Recognition of signed and spoken language: Different sensory inputs, the same 
segmentation procedure

Orfanidou, Eleni; Adam, Robert; Morgan, Gary; McQueen, James M.

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2009.12.001

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Recognition of signed and spoken language: Different sensory inputs, the same segmentation procedure

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons122

McQueen, James M.
Language Comprehension Group, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

Orfanidou_JML_2010.pdf
(Publisher version), 717KB

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Orfanidou, E., Adam, R., Morgan, G., & McQueen, J. M. (2010). Recognition of signed and spoken language: Different sensory inputs, the same segmentation procedure. Journal of Memory and Language, 62(3), 272-283. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2009.12.001.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0013-4410-B

Abstract

Signed languages are articulated through simultaneous upper-body movements and are seen; spoken languages are articulated through sequential vocal-tract movements and are heard. But word recognition in both language modalities entails segmentation of a continuous input into discrete lexical units. According to the Possible Word Constraint (PWC), listeners segment speech so as to avoid impossible words in the input. We argue here that the PWC is a modality-general principle. Deaf signers of British Sign Language (BSL) spotted real BSL signs embedded in nonsense-sign contexts more easily when the nonsense signs were possible BSL signs than when they were not. A control experiment showed that there were no articulatory differences between the different contexts. A second control experiment on segmentation in spoken Dutch strengthened the claim that the main BSL result likely reflects the operation of a lexical-viability constraint. It appears that signed and spoken languages, in spite of radical input differences, are segmented so as to leave no residues of the input that cannot be words.