Relationships certainly lexical and phonological properties
Next we examined relationships among the lexical and phonological properties of the signs in ASL-LEX to gain insight into how phonological, lexical, and semantic factors interact in the ASL lexicon. s = –0.14, p < 0.001. Although it is possible that this inverse correlation is driven by the relatively higher frequency of closed-class words which may be lower in iconicity than other signs, the negative correlation remains when closed-class words (i.e., words with a “minor” Lexical Class) are excluded (r s = –0.17, p < 0.001). This result is compatible with the early proposal that with frequent use, signs may move away from their iconic origins, perhaps due to linguistic pressures to become more integrated into the phonological system (Frishberg, 1975). Interestingly, the direction of this relationship was the opposite of that found for British Sign Language; that is, Vinson et al. (2008) reported a weak positive correlation between frequency and iconicity: r = .146, p < .05. Alternatively, the different correlations might be due differences in stimuli selection. Vinson et al. (2008) intentionally selected stimuli that had a range of iconicity values which resulted in a bimodal iconicity distribution while we did not select signs for inclusion in ASL-LEX based on their iconicity.
Regularity and you will iconicity z-score (SignFrequency(Z) and Black Sites online dating you may Iconicity(Z)) had been significantly adversely synchronised together (select Desk step 1), with an increase of constant cues ranked as reduced iconic; although not, this relationship is poor, roentgen
A number of phonological features was very correlated and in many cases simply because how they was laid out (select Table 1). Particularly, for every single biggest place is composed of a minumum of one slight locations-high-frequency minor towns and cities often thus almost invariably be discovered inside the large volume major towns and cities, and you may handshape regularity is actually furthermore connected with selected little finger and you will flexion volume. Additionally, all of the around three strategies from Area Thickness was extremely synchronised with one to various other partially since they are similarly laid out and you may partially due to the fact one locals you to express four of your four sub-lexical functions (Maximum Society Density) commonly always also express one of four sub-lexical characteristics (Restricted Society Density). In the long run, all of the about three Society Density steps is actually synchronised with each of your sub-lexical volume strategies. This makes feel as by definition, prominent sandwich-lexical attributes are available in of several cues.
Interestingly, the basic sub-lexical frequencies are completely uncorrelated with each other, with the exception of selected fingers and minor location which are significantly but weakly correlated (r = .10, p < .01). This finding suggests that the space of possible ASL signs is rather large as each sub-lexical property can (to a first degree of approximation) vary independently of the others. This property contrasts with spoken languages where phoneme frequency is correlated across different syllable positions. For example, using position-specific uniphone frequencies from Vitevitch and Luce (2004) we estimate that in English monosyllabic words, vowel frequency is negatively correlated with the frequency of the preceding consonant (r = –.07, p < .001) and positively correlated with the following consonant (r = .17, p < .001), and that onset consonants have highly correlated frequencies (r = –.51, p < .001). We speculate that the relative independence of ASL sub-lexical features is related to both the motoric independence of the manual articulators (e.g., finger flexion is unaffected by the location of the hand in signing space) as well as the relative simultaneity of manual articulation (as opposed to serial oral articulation). We note that these non-significant correlations are for sub-lexical frequency only; specific sub-lexical properties have been argued to co-vary systematically (e.g., signs produced in locations far from the face may be more likely to be symmetrical, two-handed, and have larger, horizontal, and vertical motions; Siple, 1978).