Slips of the Hands Texas CUP

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5 Modality-dependent aspects of sign languageproduction: Evidence from slips of the handsand their repairs in German Sign Language

Annette Hohenberger, Daniela Happ,and Helen Leuninger

5.1 Introduction

In the present study, we investigate both slips of the hand and slips of the tonguein order to assess modality-dependent and modality-independent effects in lan-guageproduction. As a broader framework,we adoptthe paradigmof generativegrammar, as it hasbeen developed over thepast 40 years (Chomsky 1965; 1995,and related work of other generativists). Generative grammar focuses on bothuniversal and language-particular aspects of language. The universal charac-teristics of language are known as Universal Grammar (UG). UG denes theformatof possible human languagesanddelimits the range of possible variationbetween languages. We assume that languages are represented and processedby one and the same language module (Fodor 1983), no matter what modal-ity they use. UG is neutral with regard to the modality in which a particularlanguage is processed (Crain and Lillo-Martin 1999).

By adopting a psycholinguistic perspective, we ask how a speakers orsigners knowledge of language is put to use during the production of lan-guage. So far, models of language production have been developed mainlyon the basis of spoken languages (Fromkin 1973; 1980; Garrett 1975; 1980;Butterworth 1980; Dell and Reich 1981; Stemberger 1985; Dell 1986; MacKay1987; Levelt 1989; Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer 1999). However, even the setof spoken languages investigated so far is restricted (with a clear focus onEnglish). Thus, Levelt et al. (1999:36) challenge researchers to consider agreater variety of (spoken) languages in order to broaden the empirical basisfor valid theoretical inductions. Yet, Levelt and his colleagues do not go farenough. A greater challenge is to include sign language data more frequently inall language production research. Such data canprovide thecrucial evidence forthe assumed universality of the language processor and can inform researcherswhat aspects of language production are modality dependent and what aspectsare not.

112


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Modality-dependent aspects of sign language production 113

5.2 Goals and hypotheses

We follow Levelt (1983; 1989; 1999; Levelt et al. 1999) in adopting a modelof language production with one component that generates sentences (theprocessor) and another that supervises this process (the monitor). Therefore,we have formulated two hypothesis pairs with regard to the processor and themonitor (see also Leuninger, Happ, and Hohenberger 2000a): Hypothesis 1a: The language processor is modality neutral (amodal). Hypothesis 1b: The content of the language processor (phonology, morpho-

logy, syntax) is modality dependent. Hypothesis 2a: The monitor is modality neutral. Hypothesis 2b: The content of the monitor is modality dependent.This twofold hypothesis pair is well in line with what other sign languageresearchers advocate with regard to modality and modularity (Crain and Lillo-Martin 1999:314;Lillo-Martin 1999; Lillo-Martin thisvolume):while the input

and output modules of spoken and signed languages are markedly different,the representations and processing of language are the same because they arecomputed by the same amodal language module.

The goal of our study is to investigate these hypotheses as formulated above.We are interested in nding out, in the rst place, how a purported amodallanguageprocessorand monitorworkin the twodifferent modalities. Therefore,we investigate signers of German Sign Language ( Deutsche Geb ardenspracheor DGS) and speakers of German, and present them with the same task. Thetension between equality and difference is, we feel, a very productive one andis at the heart of any comparative investigation in this eld.

Hypotheses 1b and 2b deserve some elaboration. By stating that the contentof the language processor and the monitor are modality dependent we meanthatphonological,morphological, and syntacticrepresentations are different forsigned and spoken languages. Some representations may be the same (syntacticconstructions such as wh-questions, topicalizations, etc.); some may be differ-ent (signed languages utilize spatial syntax and have a different pronominalsystem); some may be absent in one of the languages but present in the other(signed languages utilize two-handed signs, classi ers, facial gestures, othergestures, etc., but spoken languages do not utilize these language devices). If modality differences are to be found they will be located here, not in the overalldesign of the processor. The processor will deal with and will be constrained bythose different representations. As the function of the processor is the same nomatter what language is computed conveying language in real-time the pro-cessor dealing with signed language and the one dealing with spoken languagewill have to adapt to these different representations, exploit possible process-ing advantages, and compensate for possible disadvantages (Gee and Goodhart1988). One prominent dimension in this respect is simultaneity/linearity of


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114 A. Hohenberger, D. Happ, and H. Leuninger

grammatical encoding. In the sense of UG, the format of linguistic represen-tations, however, is the same for both modalities. Both modalities may drawon different offers made available by UG, but, crucially, this format will al-ways be UG-constrained. Natural languages if signed or spoken will neverfall out of this UG space. The extent to which a particular language will drawupon simultaneity or linearity as an option will, of course, depend on spe-cic (Phonetic Form or PF) interface conditions of that language. 1 Differentinterface-conditions select different options of grammatical representations, allof which are made available by UG. Therefore, UG-constrained variation isa fruitful approach to the modality issue. In this respect, we distinguish threesources of variation: Intra-modal variation between languages: This variation pertains to cross-

linguistic differences between spoken languages (e.g. English vs. German)or crosslinguistic differences between signed languages (e.g. ASL vs. DGS).

Inter-modal variation (e.g. German vs. DGS): This variation is highly wel-come as it can test the validity of the concept of UG and the modularityhypothesis.

Typological variation : It is important not to mix modality and typolog-ical effects. The mapping of languages onto the various typological cate-gories (fusional, isolating, agglutinating languages, or, more generally, con-catenative vs. nonconcatenative languages) can cut across modalities. Forexample, spoken languages as well as signed languages may belong to thesame typological class of fusional/nonconcatenative languages (Leuninger,Happ, and Hohenberger 2000a). 2 Sign languages, however, seem to uni-formly prefer nonconcatenative morphology and are established at a more

1 In Chomsky s minimalist framework(1995), syntax hastwo interfaces: onephonetic-articulatory(Phonetic Form, PF) and one logical-semantic (Logical Form, LF). Syntactic representationshave to meet wellformedness constraints on these two interfaces, otherwise the derivation fails.LF is assumed to be modality neutral; PF, however, imposes different constraints on signed andspoken languages. Therefore, modality differences should be expected with respect to the PFinterface.

2 In this sense, spoken German shares some aspects of nonconcatenativity with German SignLanguage. Of course, DGS displays a higher degree of nonconcatenativity due to the manyfeatures that can be encoded simultaneously (spatial syntax, facial gestures, classi ers, etc.). Inspoken German, however, grammatical information can also be encoded simultaneously. Ablaut(vowelgradation)is a case inpoint:the alternationof thestemsuchas /gXb/ yields variousforms:geben (to give, innitive), gib (give , second person singularimperative), gab (gave, rstandthird person singular past tense), die Gabe (the gift, noun), g abe (give, subjunctive mode).Here, morphological information is realized by vowel alternation within the stem a processof in xation and not by suf xation, the default mechanism of concatenation . A forteriori ,Semitic languages with their autosegmental morphology (McCarthy 1981) and tonal languages(Odden1995) also pattern with DGS. In syntax, sign languagesalso pattern with various spokenlanguages with respect to particular parametric choices. Thus, Lillo-Martin (1986; 1991; seealso Crain and Lillo-Martin 1999) shows that ASL shares the Null Subject option with Italian(and other Romance languages) and the availability of empty discourse topics with languagessuch as Chinese.


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extreme pole on thecontinuumof isolatingvs. fusional morphology (see Sec-tion 5.5.3.1).

5.3 A serial model of language production

As we investigate DGS production from a model-theoretic viewpoint, we tieourempirical research to theories of spokenlanguageproduction that have beenproposed in the literature. We adopt Levelt s model (1989; 1992; 1999; Leveltet al. 1999) which is grounded in the seminal work of Garrett (1975; 1980) andFromkin (1973; 1980). 3

Levelt s speaking model (1989) comprises variousmodules:the conceptua-lizer, the formulator, thearticulator, theaudition, and thespeech-comprehensionsystem. Levelt also includes two knowledge bases: discourse/world knowledgeand the mental lexicon. Furthermore, in thecourse of language planning, Levelt

distinguishes several planning steps from intention to articulation, (the sub-title of Levelt 1989), namely conceptualizing, formulating, and articulation.Formulating proceeds in two discrete steps: grammatical encoding (access tolemmas, i.e. semantic and syntactic information) and phonological encoding(access to lexemes, i.e. phonological word forms). This two-stage approach isthe de ning characteristic of Levelt s and Garrett s discrete serial productionmodels.

Figure 5.1 depicts Levelt s model of language production. The serial pro-cess of sentence production is shown on the left-hand side of the diagram. Themonitor which is located in the conceptualizer and conceived of as an indepen-dent functional module makes use of the speech comprehension systemshownon the right-hand side via two feedback loops: one internal (internal speech)and one external (overt speech).

How can the adequacy of this model and the validity of our hypotheses bedetermined? Of the different empirical approaches to this topic (all of whichare discussed in Levelt 1989; Jescheniak 1999), we chose language productionerrors, a data class that has a long tradition of investigation in psycholinguisticresearch. The investigation of slips of the tongue in linguistic research datesback to the famous collection of Meringer and Mayer (1895); this collectioninstigated a long tradition of psycholinguistic research (see, amongst others,Fromkin 1973; 1980; Garrett 1975; 1980; Dell and Reich 1981; Cutler 1982;Stemberger 1985; 1989; Dell 1986; MacKay1987; Berg 1988; Leuninger1989;Dell and O Seaghdha 1992; Schade 1992; 1999; Poulisse 1999).

3 With the adoption of a serial model of language production, we do not intend to neglect ordisqualify interactive models that have been proposed by connectionists or cascading models.The sign language data that we discuss here must, in principle, also possibly be accounted forby these models. The various models of language production are brie y reviewed in an articleby Jescheniak (1999) and are discussed in depth in Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer (1999).


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Messagegeneration

Monitoring

Grammaticalencoding

Phonologicalencoding

CONCEPTUALIZER

ARTICULATOR AUDITION

Discourse model,situation knowledge,

encyclopedia, etc.

Prev erbal message

Phonetic plan(internal speech)

overt speech

Phonetic string

Surfacestructure

FORMULATOR

Parsed speech

forms

LEXICONlemmas

SPEECH--COMPREHENSIONSYSTEM

Figure 5.1 Levelt s (1989:9) model of language production

The investigation of slips of the hand is still relatively young. Klima and

Bellugi (1979) and Newkirk, Klima, Pedersen, and Bellugi (1980) were therst to present a small corpus of slips of the hand (spontaneous as well asvideotaped slips) in American Sign Language (ASL). Sandler and Whittemoreadded a second small corpus of elicited slips of the hand (Whittemore 1987).In Europe, as far as we know, our research on slips of the hand is the rst.

Slips (ofthe tongueor of thehand)offer therareopportunity to glimpse insidethe brain and to obtain a momentary access to an otherwise completely covertprocess: language production is highly automatic and unconscious(Levelt 1989). Slips open a window to the (linguistic) mind (Wiese 1987).This is the reason for the continued interest of psycholinguists in slips. Theyare nonpathological and involuntary deviations from an original plan whichcan occur at any stage during language production. Slips are highly charac-teristic of spontaneous language production. Although a negative incident, oran error, a slip reveals the normal process underlying language production. In


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analyzing the error we can nd out what the production process normally lookslike. 4

5.4 Method: Elicitation of slips of the hand

Traditionally, slips (ofthe tongueand hand) have been studied in a non-intrusiveway, by means of recording them ex post facto in a paper-and-pencil fashion.Alternatively, more restricted experimental methods have been invoked to elicitslips at a higherrate (Baars, Motley, andMacKay 1975; Motley andBaars1976;Baars 1992).

In order to combine the advantages of both methods naturalness as well asobjectivity of the data we developed the following elicitation task. We asked10 adult deaf signers to sign 14 picture stories of varying lengths under variouscognitive stress conditions (unordered pictures, signing under time pressure,cumulative repetition of the various pictures in the story, combinations of the

conditions). 5Figure 5.2 shows one of the short stories that had to be verbalized. 6 The

signers who were not informed about the original goal of the investigation werevideotaped for 30 45 minutes. This raw material was subsequently analyzedby the collaborators of the project. Importantly, a deaf signer who is compe-tent in DGS as well as linguistic theory participated in the project. We seethese as indispensable preconditions for being able to identify slips of the hand.Then, video clips of the slip sequences were digitized and fed into a large com-puter database. Subsequently, the slips and their corrections were categorizedaccording to the following main criteria: 7 type of slip: anticipation, perseveration, harmony error, 8 substitution (seman-

tic, formal, or both semantic and formal), blend, fusion, exchange, deletion; entity: phonological feature, morpheme, word, phrase; correction: yes/no; if yes, then by locus of correction: before word, within

word, after word, delayed.4 This is also the logic behind Caramazza s (1984) transparency condition. On the limitations of

speech errors as evidence for language production processes, see also Meyer (1992).5 Cognitive stress is supposedto diminishprocessing resources which should affect language pro-

duction as a resource-dependent activity (compare Leuninger, Happ, and Hohenberger 2000a).6 We thank DawnSignPress, San Diego, for kind permission to use the picture material of two of

their VISTA course books for teaching ASL (Smith, Lentz, and Mikos 1988; Lentz, Mikos, andSmith 1989).

7 The complete matrix containsadditional information which is notrelevant in the present context.8 Whereas the other pertinent slip categories need no further explanation, we brie y de ne har-

mony error here. By harmony we denote an error that has two sources, one in the left andone in the right context, so that it is impossible to tell whether it is an anticipation or a per-severation. Note that Berg (1988) calls these errors doppelquellig (errors with two sources ),and Stemberger (1989) calls them A/P errors (anticipation/perseveration). We prefer the termharmony as it captures the fact well that two identical elements in the left and right contextharmonize the element in their middle.


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F i g u r e 5 . 2

P i c t u r e s t o r y o f t h e e l i c i t a t i o n t a s k

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(a) (b) (c)

Figure 5.3a SEINE [Y-hand] ; 5.3b ELTERN [Y-hand]; 5.3c correct: SEINE[B-hand]

Our scoring procedure is illustrated by the following slip of the hand:

(1) SEINE [B-hand Y-hand] ELTERN 9

his parentshis parents

In (1) the signer anticipates the Y handshape of ELTERN (see Figure 5.3b)when signing the possessive pronoun SEINE (see Figure 5.3a) which is cor-rectly signed with the B handshape (see Figure 5.3c). The other three phono-logical features hand orientation, movement, and place of articulation arenot affected. The slip is apparently unnoticed by the signer as evidenced by thefact that it was not corrected. Scoring for example (1): type of slip: anticipation; entity: phonological feature (handshape); correction: no.In Section 5.5, we present our major empirical ndings on slips of the handsand compare them to slips of the tongue.

9 We represent the slips of the hand by using the following notations:

SEINE The slip is given in italics.[B-hand Y-hand] In brackets, we rst note the intended form followed by the

erroneous form after the arrow.S(OHN) In parentheses, we note parts of the sign which are not spelled

out.GEHT-ZU The hyphen indicates a single DGS sign as opposed to separate

words in spoken German. // The double slash indicates the point of interruption.

mouth gestureNICHT-VORHANDEN Nonmanual parts of a sign (in this case, mouth gestures) are

represented on an additional layer.


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T a b l e 5 . 1 D G S s l i p c a t e g o r i e s , c

r o s s - c

l a s s i

e d w i t h a f f e c t e d e n t i t y A

f f e c t e d e n t i t y

P h o n o l o g y :

H a n d

S l i p o f t h e h a n d t y p e

n

%

W o r d

s u m

H a n d s h a p e

o r i e n t a t i o n

M o v e

P l a c e

O t h e r

h 1 + h 2

C o m b i n a t i o n

M o r p h e m e

A n t i c i p a t i o n

4 4

2 1 . 7

9

3 2

1 6

4

2

5

5

3

P e r s e v e r a t i o n

4 5

2 2 . 1

1 2

3 1

1 1

9

1

3

3

3

1

2

H a r m

o n y

1 3

6 . 4

1 3

1 0

1

2

S u b s t i t u t i o n

5

2 . 5

4

1

s e m a n t i c

3 8

1 8 . 7

3 5

3

f o r m a l

1

0 . 5

1

s e m a n t i c a n d f o r m a l

1

0 . 5

1

B l e n d

3 2

1 5 . 7

3 0

1

F u s i o n

1 8

8 . 8

1 8

E x c h a n g e

2

1 . 0

1

1

D e l e t i o n

4

2 . 0

2

2

1

1

T o t a l

2 0 3

1 1 2

7 8

1 2

T o t a l ( a s p e r c e n t a g e )

1 0 0 . 0

5 5 . 2

3 8 . 4

6

120


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5.5 Results

5.5.1 Distribution of slip categories and affected entities

In Table 5.1 we analyze the distribution of the various slip categories cross-classi ed with entities. 10 In these data, the slip categories that contain the mosterrors areanticipation and perseveration; these aresyntagmatic errors. The nextlargest categories are semantic substitutions and blends; these are paradigmaticerrors.

In a syntagmatic error, the correct serialization of elements is affected. Ob-servationally, a phonological feature, such as a handshape, is spelled out tooearly (anticipation) 11 or too late (perseveration). 12 If a phonological feature isaffected, this error is located in the formulator module; strictly speaking thishappens during the access of the lexeme lexicon where the phonological formof a word is speci ed.

In a paradigmatic error, elements that are members of the same paradigm areaffected. A paradigm may, forexample, consist of verbs that share semantic fea-tures. Typically, one verb substitutes for a semantically related one; for exampleSIT substitutes for STAND. Semantic substitutions take place in the formulatoragain, but this time during access of the lemma-lexicon where semantic andgrammatical category information is speci ed.

The most frequently affected entities are sign words, followed by phonologi-cal parameters. Morphemes and phrases are only rarely affected. Most slip cat-egories co-occur with all entities. There are, however, preferred co-occurrencesthat are presented in Section 5.5.2.

5.5.2 Selection of original slips of the hand

In this section we present a qualitative analysis of a small collection of slips of thehand that exemplify themajor results in Section 5.5.1.Theerrors may or maynot be corrected. Typically, paradigmatic errors such as semantic substitutions

10 The categories and the affected entities are those described in Section 5.3. The phonologicalfeatures are further speci ed as handshape, hand orientation, movement, and place of articula-tion. The category other concerns other phonological errors; for example the proper selectionof ngers or the contact. The category h1 and h2 concerns the proper selection of hands, e.g. aone-handed sign is changed into a two-handed sign. The category combination concerns slipswhere more than one phonological feature is changed.

11 Compare example (1) in Section 5.4.12 In a serial, modular perspective (as in Garrett, Levelt), the problem with syntagmatic errors

concerns the proper binding of elements to slots speci ed by the representations on the respec-tive level. From a connectionist perspective, the problem with syntagmatic errors concerns theproper timing of elements. Both approaches, binding-by-evaluation and binding-by-timing arecompeting conceptions of the language production process (see also Levelt,Roelofs,and Meyer1999).


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(a) (b) (c)

Figure 5.4a substitution: VA(TER) ; 5.4b conduite: SOHN ; 5.4c target/correc-tion: BUB

and blends referred to in Section 5.4.1 affect words. Example (2) is a semanticsubstitution (with a conduite d approche 13 ):

(2) (Context: A boy is looking for his missing shoe)VA(TER) [BUB VATER] S(OHN) [conduite: BUB SOHN] BUBfather son boythe father, son, boy

The signer starts with the erroneously selected lemma VATER ( father ) givenin Figure 5.4a. That BUB and not VATER is the intended sign can be inferredfrom the context in which the discourse topic is the boy who is looking for hismissing shoe. After introducing the boy, the signer goes on to say where the

boy is looking for his shoe. Apart from contextual information, the repair BUBalso indicates the target sign. Immediately after the onset of the movement of VATER, the signer changes the handshape to the F-hand with which SOHN(son ) is shown in Figure 5.4b. 14 Eventually, the signer converges on the targetsign BUB ( boy ) as can be seen in Figure 5.4c.

Linearization errors such as anticipation, perseveration, and harmony errorstypically affect phonological features. Example (3) is a perseveration of thehandshape of the immediately preceding sign:

13 A conduite d approche is a stepwise approach to the target word, either related to semantics orto form. In (2) the target word BUB is reached only via the semantically related word SOHN,the conduite .

14 In fact the downward movement is characteristic of TOCHTER ( daughter ); SOHN ( son )is signed upwards. We have, however, good reasons to suppose that SOHN is, in fact, the in-tended intermediate sign which only coincidentally surfaces as TOCHTER because of the com-pelling downward movement from VATER to the place of articulation of BUB. Thus, the stringVATER SOHN BUB behaves like a compound.


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(a) (b) (c)

Figure 5.5a VATER [B-hand]; 5.5b slip: MOTHER [B-hand]; 5.5c correct:MOTHER [G-hand]

(3) (Discourse topic: the boy)(ER) GEHT-ZU VATER MUTTER [G-hand B-hand] SAGT-

BESCHEID(He) goes-to father mother tells-them(The boy) goes to father and mother, and tells them . . .

In (3) the B handshape of VATER ( father ) as can be seen in Figure 5.5a isperseverated on the sign for MUTTER ( mother ), as shown in Figure 5.5b.MUTTER is correctly signed with the G-hand as can be seen in Figure 5.5c.

With regard to serial handshape errors, we need to explain how erroneousphonological processes are distinguished from non-erroneous ones. First,Zimmer (1989) reports on handshape anticipations and perseverations on thenondominant hand which occur frequently in casual registers. While we ac-knowledge the phenomenon Zimmer describes, it is important not to mix thesecases with theones reported here; these ones concern the dominant hand only. 15

Second, it has been observed that signers of ASL and of Danish Sign Lan-

guage may systematically assimilate the index [G] handshape to the precedingor following sign with rstpersonsingular, but notwith second and third personsingular. Super cially, these cases look like anticipations and perseverations.While we also observe this phenomenon in DGS, it does notseemto havea com-parable systematic status as in ASL. 16 In (1) above SEINE ELTERN ( his par-ents ) it is the third person singular possessive pronoun SEINE ( his) which isaffected. This clearly cannotbe accountedfor along the lines of Zimmer(1989).

Handshape is the most prominent phonological feature to be affected by lin-earization errors. Our ndings with regard to the high proportion of handshapeerrors among the phonological slips reproduce earlier ndings of Klima and

15 In fact we found only one perseveration that concerns the nondominant hand of a P2-sign (inthe sense of Sandler 1993). The nondominant hand is rarely affected, and this fact might mirrorthe minor signi cance of the nondominant hand in sign language production.

16 We found only four such cases (three anticipations and one perseveration) which involved rstperson singular.


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In (5), the signer fuses the two signs SCHAUT ( looks ) and NICHT-VORHANDEN ( nothing ). The [V] handshape is from SCHAUT; the circularmovement, the hand orientation, and the mouth gesture (blowing out a streamof air) is from NICHT-VORHANDEN. The fused elements are adjacent andhave a syntagmatic relation in the phrase. Their positional frames are fusedinto a single frame; phonological features stem from both signs. Interestingly,a nonmanual feature (the mouth gesture) is also involved. 18

Fusions in spoken languages are not a major slip category but have beenreported in the literature (Shattuck-Hufnagel 1979; Garrett 1980; Stemberger1984). Fusions are similar to blends, formationally, but involve neighboringelements in the syntactic string, whereas blends involve paradigmatically re-lated semantic items. Stemberger (1984) argues that they are structural errorsinvolving two words in the same phrase for which, however, only one wordnode is generated. In our DGS data, two neighboring signs are fused into asingle planning slot, whereby some phonological features stem from the onesign and some from the other; see (5). Slips of this type may relate to regularprocesses such as composition by which new and more convenient signs aregenerated synchronically and diachronically. Therefore, one might speculatethat fusions are more frequent in sign language than in spoken language, asour data suggest. This issue, however, is not well understood and needs furtherelaboration.

Word blends are frequentparadigmaticerrors in DGS. In (6) twosemanticallyrelated items HOCHZEIT ( marriage ) and HEIRAT ( wedding ) competefor lemma selection and phonological encoding. The processor selects both of them and an intricate blend results; this blend is complicated by the fact thatboth signs are two-handed signs:

(6) HEIRAT

PAAR// HOCHZEIT // HEIRAT PAARmarriage

couple// wedding// marriage couplewedding couple

The two competing items in the blend (6) are HEIRAT ( marriage ) (see Fig-ure 5.7b) and HOCHZEIT ( wedding ) (see Figure 5.7c). 19 In the slip (seeFigure 5.7a), the dominant hand has the [Y] handshape of HOCHZEIT andalso performs the path movement of HOCHZEIT, while the orientation andcon guration of the two hands is that of HEIRAT. For the sign HEIRAT, thedominant hand puts the ring on the non-dominant hand s ring nger as in the18 It is important not to confuse fusions and blends. Whereas in fusions neighboring elements in

the syntagmatic string interact,only signs that bear a paradigmatic (semantic) relation engage ina blend. While SCHAUT and NICHT-VORHANDEN have no such relation, the signs involvedin blends like (6) do.

19 Note that this blend has presumably been triggered by an appropriateness repair, namely theextension of PAAR ( couple ) to HEIRATSPAAR ( wedding couple ).


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(a) (b) (c)

Figure 5.7a slip: HEIRAT/HOCHZEIT ; 5.7bcorrection:HEIRAT;5.7c correct:HOCHZEIT

wedding ceremony. In the slip, however, the dominant hand glides along thepalm of the non-dominant hand and not over its back, as in HOCHZEIT. Inter-estingly, featuresof both signs are present simultaneously, butdistributed on thetwo articulators, the hand; this kind of error is impossible in spoken languages.The blend is corrected after the erroneous sign. This time, one of the competingsigns, HEIRAT, is correctly selected.

5.5.3 Intra-modal and inter-modal comparison with other slip corpora

In this section we present a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of our slipsof the hand data. We then compare our slip corpus with the one compiledby Klima and Bellugi (1979), which also appears in Newkirk et al. (1980).With respect to word and morpheme errors, the latter is not very informative.Klima and Bellugi report that only nine out of a total of 131 slips were wholesigns being exchanged. No other whole word errors (substitutions, blends) are

reported. With respect to the distribution of phonological errors, however, wecan make a direct comparison. The ASL corpus consists of 89 phonologicalslips that are distributed as shown in Table 5.2. We present our data so that it isdirectly comparable to Klima and Bellugi s.20 As can be seen in Table 5.2, thedistribution in both slip collections is parallel. As expected, hand con guration(especially handshape) hasthelion s share in theoverallnumberofphonologicalslips.

The reason why handshape is so frequently involved in slipping may haveto do with inventory size and the motoric programs that encode handshape.In DGS the signer has to select the correct handshape from a set of approxi-mately 32 handshapes (Pfau 1997) which may lead to mis-selection to a certain

20 In the rearrangement of our own data from Table 5.1 we only considered the rst four param-eters and left out the minor categories (other, h1 + h2, combination; see footnote 10 above).Note that we have combined handshape and hand orientation into the single parameter handcon guration in Table 5.2.


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Table 5.2 Frequency (percentages in parentheses) of phonologicalerrors by parameter in ASL (Klima and Bellugi 1979) and in DGS

Parameter ASL DGS

Hand con guration 65 (73) 47 (82.5)Place of articulation 13 (14.6) 5 (8.8)Movement 11 (12.4) 5 (8.8)

Total 89 (100) 57 (100)

degree. One might conjecture that the bigger the inventory, the moreerror-pronethe process of selection both because there is higher competition between themembers of the set and because the representational space has a higher density.Furthermore, the motor programs for activating these handshapes involve only

minor differences; this might be an additional reason for mis-selection. Notethat the inventory for hand orientation is much smaller there are only sixmajor hand orientations that are used distinctively and the motor programsencoding this parameter can be relatively imprecise. Hand orientation errors,accordingly, are less frequent.

In spoken language, phonological features are also not equally affected inslips; the place feature (labial, alveolar, palatal, glottal, uvular, etc.) is mostfrequently involved (Leuninger, Happ, and, Hohenberger 2000b).

In order to address the question of modality, we have to make a second com-parison, this time with a corpus of slips of the tongue. We use the Frankfurtcorpus of slips of the tongue. 21 This corpus includes approximately5000 items. Although both corpora differ with respect to the method by whichthe data were gathered and with respect to categorization, we provide a broadcomparison.

As can be seen from Tables 5.1 and 5.3, 22 there is an overall congruence foraffected entities and slip categories. There are, however, two major discrepan-cies. First, there are almost no exchanges in the sign language data, whereasthey are frequent in the spoken language data. Second, morphemes are rarelyaffectedin DGS, whereas they areaffected to a higherdegree in spokenGerman.These two results become most obvious in the absence of stranding errors inDGS. In Section 5.5.3.1 we concentrate on these discrepancies, pointing outpossible modality effects.

21 We are in the process of collecting slips of the tongue from adult German speakers in the samesetting, so we have to postpone the exact quantitative intermodal comparison for now.

22 In Table 5.3 the following categoriesfrom Table 5.1 are missing: harmony, formal, and semanticand formal substitutions. These categories were not included in the set of categories by thetime this corpus had been accumulated. Harmony errors are included in the anticipation andperseveration category.


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Table 5.3 Slip categories/affected entities for the German slip corpus

Affected entity

Slip of the tongue type n % Word Phoneme Morpheme Phrase

Anticipation 1024 20.7 143 704 177Perseveration 906 18.3 155 644 107Substitution, semantic 1094 22.1 783 147 164Blend 923 18.6 658 13 242 10Exchange 774 15.6 200 439 135Fusion 13 0.3 10 2 1Deletion 182 3.7 46 78 58Addition 35 0.7 8 17 10

Total 4951 2003 2043 894 10Total (as percentage) 100.0 40.5 41.3 18.1 0.2

5.5.3.1 Absence of stranding errors. One of the most striking differ-ences between the corpora is the absence of strandingerrors in DGS. Surprisingas this result is from the point of view of spoken languages, it is in line withKlima and Bellugi s earlier ndings for ASL. They, too, did not nd any strand-ing errors (Klima and Bellugi 1979). In this section we explore possible reasonsfor this nding.

In spoken languages, this category is well documented (for English, seeGarrett 1975; 1980; Stemberger 1985; 1989; Dell 1986; forArabic, seeAbd-El-Jawad and Abu-Salim 1987; for Spanish, see Del Viso, Igoa, and Garc a-Albea1991; forGerman, seeLeuninger 1996).Strandingoccurswhen the free contentmorphemes of two words, usually neighbors, are exchanged whereas their re-

spective boundgrammaticalmorphemes stay in situ . A famousEnglish exampleis (7a); a German example which is even richer in bound morphology is (7b):

(7) a. turk ing talk ish talk ing Turk ish (from Garrett 1975);b. mein kolleg ischer Malay e mein malay ischer Kolleg e;

my colleag ical Malay my Malay colleague (Leuninger1996:114).

In (7a) the word stems talk - and turk -, guring in a verb and an adjective,respectively, are exchanged, leaving behind the gerund - ing and the adjectivalmorpheme- ish . This misordering issuppposed to take placeata level ofprocess-ing where theword form (morphological, segmental content) is encoded, on thepositional level (Garrett s terminology) or lexeme level (Levelt s terminology).

In (7b), the stems malay - and kolleg -, guring in an adjective and a noun, re-

spectively, are exchanged, leaving behind the adjectivalmorpheme- isch as wellas the case/gender/number morpheme - er of the adjective and the nominalizingmorpheme - e of the noun.


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Theabsenceof this category inDGS andASL callsfor some explanation.Firstof all, we have to exclude a sampling artifact. The data in both corpora (DGS vs.spoken German)werecollected ina verydifferentfashion: theslips of thetonguestem from a spontaneous corpus; the slips of the hand from an elicited corpus(for details, see Section 5.4). The distribution of slip categories in the formertype of corpora is known to be prone to listeners biases (compare Meyer 1992;Ferber 1995; see also Section 5.4). Stranding errors are perceptually salient,and because of their spectacular form they are more likely to be recorded andadded to a slip collection. In an objective slip collection, however,this bias is notoperative. 23 Pending the exact quanti cation of our elicited slips of the tongue,we now turn to linguistic reasons that are responsible for the differences. Theconvergent ndings in ASL as well as in DGS are signi cant: if morphemes donot strand in either ASL or DGS this strongly hints at a systematic linguisticreason.

What rst comes to mind is the difference in morphological type: spokenGerman is a concatenative language to a much higher degree than DGS or ASL.Although spokenGerman is fusional to a considerable degree (see Section 5.2),it is far more concatenative than DGS in that morphemes typically line upneatly one after the other, yielding, for example, mein malay-isch-er Kolleg-e (my Malay colleague ) with one derivational morpheme ( -isch ), one stem-generating morpheme(- e) andone case/agreement morpheme(- er ).InDGSthiscomplex nominal phrase would contain no such functional morphemes but takethe form: MEIN KOLLEGE MALAYISCH ( my Malay colleague ). For thisreason, no stranding can occur in such phrases in the rst place. Note that thisis not a modality effect but one of language type. We can easily show thatthis effect cuts across languages in the same modality, simply by looking atthe English translation of (7b): my Malay colleague. In English comparable

stranding could also not occur because the bound morphemes (on the adjectiveand thenoun) arenot overt, as in DGS. English, however, has many other boundmorphemes that are readily involved in stranding errors (as in 7a), unlike inDGS.

Now we are ready for the crucial question, namely, whether we are to expectno stranding errors in DGS (or ASL) at all? The answer is no. Stranding errorsshould, in principle, occur (see also Klima and Bellugi 1979). 24 What we haveto determine is what grammatical morphemes could be involved in such signmorpheme strandings. The answer to this question relates to the second reasonfor the low frequency of DGS stranding errors: high vs. low separability of

23 A preliminary inspection of our corpus of elicited slips of the tongue suggests that strandingerrors arealso a low-frequency error categoryin spoken languages, so thatthe apparentdifferenceis not one between language types but is, at least partly, due to a sampling artifact.

24

Klima and Bellugi (1979) report on a memory study in which signers sometimes misplaced theinection. Although this is not the classical case of stranding (where the in ections stay in situwhile the root morphemes exchange), this hints at a possible separability of morphemes duringonline production.


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Figure 5.8 A polymorphemic form in ASL (Brentari 1998:21)

grammatical morphemes. This difference is a traditional one of descriptivelinguistics and dates back to the early days of research into Indo-Europeanlanguages (Kean 1977).

Sign languages such as DGS are extremely rich with in ectional and deriva-tional morphemes and, crucially, are able to realize them at the same time.Figure 5.8 describes a polymorphemic ASL sign in which nine morphemes(content morphemes and classi ers) are simultaneously realized in one mono-syllabic word (Brentari 1998:21) meaning something like:

(8) two, hunched, upright-beings, facing forward, go forward, carefully,side-by-side, from point a, to point b .

Of these many morphemes, however, only a few such as the spatial loci could, if ever, be readily involved in a stranding error. Fusional as these signlanguage morphemes are, they are much more resistant to being separated fromeach other than concatenated morphemes. 25

There are,however, grammatical sign languagemorphemes thatshould allowfor stranding errors, hence be readily separable; for example aspectual, plural,and agreement morphemes. In a hypothetical sentence like (9):

(9) ICH PERSON +++ ICH FRAG JEDEN -EINZELNENI person plural I ask each -of -themI ask each of them.

the plural morpheme +++ (realized by signing PERSON three times) andthe AGR-morpheme each of them (realized by a zigzag movement of theverbal stem FRAG) could,in principle, strandwhilethe free content morphemes

25 In Stemberger (1985:103), however, there is little difference in the stranding of regular (highseparability) vs. irregular (low separability) past tense in English speech errors.


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Gee and Goodhart (1988) have convincingly argued that spoken and signedlanguages differwith respect to the amount of information that can be conveyedin a linguistic unit and in a particular time. This topic is intimately related tolanguage production and therefore deserves closer inspection (Leuninger et al.2000a). Spoken languages, on the one hand, make use of very ne motoricarticulators (tongue, velum, vocal chords, larynx, etc.). The places of articula-tion of the various phonemes are very close to each other in the mouth (teeth,alveolar ridge, lips, palate, velum, uvula, etc.). The oral articulators are capableof achieving a very high temporal resolution of signals in production and canthus convey linguistic information at a very high speed.

Signed languages, on the other hand, make use of coarse motoric articulators(the hands and arms, the entire body). The places of articulation are moredistant from each other. The temporal resolution of signed languages is lower.Consequently, sign language production must take longer for each individualsign.

The spatio-temporal and physiological constraints of language productionin both modalities are quite different. On average, the rate of articulation forwords doubles that of signs (4 5 words per second vs. 2.3 2.5 signs per sec-ond; see Klima and Bellugi 1979). Surprisingly, however, signed and spokenlanguages are on a par with regard to the ratio of propositional information pertime rate. Spoken and signed sentences roughly have the same production time(Klima and Bellugi 1979). The reason for this lies in the different informationdensity of each sign. 27 A single monosyllabic sign is typically polymorphemic(remember the nine morphemes in (8); compare Brentari 1998). The condensa-tion of information is not achieved by the high-speed serialization of segmentsand morphemes but by the simultaneous output of autosegmental phonologicalfeatures and morphemes.

Thus, we witness an ingenious trade-off between production time and in-formational density which enables both signed and spoken languages to comeup with what Slobin (1977) formulated as a basic requirement of languages,namely that they be humanly processible in real time (see also Gee andGoodhart 1988).

If we follow this line of argumentation it follows quite naturally that signedlanguages due to their modality-speci c production constraints will alwaysbe attracted to autosegmental phonology and fusional morphology. Spokenlanguagesbeing subject to less severe constraints will be free to choosebetweenthe available options. We therefore witness a greater amount of variabilityamong them.

27 Klima and Bellugi (1979) suggest that the omissionof function words such as complementizers,determiners, auxiliaries, etc. also economizes time. We do not follow them here because thereare also spoken languagesthat have manyzero functors, althoughthey are obviously not pressedto economize time by omitting them.


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5.5.3.2 Fewerexchanges in general:Phonological features andwords.As can be seen by comparing Table 5.1 and 5.3, not only are stranding errorsabsent in our DGS corpus, but exchanges of any linguistic entity are extremelyrare as compared to the spoken German corpus. The analysis of phonologi-cal and word exchanges in spoken language has been of special importancesince Garrett (1975; 1980) and others proposed the rst models of languageproduction. Garrett showed that the errors in (10a) and (10b) arise at differentprocessing levels which he identi ed as the functional (lemma) level and thepositional (lexeme) level:

(10) a. the list was not in the word the word was not in the list(Stemberger 1985, in Berg 1988:26);

b. heft lemisphere left hemisphere(Fromkin 1973, in Meyer 1992:183).

Thereasons to differentiate both types of exchange liein distinct constraints andvocabularyusedto computebothkinds of exchange. Thewords involved in wordexchanges, on the one hand, always obey the word class constraint, i.e. nounsexchange with nouns, and verbs with verbs, but they do not necessarily sharethe same phrase. The segments involved in phoneme exchanges, on the otherhand, do belong to the same phrase and do not obey the word class constraint. However, they obey the syllable position constraint, namely that segmentsof like syllable positions interact; for example onset with onset, nucleus withnucleus, and coda with coda (Garrett 1975; 1980; Levelt 1992; Meyer 1992;Poulisse 1999).MacNeilage (1998)refers to this constraint in termsof a frame-content metaphor 28 at the core of which is the lack of interchangeability of the two major class elements of spoken language phonology, consonants, andvowels. 29

Although in theKlimaandBellugi study (1979; seealso Newkirk et al. 1980)no word errors are reported, they found nine phonological exchanges. Amongthese is the following handshape exchange:

(11) SICK BORED (Newkirk et al. 1980:171; see also Klima and Bellugi1979:130)

Here, the handshapes for SICK (G-hand) and BORED (exposed middle nger)are exchanged; the other features (place of articulation, hand orientation, andmovement) remain unaffected.28 We are thankful to Peter MacNeilage for pointing out the frame-content metaphor to us in

this context.29 It is wellknownthat in spoken languagesphonological slips in normal speakers andphonological

paraphasia in aphasic patients concern mostly consonants. The preponderance of handshapeerrors in sign language production errors as well as in aphasic signing bears directly on theframe-content metaphor and invites speculation on a modality-independent effect in thisrespect. Consonants in spoken and signed languages may be more vulnerable than vowels dueto a neural difference in representation (Corina 1998:321).


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Given the fact that all major phonological features (handshape, place of ar-ticulation, hand orientation, and movement) can be affected in simple signingerrors where only one element is affected as in anticipations, perseverations,and harmony errors (see Table 5.1), one wonders why they should not also g-ure in complex signing errors where two elements are affected. Handshapeexchanges like theone in (11) should, therefore, be expected. There is no reasonto suppose that sign language features cannot be separated from each other. Infact, it was one of the main goals of Newkirk et al. (1980) to demonstrate thatthere are also sub-lexical phonological features in ASL, and to provide em-pirical evidence against the unwarranted view that signs are simply indivisiblewholes, holistic gestures not worth being seriously studied by phonologists.

Note that spoken and signed languages differ in the following way withrespect to phonological errors in general and phonological exchanges in partic-ular. Segments of concatenating spoken languages such as English and Germanare lined up like beads on a string in a strictly serial order as speci ed in thelexical item s word form (lexeme). If two complete segments are exchanged,the syllable position constraint is always obeyed. The same, however, cannothold true of thephonological features of a sign. They do notbehaveas segments:they are not realized linearly, but simultaneously. It is a modality speci city,indeed, that the sign s phonological features are realized at the same time,although they are all represented on independent autosegmental tiers. Obvi-ously, the frame-content metaphor (MacNeilage 1998) cannot be transferredto signed languages straightforwardly. The frame-content metaphor statesthat a word s skeleton and its segmental content are independently generated (Levelt 1992:10). This is most obvious in segmental exchanges. If we roughlyattribute handshape, hand orientation, and placeof articulation consonantal sta-tus and movement vocalic status, then of the two constraints on phonological

errors the segment class constraint and the syllable position constraint sign languages obey only the former (compare Perlmutter 1992). Typically, onehandshape is replaced with another handshape or one movement with anothermovement. The latter constraint, however, cannot hold true of the phonologicalfeatures of a sign because they are realized simultaneously. Thus, phonologicalslips in sign languages compare to segmental slips in spoken languages, butthere is no equivalence for segmental slips in sign language.

We still have to answer the question why exchanges across all entities are sorare in sign language. As Stemberger (1985) pointed out, the true number of exchanges maybe veiled by what he calls incompletes, i.e. coveredexchangesthat are caught and repaired by the monitor after the rst part of the exchangehas taken place. (An incomplete is an early corrected exchange.) These errors,then, do not surface as exchanges but as anticipations. As a null hypothesis

we assume that the number of exchanges, true anticipations, and incompletesis the same for spoken and signed languages, unless their incidence interacts


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with other processes that change the probability of their occurrence. We will, infact, argue below that monitoring is such a process. In Section 5.6 we point outthat the cut-off points in signed and spoken languages are different. Errors aredetected and repaired apparently earlier in sign languages, preferentially in theproblem item itself, whereas repairs in spoken languages start later, after theerroneous word or even later. If this holds true, exchanges may be more likelyto surface in spoken languages simply because both parts of the error wouldhave already occurred before the monitor was able to detect them.

5.6 The sign language monitor: Repair behavior in DGS

Corrections are natural phenomena in spontaneous language production. Ad-vanced models of language production therefore contain a functional com-ponent that supervises its own output, realizes discrepancies to the intendedutterance, and, if necessary, induces a repair. This module is the monitor. InLevelt s model the monitor (see Figure 5.1) is situated in the conceptualizer,i.e. hierarchically very high, and is fed by two feedback loops, one internal(via internal speech), the other external (via overt speech). The monitor usesthe speech comprehension system as its informational route. The fact that thelanguage production system supervises itself and provides repairs is not at alltrivial. Repair behavior is a complex adaptive behavior and shows the capacityof the system in an impressive way.

To date, monitor behavior in signed languages has not been investigatedsystematically. In the following discussion we analyze slip repairs from amodel-theoretic perspective. According to Hypothesis 2a, we expect compara-ble monitoring with respect to processing DGS and spoken German. The rateof correction and correction types should be thesame. According to Hypothesis

2b, we expect the sign language monitor to be sensitive to the speci c represen-tations of signed and spoken languages. Therefore, repair behavior is taken tobe an interesting new set of data that can reveal possible modality differences.

In the following, we present our quantitative analysis of repairs in DGS.Above all, we concentrate on the locus of repair in spoken languages and DGSbecause this criterion reveals the most striking difference between DGS andspoken language.

5.6.1 Locus of repair: Signed vs. spoken language

Slip collections do not always contain detailed information about repair behav-ior. We believe, however, that monitor behavior is revealing with respect to thecapacity of the processor, to incremental language production, and to the pro-

cessor s dependency on the linguistic representations it computes (Leuningeret al. 2000a).


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Table 5.4 Locus of repair (percentages) in DGS vs. Dutch

Locus of repair DGS Dutch

Before word 8 (7.3) 0Within word 57 (51.8) 91 (23)After word 37 (33.6) 193 (48)Delayed 8 (7.3) 115 (29)

Total slip repairs 110 (100.0) 399 (100)Ratio repairs/slips 110/203 (54.2)

Source: Levelt 1983:63

In this section we address the following questions: To what extent do Germansigners correct their slips? What are the main cut-off points and do these cor-respond to those in spoken languages?

According to Levelt (1983:56; 1989:476), the speaker adheres to the MainInterruption Rule:namely Stop the ow of speech immediatelyupon detectingtrouble. It is assumed that this rule is obeyed in the same way in both spokenand sign language. However, we see that due to modality differences repairsin sign language appear to occur earlier than those in spoken language.

Table 5.4 shows the distribution of repairs at four cut-off points (see Section5.4): before word, 30 within word, after word, and delayed. We compare theDGS data with error repairs of Dutch speakers from Levelt (1983). 31 First, wecan see that 54.2 percent of all slips in DGS are repaired. This is in the normalrange when compared with thepercentage of repairs in spoken languages, whichexhibit varying correction rates of about 50 percent.

Focusing on differences in monitor behavior between DGS and spoken lan-guages, as can be seen from Table 5.4, the most frequent locus of repair forDGS is within word (51.8 percent), followed by after the word (33.6 percent).

30 The diagnosis of such early repairs is possible because the handshape is already in place duringthe transitional movement. This allows a good guess to be made at what sign would have beenproduced if it had not been caught by the monitor. Maybe these extremely early repairs mustbe compared to sub-phonological speech errors which consist in altered motor patterns thatare imperceptible unless recorded by special electromyographic techniques, as in the studyof Mowry and MacKay (1990). Furthermore, these early repairs encourage us to speculateon the time course of activation of the various phonological parameters of a sign. Handshapeseems to be activated extremely early and very fast, obviously before the other parameters i.e. hand orientation, place of articulation, and movement are planned. This would mean thatsequentiality is, in fact, an issue when signs are accessed in the lexeme lexicon.

31 We compared our DGS repairs with only a subset of Levelt s data set, namely with error repairs(E repairs) (Levelt 1983:63). It is well known that in appropriateness repairs (A repairs), thespeaker tends to complete the inappropriate word before he or she corrects it because it is noterroneous. In E repairs, however, the speaker corrects his or her faulty utterance as fast aspossible, not respecting word boundaries to the same extent.


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Delayed repairswheresome materialintervenes between theerror and the repairare rare (7.3 percent) as are early repairs before word onset (7.3 percent).

The cut-off points in spoken language (here, Dutch) are different. 32 The typ-ical locus of repair in spoken language is after the word. Corrections within theword are rarer, and delayed repairs are more frequent. For DGS, however, re-pairs peak on very fast repairs within the word, followed by increasingly slowerrepairs. However, we do not invoke modality as an explanation for this apparentdifference because it is only a super cial, albeit interesting, explanation.

From the discussion in Section 5.5 of the different production times forspoken vs. signed languages (the ratio of which is 2:1), we can easily predictthat thelongerdurationof a sign word will in uence the locus of repair,providedthat theoverallcapacity of thespoken andthe sign language monitor is thesame.The following prediction seems to hold: because a signed word takes twice aslong as a spoken word, errors will be more likely to be caught within the word insign language, but after the word in spoken language. Note that this differencebecomes even more obvious when we characterize the locus of repair in termsof syllables. In DGS, the error is caught within a single syllable, whereas forspoken Dutch, the syllable counting begins only after the trouble word (notcounting any syllables within the error).

Again, the reason is that words in signed language (monomorphemic as wellas polymorphemic) tend to be monosyllabic(see Section 5.5). This onesyllable,however,hasa long production time andallows fora repair at some point duringits production. 33 Thus, the comparison of signed and spoken language repairsreveals once more the different temporal expansion of identical linguistic ele-ments, i.e. words and syllables. This is a modality effect, but not a linguisticone. This effect is related to the articulatory interface. Note that in Chomsky sminimalist program (1995) PF, which is related to articulation and perception,

is one of the interfaces with which the language module interacts. Obviously,spoken and signed languages are subject to very different anatomical and phys-iological constraints with regard to their articulators. Our data reveal exactlythis difference.

Would it be more appropriate to characterize the locus of repair not in termsof linguistic entities but in terms of physical time? If we did this we wouldnd that in both language types repairs would, on average, be provided equallyfast. With this result any apparent modality effect vanishes. We would notknow, however, what differences in the temporal resolution of linguistic entitiesexist in both languages, and that these differences result in a very different32 Levelt distinguishes word-internal corrections (without further specifying where in the word),

corrections after the word, and delayed corrections that are measured in syllables after the error.33 It is even possible that both the erroneous word and the repair share a single syllable. In these

cases, the repair is achieved by a handshape change during the path movement. This is in accordwith phonological syllable constraints (Perlmutter 1992) which allow for handshape changeson the nucleus of a sign.


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monitor behavior. Stopping after theproblem word hasbeen completedor whileproducing the problem word itself makes a difference for both the producer andthe interlocutor.

5.7 Summary and conclusions

We have investigated slips of thehandandrepair behaviorin DGSand comparedthem to slips of the tongue and repair behavior in spoken languages. Our aimwasto determinewhether there aretruemodality differences between them. Ourmajor nding is that signed and spoken language production is, in principle,the same. This comes as no surprise as both are natural languages and aretherefore subject to the same constraints on representation and processing. Dueto modality differences, the satisfaction of these constraints may, however, bedifferent in each language. In this respect, our language production data revealexactly the phonological, morphological, and syntactic design of DGS andspoken German. Language production data therefore provide external evidenceforthe structures andrepresentationsof DGSin particular, andof sign languagesin general, which have been analyzed by sign language researchers so far.

As for the slip behavior, stranding errors are absent in DGS and exchangeerrors are, in general, very rare. Fusions are more prominent. We explain thisdiscrepancy partly by appealingto typological differencesand morespeci callywith respect to the autosegmental character of the phonology and morphologyof signed languages. The possibility of simultaneous encoding of linguisticinformation enhances the information density of signs. They may be composedof many morphemeswhichare realized at thesametime. As this ischaracteristicof sign languages in general and not just of a particular typological class (as theSemitic languages in spoken languages) we acknowledge that this discrepancy

is rooted in a true modality difference. Thus, the simultaneous encoding of morphological information is at rst sight a typological difference, but onewhich is layered upon a true modality effect.

The repair behavior in DGS reveals again the different interface conditions(articulatory, physical, and timing conditions) of spoken and signed languages.The longer production time of signs enables the monitor to catch and repairerrors before the end of the sign. The low incidence of exchanges receives anexplanationalong theselines:they arerarerin signlanguagebecausethe monitorhas enough time to catch them after the rst erroneous word (the anticipation)due to the longer production time of signed vs. spoken words. The physical,neurophysiological, and motor constraintson the primary articulators(hands vs.vocal tract) and receptors (visual vs. auditory) in signed vs. spoken languagesare vastly different (see Brentari, this volume). These are indisputable modality

differences. They are, however, situated at the linguistic interfaces, here at thearticulatory perceptual interface (Chomsky 1995).


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Our approach to modality effects is a highly restrictive one. We only acceptthe different degree of linguistic information being processed simultaneouslyand the different interface conditions as true modality differences. All otherdifferences turn out to be typological differences or crosslinguistic differencesthat have always been known to exist between natural languages. From theperspective of UG, the question of modality is always a secondary one, theprimary one being the question of the nature of language itself.

Acknowledgments

Ourresearch project isbased on a grantgivento Helen Leuningerby theGermanResearch Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG), grant numberLE 596/6-1 and LE 596/6-2.

5.8 References

Abd-El-Jawad, Hassan and Issam Abu-Salim. 1987. Slips of the tongue in Arabic andtheir theoretical implications. Language Sciences 9:145 171.

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