Blinks and intonational phrasing in Hong Kong Sign Language
Temas
Detalles
The purpose of this paper is report on the author’s attempt to figure out the relation(s) between blinks, syntactic boundaries and intonational phrases in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL). It will be argued that certain physiologically motivated blinks are unlikely to serve linguistic function and that blinks occurring towards the end of or after a sign possibly co-occur with syntactic boundaries of constituents equivalent to or smaller than an IP, which in the majority of cases corresponds to an intonational phrase in spoken languages. In addition, evidence will be presented to show that the occurrence of blinks bears a high correlation with head turns and gaze changes, suggesting the need to take these two factors into account in order not to overestimate the linguistic role of blinks in signing.
En: Josep Quer (ed.), Signs of the time. Selected papers from TISLR 8, pp. 83-110.