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Amodal phonology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2020

IRIS BERENT Open the ORCID record for IRIS BERENT [Opens in a new window] ,
OUTI BAT-EL Open the ORCID record for OUTI BAT-EL [Opens in a new window] ,
DIANE BRENTARI Open the ORCID record for DIANE BRENTARI [Opens in a new window] ,
QATHERINE ANDAN Open the ORCID record for QATHERINE ANDAN [Opens in a new window]  and
VERED VAKNIN-NUSBAUM Open the ORCID record for VERED VAKNIN-NUSBAUM [Opens in a new window]
IRIS BERENT*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, 125 Nightingale Hall, 360 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA02115, [email protected]
OUTI BAT-EL
Affiliation:
Department of Lingustics, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel, 69978, [email protected]
DIANE BRENTARI
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, 115 East 58th St., Chicago, IL60637, [email protected]
QATHERINE ANDAN
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, 125 Nightingale Hall, 360 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA02115, [email protected]
VERED VAKNIN-NUSBAUM
Affiliation:
School of Education, Western-Galilee College, Akko, [email protected]
*
Correspondence regarding this paper should be directed to Iris Berent ([email protected]).
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Abstract

Does knowledge of language transfer spontaneously across language modalities? For example, do English speakers, who have had no command of a sign language, spontaneously project grammatical constraints from English to linguistic signs? Here, we address this question by examining the constraints on doubling. We first demonstrate that doubling (e.g. panana; generally: ABB) is amenable to two conflicting parses (identity vs. reduplication), depending on the level of analysis (phonology vs. morphology). We next show that speakers with no command of a sign language spontaneously project these two parses to novel ABB signs in American Sign Language. Moreover, the chosen parse (for signs) is constrained by the morphology of spoken language. Hebrew speakers can project the morphological parse when doubling indicates diminution, but English speakers only do so when doubling indicates plurality, in line with the distinct morphological properties of their spoken languages. These observations suggest that doubling in speech and signs is constrained by a common set of linguistic principles that are algebraic, amodal and abstract.

Keywords

anchoringOCPphonologyreduplicationsign language
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 499 - 529
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The authors wish to thank the Editor, Prof. Marc van Oostendorp, and the Journal of Linguistics referees for their expert opinion and helpful comments. We also thank Melanie Platt for her technical assistance. This research was supported by NSF grants 1528411 and 1733984 to IB.

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