Crasborn, O., E. van der Kooij, D. Waters, B. Woll, & J. Mesch. 2008. Frequency distribution and

spreading behavior of different types of mouth actions in three sign l a n g u a g e s . Sign

Language & Linguistics, 11, 45–67.

De Vos, C., van der Kooij, E., & Crasborn, O. (2009). Mixed signals: Combining linguistic

and affective functions of eyebrows in questions in Sign Language of the Netherlands.

Language & Speech, 52(2/3), 315-339.

De Vos, C. (2012). Sign-spatiality in Kata Kolok: How a village sign language in Bali inscribes

its signing space. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

De Vos, C. (2015). The Kata Kolok pointing system: Morphemization and syntactic

integration. Topics in Cognitive Science, 7(1), 150-168. doi:10.1111/tops.12124.

Heritage, J. (2012). Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge.

Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45 (1), 1-29.

Marsaja, I. G. (2008). Desa Kolok - A deaf village and its sign language in Bali, Indonesia.

Nijmegen: Ishara Press.

van der Kooij, E., Crasborn, O. & Emmerik, W. (2006). Explaining prosodic body leans in

Sign Language of the Netherlands: Pragmatics required, Journal of Pragmatics, 38 (10),

1598-1614.

Experimental evidence for stroke-to-stroke turn-boundary prediction in signed conversations

Connie de Vos, Marisa Casillas (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics), Onno Crasborn (Radboud University) and Stephen C. Levinson (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics)

In spoken interactions, interlocutors carefully plan and time their utterances, minimising gaps and

overlaps between consecutive turns (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson 1974). Cross-linguistic

comparison has indicated that spoken languages vary only minimally in terms of turn-timing, with

mean overall turn transition times of 229ms, and language-specific average turn transition times

within ranging from -31 to 479ms (Stivers et al. 2009). Pre-linguistic vocal turn-taking has also

been attested in the first half year of life (Hilbrink, Gattis & Levinson under review). These

observations suggest that the turn-taking system may provide a universal basis for our linguistic

capacities (Levinson 2006). It remains an open question, however, whether this precisely-timed

turn-taking is a sole property of the spoken modality.

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It has been suggested that signers may show greater tolerance for overlapping turns at talk

due to the characteristics of the visual modality. In signed conversation, visual feedback does not

interfere with sign-production in the same way that auditive feedback does when speaking

(Emmorey, Bosworth & Kraljic 2009). This suggests that if overlap avoidance during turn-taking is

motivated by channel limitations (the difficulty of hearing and speaking at the same time), then

signed turn-timing should be characterized by a higher proportion of overlapping turns.

Additionally, Coates & Sutton-Spence (2001) argue that, unlike speakers, signers do not attend to

the one-at-a-time principle, and instead form a collaborative floor with their interlocutors, thus

having a higher degree of social tolerance for overlap.

Recent corpus analyses of spontaneous conversation in Sign Language of the Netherlands

(Nederlandse Gebarentaal; NGT) have revealed that, although simultaneous signing is more

frequent in NGT than overlapping speech in many spoken languages, the additional overlap may

come as a consequence of having larger and slower articulators (de Vos, Torreira & Levinson, in

press). For spoken languages, which rely on quick oral articulations, the start and end of a turn is

clear: approximately when vocalization begins and ends. But for signed utterances, the beginnings

and ends of utterances are bookended by preparatory and retractive movements—movements that

don’t bear turn-related content (Kita, van Gijn & van der Hulst 1998).

De Vos et al. (in press) hypothesized that, because of this, signers might perceive their turns

as starting and ending with the content-bearing movements (stroke-to-stroke) and not with all

movements altogether (preparation-to-retraction). When they calculated the timing of turn

transitions in NGT with stroke-to-stroke turn boundaries instead of preparation-to-retraction

boundaries, they found that NGT transition timing and turn overlap were consistent with the

documented averages for spoken turn taking. Stroke-to-stroke boundary perception is then a

potentially critical mechanism for linking signed to spoken turn-taking behaviors. But there is

currently no experimental evidence that supports the psychological reality of stroke-to-stroke turn

boundaries for sign language users.

Several studies have now shown that, when asked to listen to a conversational turn, spoken

language users can precisely indicate the moment just before that turn ends (by pressing a button; de

Ruiter, Mitterer & Enfield 2006). The present study uses this same experimental technique to

explore whether sign language users can predict the upcoming end of ongoing turns when the “end”

is defined as the end of the last stroke (the stroke-to-stroke hypothesis) rather than the end of the

last movement (the preparation-to-retraction hypothesis).

We asked 52 deaf signers to watch 80 short video sequences. Each experimental item was

presented as a sequence containing the context and a target-turn video clips segmented from

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spontaneous NGT conversation. An example stimulus item can be viewed at:

http://hdl.handle.net/1839/00-0000-0000-0020-6C0D-C@view Participants were asked to watch the

context and then, when one signer disappeared, to focus on the remaining signer and try to press the

button at the moment they anticipated that the turn would end. They were told that, if they saw the

screen freeze at the end to press the button as quickly as possible because they had already reached

the end of the turn. This gave us a measure of their predictive and reactive button-presses across the

stimuli. The task lasted approximately 20 minutes.

Our results indicate that signers indeed anticipated turn boundaries at the ends of turn-final

strokes. Signers often responded early, even at potential turn-ends that preceded the actual turn end,

mirroring findings from experimental and naturalistic turn-end anticipation with spoken language

users (de Ruiter et al., 2006; Holler & Kendrick, 2015). They also responded later for questions than

for non-questions, though younger signers and signers who received earlier linguistic input were

less likely to show this difference. These results are the first to experimentally support the idea that

signers use something like stroke-to-stroke turn boundaries to coordinate their turns in conversation.

They also suggest that linguistic processing, here represented by participant age and age of sign

acquisition, plays a role in the ability to use precisely-timed turns in conversation.

Coates, J., & Sutton-Spence, R. (2001). Turn-taking patterns in deaf conversation. Journal of

Sociolinguistics, 5(4), 507–529.

De Vos, C., Torreira, F., & Levinson, S. C. (in press). Turn-timing in signed conversations:

coordinating stroke-to-stroke turn boundaries. Frontiers in Psychology

De Ruiter, J. P., Mitterer, H., & Enfield, N. J. (2006). Projecting the end of a speaker’s turn: A

cognitive cornerstone of conversation. Language, 82(3), 515–535.

Emmory, K., Bosworth, R. & Kraljic, T. (2009). Visual feedback and self-monitoring of sign

language. Journal of Memory and Language, 61, 398-411.

Hilbrink, E., Gattis, M., & Levinson, S. C. (under review). Conversational turn-taking during

infancy: Longitudinal observations and experimental assessment.

Holler, J., & Kendrick, K. H. (2015). Unaddressed participants’ gaze in multi-person

interaction: Optimizing recipiency. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 98.

Kita, S., I. Van Gijn, & van der Hulst, H. (1998). Movement phases in signs and co-speech

gestures, and their transcription by human coders. In Wachsmuth, I. & Fröhlich, M.

(Eds.) Gesture and sign language in human-computer interaction (pp. 23–35). Springer.

Levinson, S. C. (2006). On the human “interaction engine”. In N. J. Enfield & S. C. Levinson

(Eds.), Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition and interaction (pp. 39–69). Oxford:

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Berg.

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A Simplest Systematics for the

organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation. Language, 50, 696-735.

Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J., Brown, P.,. . . others (2009). Universals and cultural variation in

turn-taking in conversation. PNAS, 106(26), 10587–10592.

Mouth lexemes in LSB

Aline Garcia Rodero Takahira (University of São Paulo)

Some researchers turned to the investigation of mouth patterns in sign languages (SLs).

Sutton-Spence & Boyes Braem (2001) argue for at least two kinds of mouth patterns, the one

derived from a spoken language (“mouthings”) and the one with no relation to the spoken language,

formed as part of the sign languages (“mouth gestures”). Mouthings and mouth gestures accompany

signs. The first makes use of (part of) a word in the oral language (OL) while producing the

correspondent sign in the SL, as HOW-mouthing “how?” (1). The second use a mouth pattern that

brings an extra meaning to the sign that it occurs with, as WRITE-mouth gesture “write correctly”

(2).

Besides mouthings and mouth gestures, LSB present another kind of mouth pattern. It is the

exclusively use of mouth, that is, with no manual signs being realized along with it. Two very

common examples are: (i) SEX (3), it is produced by distending the right cheek using the tip of the

tongue, repeatedly (CAPOVILLA; RAPHAEL, 2001, p.1194). We have observed this sign can also

be produced by inflating the right cheek two or more times; and (ii) THIEF/STEAL (4), it is

produced by distending the right cheek, from the back to the front part, using the tip of the tongue,

once. As these signs surface as simple signs, we call them “mouth lexemes”. This paper aims to

describe this kind of signs produced by the mouth in LSB and investigate the possible constructions

where they figure. For that, we elicited the data using pictures (no use of the SL or OL) with two

Deaf collaborators and we have observed natural productions used by the Deaf community in some

different regions.

Although we have observed that the mouth lexemes are not very productive in LSB and they

are not common at all in other SLs, we see some of them figures in LSB dictionaries and books, as

the examples shown in (3) and (4). In our data, we see that besides working as free forms (simple

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