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Establishing a sonority hierarchy in American Sign Language: the use of simultaneous structure in phonology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2008

Diane Brentari
Diane Brentari
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to help define and limit the role that temporal ordering plays in morphophonemic representation, syllable structure and phrases in American Sign Language (ASL). First, I will list the ways in which temporal ordering plays a role in morphophonemic structures. Second, I will show that temporal ordering plays a limited role in ASL phrases. Third, I will argue that neither temporal ordering nor segmentation plays a role in syllables, and the bulk of this paper will be devoted to motivating this syllable template. Stokoe (1960) and Stokoe et al. (1965) proposed that ASL is organised according to simultaneous phonemes, but since Liddell (1984) the importance of temporally ordered structure in sign structure has been emphasised by many researchers (Liddell & Johnson 1989; Sandler 1986, 1989; Perlmutter 1990, 1992; Corina 1990a, b; to name a few).

Type
Articles
Information
Phonology , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , August 1993 , pp. 281 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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