eyeblinks to determine the IP boundaries,
and then, within IPs, we used lengthening to determine the intermediate or PP
boundaries. Second, we identified instances of H2-Spread or dominance switch. The
total number of instances of both of these phenomena in the 60-minute sample was
166. Then, we divided the occurrences of H2-Spread into those in which H2 carried
distinct morphological information and cases where it did not. We defined a morpho-
logical or morphosyntactic instance of H2-Spread as one in which the handshape
and/or location of the trigger sign had a meaningful referent, either in space as person
or spatial agreement, or as a classifier handshape, or both. We defined a prosodic
instance of H2-Spread as one in which the handshape and/or location of the non-
dominant hand had no morphological or morphosyntactic purpose, so that these cases
could be investigated solely on the bases of the phonological/prosodic use. Here we are
addressing only those instances of H2-Spread that did not have a morphological or
morphosyntactic role. There were 84 instances classified as phonological and 82
instances classified as morphosyntactic H2-Spread in this 1-hr. lecture. Only the
phonological cases will the subject of investigation here; the morphosyntactic ones will
be addressed in future work. Third, we described what the lower face was doing during
the instances of H2-Spread or dominance switch.
After our analysis of this first corpus, we confirmed it by performing the same
procedures described above on a shorter, second ASL corpus by a native signer, and
found evidence of all four categories described here. The second transcription was
made of a published source; these were the explanatory narratives given by Ella Mae
Lentz on the video “Treasures” (1995) of her own poems (not the poems themselves).
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114 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

The signers in both of our tapes are females of approximately the same age, but from
different part of the US — the first is from Chicago; the second is from the Bay Area
in California. We used SignStream™ (Neidle & MacLaughlin 1998) to transcribe the
data, in order to identify precisely the timing of these behaviors both alone and with
respect to one another within utterances.

3. Analysis

We found the distribution of H2-Spread to be across a broad range of prosodic

constituents, but that it can be nonetheless analyzed systematically, since H2-Spread
interacts with inhibited eyeblinks and with nonmanuals of the lower face — in
particular, with tension in the cheeks and corners of the mouth. We found that, within
an IP, H2-Spread has two possible domains, which we summarize in (10). Their
distribution confirms the findings of Nespor and Sandler (1999) and Sandler
(1999a,b); we add further evidence for their analysis by proposing facial cues that
differentiate the two.
We conclude that the behavior of H2 alone cannot be used as a primary index of
any constituent, but rather that it is redundant to the timing of facial expression on the
lower face nonmanuals and eyeblinks.

3.1 Analysis of P-Word (PW) vs. P-Phrase (PP) Domains

In the work here, we found that the timing of H2-Spread, blinks, and LFT are used to
distinguish single PWs from multiple PWs in a PP. Lengthening effects are not much
help here, because, since PW cases appear in the final position of an IP, they also
exhibit lengthening. As you will see below, H2-Spread is not the primary phonetic cue,
but it provides an important redundant cue.

3.1.1 The Prosodic Word (Total 30; 36% of H1/H2 interaction)

One Prosodic Word/Coalescence is the combination of two morphosyntactic elements
that typically occur as free morphemes (i.e. independent words) into a single phono-
logical word. The definition of the PW use of H2-Spread is given in (10).
(10) One (P)rosodic-Word/Coalescence
a. There is no change in LFT value between the trigger sign and the target sign
of H2 spread.
b. There are no nonmanual changes during the H2 spread (i.e. eyegaze, head
tilt, blinks).
c. The trigger of assimilation is H2 (i.e. not a switch of hand dominance).
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It follows the findings of Sandler (1999a,b) in the following ways:

d. It occurs at the right edge of a IP.
e. There is a maximum of two signs involved.
f. H2-Spread is progressive.

The arguments for calling these forms PWs in ASL — rather than some other prosodic
unit — come from disyllabic 2-handed signs, including both compounds (e.g.
sleep^sunrise = oversleep) and other disyllabic monomorphemic forms (e.g.
lock). First, when compounds in ASL include a lower-face gesture, this single gesture
extends across both stems of the compound. There are no compounds with two
distinct lower face gestures (11).8
(11) Compounds with a single lower face gesture (each compound is a separate form)
LF: (u)----------- (r)---------- (r)-------------
signs: good^night male^same female^same
LF: (closing)------ (u)--------------
signs: male^marry female^marry.

Second, in disyllabic, 2-handed signs there can be at most one distinctive H2 specifica-
tion; forms demonstrating this are given in (12). The forms in (12a) are mono-
morphemic, 2-handed forms. Using Battison’s 1978 typology of 2-handed signs, where
Type 1 and Type 2 signs have the same handshape, and Type 3 have different hand-
shapes, the forms in (12a) are Type 3 signs. No type 3 sign in ASL has 2 different H2
handshapes, which led to a re-analysis of H2 as a word-level appendix (Brentari, 1998)
rather than a syllable coda as was argued in previous work (Brentari and Goldsmith,
1993). The forms in (12b) are disyllabic compounds and “+er” nominals. In each
form, at least one of the signs is a Type 1 sign, which by definition has a redundant H2
specification; therefore, only 1 of the 2 H2-handshapes is distinctive. The forms in
(12c) are compounds, which contain two Type 3 signs, but both of signs happen to
have the same H2-handshape; so, again, there is only one distinctive H2 handshape
(both signs nude and zoom; check and read have a b-handshape). Finally, in (12d),
are forms that should be legitimate compounds semantically, but they are ungrammat-
ical forms. They are ungrammatical, we would argue, precisely because they have two
distinctive H2 specifications.
(12) Distribution of H2 in disyllabic, 2-handed signs
a. disyllabic monomorphemic words: background, curriculum, program,
project

8.A “gesture” can be a steady state gesture, such as liprounding, or a single, dynamic gesture, such
as mouth opening or closing. Whenever possible, we are using IPA symbols to indicate the lip
posture in use.
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116 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

b. polymorphemic forms with two redundant specifications (compounds and

“+er” nominals: jesus^book (“bible”), word^book (“dictionary”),
teacher, money^behind, server
c. polymorphemic forms with one distinctive H2 specification compounds:
check^read, nude^zoom
d. ungrammatical compounds with two distinctive h2 specification:
*word^help (“spell checker”), *check^vote (“recount”), *money^
enough (“savings”)

Since all of the forms in (12a–c) are single words, and since the domain of their LF
value and domain of H2-Spread is the same as those forms at the right edge of an IP,
we conclude that the unit in these H2-Spread cases at the end of an IP is also the
prosodic word. The direction of assimilation for H2-Spread is regressive in compounds
(Liddell & Johnson 1986), but the direction of assimilation in lexicalized compounds
may occur later in the lexicalization process.9
Sandler (1999a,b) calls these cases Coalescence in ISL, to distinguish them from a
more general description of H2-Spread at the level of the PP, but she reports that
Coalescence is restricted in two ways that we did not find in ASL. First, Sandler
analyzes Coalescence as a type of cliticization, since in ISL it appears that only locative
and pronominal index forms can appear in this context. In ASL, this is not the case; a
variety of grammatical categories are combined, not only noun + index forms. Second,
Sandler extends the use of Battison’s typology of 2-handed signs to ISL, and they
report that in ISL only Type 1 signs can trigger Coalescence. In the ASL corpus, while
the trigger sign of Coalescence is more commonly a 1-handed sign, Type 1 sign, Type
2 or Type 3 signs can also trigger the spread of H2. A range of examples of PW uses of
H2-Spread, which do not conform the ISL data, are given in (13). In all of these
examples, the LFT value is across both signs in the 2-sign combination.
(13) 2-sign combinations, analyzed as prosodic words at the R-Edge of IPs, cited
with the way that they deviate from the findings reported for ISL (Sandler
1999a,b).
a. H1: word what (word is not a Type 1 sign; what is not a pronoun.)
H2: what
b. H1: depend where (depend is not a Type 1 sign; W where is not a pro-
noun.)
H2: depend
c. H1: role have (role is not a Type 1 sign; have is not a pronoun.)
H2: role

9.It has been suggested by John Kingston (personal communication) that this is precisely the way
to tell a lexicalized compound from a PW.
 Prosody on the hands and face 117

d. H1: expression face (face is not a pronoun.)

H2: expression
e. H1: parenthesis indian (indian is not a pronoun.)
H2: parenthesis
f. H1: cold shoulder (shoulder is not a pronoun.)
H2: cold
g. H1: hmm where (hmm is not a 2-handed sign; where is not a pronoun.)
H2: hmm

A sentence containing a PW case of H2-Spread in is given below in (14). The H2 of the

Type 1 sign cold spreads progressively to the next sign shoulder (Figure 1).
(14) PW: “cold shoulder”
LF: (o)--------------
H1: polite-small-talk feel quote cold shoulder ^
H2: cold(s-hs)
‘It’s just polite small talk; you feel like you are getting the cold shoulder.’

polite small-talk feel

quote cold shoulder

Figure 1.
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118 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

3.1.2 More than One PW in a PP (Total 32; 38% of H1/H2 interaction)

Turning to non-final position in an IP, we find that in ASL the LFT value changes
between the trigger and target sign(s), and the direction of assimilation can be
regressive or progressive. The criteria for this type of H2-Spread are given in (15).
(15) Criteria for determining H2-Spread with a domain of more than PW
a. There is a change in LFT value, and possibly other nonmanuals, between
the trigger and the target signs of H2-Spread.
b. The number of signs involved has a minimum of 2 signs but the maximum
is specified by higher order prosodic structure.
c. The trigger of assimilation is H2 (i.e. not a switch of hand dominance).
d. Following Nespor and Sandler (1999), the direction of assimilation may be
regressive or progressive.

This occurs in the sequence from and c-o-d-a in (16). In this example, the H2-Spread
is the 1-handshape on H2 from the first sign from which spreads to the fingerspelled
form c-o-d-a (Figure 2).
(16) PP: “from c-o-d-a”
LF: (a)--- (o)-----
H1: from c-o-d-a different story ^
H2: from(1hs)
‘From a CODA (child of Deaf parents) it is a different story.’
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from c-o-d-a

different story
Figure 2.

The test for PW status is whether there is one LFT value or not; PWs have one LFT
value, more than one PW will allow more than one LFT value. Also, the PW context is
more restrictive than that of two PWs in a PP in terms of both the direction of
assimilation and in the number of signs across which H2 may spread. In our corpus
PWs have a domain of two signs (including trigger and target), while PPs have a
domain as large as four signs. Following Nespor and Sandler (1999), we expected that
the spread would be to the left or right edge of the PP, unless a two-handed sign blocks
it. This was generally correct, except for the forward-referencing cases described in the
next section.
In sum, we found that it was not reliable to look for H2 behavior alone to dis-
ambiguate these units; the prosodic cues on the face were more consistent. We found
that H2-Spread alone cannot predict anything unless seen in light of the LFT value and
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120 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

position in the IP. In fact, there are instances of the PW LFT marking in phrase-final
position that involve only 1-handed signs such as the one given in (17). The signer is
talking about differences between Deaf and hearing senses of humor, and she signs sad
(blink) watch happen hit watch j-a-y l-e-n-o… (blink) (English: It’s sad, when I
happen to watch Jay Leno …) well watch [protracted] not funny, at the right-edge
of the IP has the same LFT value, and hence, under this analysis would count as a
single PW.
(17) 1-handed-sign combination of a PW: not-funny
LF: (r)---------
H1: well watch[protracted] not funny ^
‘Well, I watch it and it’s not funny [to me].’

In (18) we see an example of a 2-sign combination in which both signs are 1-handed
— you-know indian. Despite the fact that this form is phrase-final (in this sentence
this two-sign combination is a “topic structure”, Padden 1983) there are two LF
gestures; i.e., the nonmanuals change between the trigger and target signs. This
example makes two points: first, not all 2-sign combinations at the right edge of an IP
are a single PW, and, second, the way one can tell consistently between them is not by
looking at H2 behavior, but by looking at their nonmanual behavior.
(18) 1-handed-sign combination in a PP: you-know indian
UF: brow raise/topic
LF: (o)----------- (a)------ (o)-- (a>p)
H1: know-that indian ^ like old habit sign indian ^
‘You know that, as for the sign “Indian”, it’s like an old habit to sign ‘Indian’.’

To conclude, we confirmed the findings of Nespor and Sandler (1999) that there are two
uses of H2-Spread — a PW use and one in a larger PP domain. We found that in ASL,
however, PW cases are not restricted in the types of signs that might be involved; we
also found the nonmanual and positional factors are more predictive than H2-Spread.

4. Analysis H2-Spread for Utterance Meaning

In this section we will analyze two cases of H2-Spread that contribute specific mean-
ings to their utterances, following the work of Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg (1990).
The timing of H2-Spread and eyeblinks provides information about the prosodic
contours of the utterance that contribute to meaning. We have identified parenthetical
uses of H2-Spread and forward referencing uses of H2-Spread. As expected, since these
are units that are larger than the prosodic word, the value for LFT changes during the
execution in all of these instances of H2-Spread. We found that these occur far less
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Prosody on the hands and face 121

frequently than the cases discussed in the previous section. Taken together, PW and PP
cases make up 74% of the total, while instances meaningful use of H1/H2 interaction
are only 26% of the total.

4.0.1 Forward Referencing (Total 18; 21% of H1/H2 interaction)

“Forward Referencing” is a way to show the relatedness of two adjacent IPs (Pierre-
humbert & Hirschberg 1990). H2-Spread crosses the right IP boundary into the first
sign of the next IP. In these cases, and in these cases it serves to mark a strong semantic
connection between the two IPs. Our analysis of forward-references follows that of
Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg (1990), where “forward referencing” is defined as
signaling a close semantic link in a second IP by a prosodic cue in the first IP. This is
shown in (19). In (19a) the two IPs are semantically linked, while in (19b) they are not.
A high boundary tone (transcribed as a H%, shown in bold) indicates that the second
IP about to be uttered in (19a) is closely linked to the one just uttered.
(19) Forward referencing in English (from Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990)
a. The train leaves at seven It’ll be on track four
H* H* H* L H% H* H* L L%
b. The train leaves at seven There’s a full moon tonight.
H* H* H* L L% H* H* H* L L%

The ASL case, however, is much more like Swedish accent patterns as described in
Bruce (1977), where intonational markers can be systematically shifted within a phrase
and need not line up cleanly with the predicted stressed syllables which usually are
responsible for carrying such accents. This type of misalignment is analogous to the
ASL case; that is, it is precisely because the H2 handshape shifts one word to the right
of the normal boundary of forward referencing that these cases mark themselves out
as special. The criteria for forward referencing in ASL are given in (20), examples are
given in (21)–(22). Because forward referencing is a category of H2-Spread that has
not been documented before, we include two examples. One is from our primary
corpus, and one is from our secondary corpus.
(20) Criteria for a “forward referencing” instance of H2-Spread
a. The trigger is in the first of two IPs, determined by an eyeblink, and the
target is the first sign of the second IP in the sequence.10
b. The trigger is H2 (i.e. no dominance switch)
c. The direction of assimilation is progressive.

10.The limit we place on the spreading of H2 in these cases is tentative. The spreading stops at an
emphatic 2-handed sign in all of the cases we have from our data. More examples of this would need
to be collected to confirm this limit.
122 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

(21) Forward-referencing: “distribute-all-over (blink) index1sg” (Figure 3)

Body lean: (left)--------------------------------- (right)----------------
H1: index3SG distribute-all-over ^ index1SG darn ^
H2: distribute (5hs)
‘She distributed (the advertisement) all-over. (There I was,) “Darn!”’ [It had an
error.]

index3SG distribute

all-over blink

index1SG darn
Figure 3.
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Prosody on the hands and face 123

(22) Forward referencing (ex. from Lentz 1995): “language (blink) wow” (Figure 4)
H1: english asl different[int] language ^ wow mind-blowout ^
H2: english different[int] language mind-blowout
‘English and ASL are really different languages; I was really blown away.’

english ASL different

languages (1st position)languages (2nd position) [blink]

wow mind blow-out

Figure 4.

Note that in both examples, the opportunity to continue the assimilation of H2 further
into the second IP is possible. In (21) and (22), darn and mind-blowout, respective-
ly, the second sign of the second IP is a Type 1 sign that could easily have surfaced as
a 1-handed variant via the operation of Weak Drop (Padden & Perlmutter 1987)
thereby allowing H2 to spread, but it did not. This shows that there may really be a
limit on H2-Spread for forward referencing (cf. note 10).
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124 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

4.0.2 Parentheticals (Total 4; 5% H1/H2 interaction)

The second type of meaningful use of H1/H2 interaction, and the fourth type we found in
our corpus, was the parenthetical remark. During a signed utterance, a comment that is
of secondary importance is interjected into the immediate topic of conversation. It is
marked by a “dominance shift” (Frishberg 1985); that is, the nondominant hand, H2,
signs the parenthetical remark and the handshape held is that of the typical dominant
hand, H1. The parenthetical portion forms its own IP within the matrix sentence. The
units on either side of the parenthetical unit also form IPs. The signer will change
dominance to indicate an abrupt shift in the main flow of a conversation topic, while
continuing to sign the remaining utterance with their dominant hand. Frishberg found
that “in that case, the DR[dominance relation] set off material as background to the
main force of the narrative”. The example taken from Frishberg (1985) is repeated here
in (23). The criteria for an ASL parenthetical are given in (24).
(23) Dominance Shift (from Frishberg 1985; repeated from (3))
H1: army rush-at-us embarrassed why girl five boy five
H2: only-one-me
‘The soldiers came right at us. I was embarrassed because — I was alone — a
girl with five guys.’
(24) Criteria for a “parenthetical” instance of H2-Spread
a. Dominance switch (Frishberg 1978);
b. The handshape that spreads is the typical H1-handshape;
c. Inhibited eyeblinks at the left and right edges of the remark;
d. The direction of assimilation is progressive;
e. The strings that frame the parenthetical must be isomorphic to syntactic
constituents, or, minimally, they have the same subject and the same point
of view.

In our corpus, parentheticals were not marked only by a dominance shift, but also by
the spread of (the usual) H1 across the parenthetical remark signed by (the usual) H2
for a given signer. Inhibited eyeblinks in parentheticals occur at the left and right edges
of the string, marking it as an independent IP embedded within a matrix sentence.
Nespor & Vogel (1986) argue that parentheticals can be identified “when a root sentence
has an intervening obligatory IP”. The clauses that frame the parenthetical in ASL had the
same subject and the same point of view. We were unable to say definitely whether the
two clauses framing the parenthetical are a single sentence or not, but the behavior and
function of parentheticals was consistent and systematic in the use of dominance shift
and H2-Spread, subject, and point of view. An example is shown in (25), in which
misunderstood is signed by both hands, then index1SG send 20 (‘I sent her the 20th’)
is signed by H2, which we analyze as parenthetical to the rest of the utterance, misunder-
stood … think 28 (‘She misunderstood … she thought the 28th’) (see Figure 5).
 Prosody on the hands and face 125

(25) Parenthetical: “index1SG send 20”11

H1: misunderstood ^ ^ think 28
H2: misunderstood index1SG send 20
‘(She) misunderstood. I sent the 20th. (She) thought the 28th.’

misunderstood blink index1SG

send (1st position) send3SG (2nd position) 20

blink think3SG 28
Figure 5.

11.Recall that the blinks mark all IPs, not just the boundaries of a parenthetical.
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126 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

5. Discussion and Conclusion

Our main finding was that, while H2-Spread can determine nothing on its own. In
ASL, it has too many different (albeit systematic) uses to definitively determine any
prosodic category. In fact our data supports a result where the facial cues are primary,
and H2-Spread is an associated, redundant behavior, as the one handed examples in
(12) and (13) have shown. The relevant nonmanual prosodic cues are present whether
the sentence contains 2-handed signs or not. However, H2-Spread is a manual, salient
cue to prosodic structure, one that is expected to have cross-linguistic significance,
since the nonmanual behaviors are more variable and could possibly make cross-
linguistic comparisons more difficult. The cues on the face and hands must be
examined individually, and then the temporal relationships among them uncovered,
if we are to find the prosodic patterns in sign languages.

5.1 The Elusive Phonological Phrase

Nespor and Sandler (1999) attribute the instances of H2-Spread that are not Coales-
cence to the domain of the PP, since they have found no instances of spreading beyond
the PP in ISL and have found cases of where H2-Spread does not extend to the PP
boundary due to the presence of a 2-handed sign that would block such spreading.12
Sandler (1999) also reports the following independent PP boundary markers in ISL: (a)
slower movement and (b) lengthening of the final hold to be PP markers in ISL (c)
optional iteration/reduplication.
In ASL, we have found only lengthening to be a reliable cue for PP boundaries.
Repetitions/iterations of form, or even the cases of double-articulation of the same
word with different variants (e.g. vegetables+v-e-g) occur consistently at IP
boundaries in ASL. While our data unequivocally supports a PW domain for the
specific type of H2-Spread referred to by Sandler as Coalescence in ISL, it is less
definite in its support of a PP domain for H2-Spread. We have cases of spread beyond
the PP boundary and also cases that fail to spread to the PP boundary when expected;
the forward referencing data are evidence of this. The H2 handshape spreads across an
IP boundary, and then stops after the first sign. If one considers these cases to have a
special status because of their discourse-level meaning, these cases may only be only an
apparent set of counter-examples.
We conclude that, alone, H2-Spread is not a reliable marker for any constituent in
ASL, and that the nonmanual behaviors on the face are more important in this regard.

12.It is not entirely clear what this means, since some 2-handed signs (notably Type 1 signs) are
allowed to drop H2 and would then be available for H2-Spread.
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Prosody on the hands and face 127

If our results are correct, we can propose a set of criteria for establishing PWs, PPs, and
IPs independent of H2, given in (26).
(26) Criteria for PW, PP, and IP prosodic constituents in ASL
lower face/LFT lengthening blinks

P word no change no no
P Phrase change yes no
I Phrase NA yes yes

5.2 Theoretical implications

This work has important implications for diachronic change, as well as for the study of
prosodic structure in signed and spoken language. Here we see that PW formation
exhibits important positional and lower face cues. If there can only be one LF value in
PW, then this nonmanual aspect of the phonology conforms to the set of constraints
on the other parameters of ASL; namely, as a form becomes lexicalized, there will be
one contrastive value per parameter (i.e. handshape, movement and place of articula-
tion). These data show that in considering the processes involved in lexicalization in
sign languages, therefore, one must consider nonmanual behaviors, as well as those
manual behaviors, such as those discussed in Brentari and Padden (2001). One might
speculate that as polymorphemic forms become lexicalized as single words, the
tendency is toward single values for all phonological parameters, both manual and
nonmanual. This tendency toward a single specification has been well documented for
the manual properties of handshape (Friedman 1978), for place of articulation
(Sandler 1987), for H2 (Brentari 1998) and for movements (Coulter 1982).
This work also highlights where one might expect to find such forms-in-transition
in prosodic structure in ASL — i.e. at the right edge of an IP. As discussed in Sec-
tion 1.1.4, the right-most sign of a sentence is the site for focus and for morpho-
phonological weight. A short sentence or clausal unit can be an IP. A question for
future research might be to investigate the position of forms, which are not yet fully
lexicalized, but rather exist in the peripheral strata of the ASL lexicon with respect to
word-level constraints, such as the sign + fingerspelled compounds discussed in
Brentari and Padden (2001). One might speculate that these forms would exhibit the
same distribution within utterances or behaviors on the lower face similar as the PW
cases analyzed here. Two-sign combinations that appear in this position may still
currently be nonce forms, but they are candidates for further lexicalization operations,
such as compounding or nativization of a fingerspelled form (Battison 1978; Brentari
& Padden 2001). When focus is not a factor, the LFT behavior and positional use may
be early indicators that lexicalization may have begun.
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128 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

Our work on sign language can also contribute methodologically to studies of

prosody in spoken languages. First, it emphasizes that a prosodic constituent may be
identifiable by a constellation of behaviors, and the timing relationships among these
behaviors are important clues to structure. Second, even though pauses, tunes, and
tone sequences have been considered the primary means of identifying prosodic
constituents in English, for example (Pierrehumbert 1980, and the generation of work
thereafter), the body may also be important in signaling prosodic constituency. A
compositional approach to prosodic analysis need not be an analysis of solely sequen-
tial acoustic behaviors (such as tone sequences), but can include nonverbal behaviors
operating in parallel. Eyeblinks and facial postures, such as head tilts and eyegaze, as
well as manual gestures in spoken languages may be useful in work on prosody in
spoken languages, as well.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Drucilla Ronchen for her assistance on this project. This material is
based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. 9905848.

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130 Diane Brentari and Laurinda Crossley

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Authors’ addresses
Dr. Diane Brentari
Purdue University
Linguistics Program
Heavilon Hall
500 Oval Drive
W. LAFAYETTE IN 47907–2038
USA