2025/02/27 by Gabrielle Hodge, Elizabeth Manrique, Bodo Winter +1 · 1 voice
Psychology · Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · #Hearing Impairment and Communication #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Speech and dialogue systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.1515/ling-2023-0238
Abstract How do deaf BSL signers signal polar and content questions? This study quantitatively investigates the manual and non-manual forms used to signal polar and content questions during dyadic conversations documented in the BSL Corpus. We found that non-manual movements such as eye, eyebrow and/or head movements do not differentiate content and polar questions in BSL. Instead, it is the presence or absence of conventionalised wh -forms that most strongly differentiates content questions in BSL, and these wh -forms can be signed in BSL and/or mouthed in English. These findings challenge the traditional manual versus non-manual paradigm for analysing polar and content questions in signed languages, while demonstrating how corpus methods can further our understanding of signed language variation and use.