Doctoral Dissertation Research: Investigating the Interplay between Language and Cognition in American Sign Language Referential Cohesion

语言使用者必须不断地在指称同一实体的不同语言形式之间进行选择，如“他”、“亨利”或“那个人”。“说话者如何选择使用哪种形式？在口语中，这种选择很大程度上取决于语法和信息结构因素，例如实体先前的语法角色以及实体是否是讨论中的主题。本文的研究是探讨手语中代词的使用是否遵循语法规则或手势规则。美国手语（ASL）中的代词，也就是点，被认为是从实体和签名者所指的空间之间的特殊联系中获得意义的。指向与一个名叫亨利的人有关的空间的点相当于英语中的代词“他”。相比之下，一个指向一个空间，其中没有实体先前已被关联的指示标志被预测为是毫无意义的。这种观点认为，美国手语代词主要是实体和符号空间之间的空间关联，不一定是根据语法或信息结构的原则选择的。两个实验测试美国手语代词形式是否遵循口语的语法模式。实验研究ASL签名者如何在不同的空间关联和可能的实体被谈论的数量的上下文中提到实体。这项研究将有助于我们理解指称表达的选择是受普遍原则还是语言特定原则的指导。这方面的知识可以直接有助于改善聋儿的教育，因为聋儿的识字能力一般比听力正常的儿童低得多。通过建立一个模型，说明手语如何在句子之间建立指称联系，该项目将提供帮助手语儿童理解英语文本中平行过程的方法。

Language users must constantly choose between different linguistic forms that refer to the same entity, such as 'he', 'Henry' or 'the man.' How do speakers choose which form to use? In spoken languages, this choice is largely determined by grammatical and information structural factors such as the previous grammatical role of the entity and whether the entity is the topic under discussion. This dissertation research asks whether pronoun usage in sign languages follows grammatical or gestural rules. American Sign Language (ASL) pronouns, which are points, are thought to get their meaning from ad hoc associations between entities and the space the signer points to. A point towards a space associated with a man named Henry is equivalent to the pronoun 'he' in English. By contrast, a pointing sign towards a space where no entity has been previously associated is predicted to be meaningless. This view suggests that ASL pronouns are primarily spatial associations between entities and signing space, which are not necessarily chosen based on principles of grammar or information structure. Two experiments test whether ASL pronominal forms follow the grammatical patterns of spoken languages. The experiments investigate how ASL signers refer to entities in contexts that vary in spatial associations and the number of possible entities being talked about. This research will inform our understanding of whether choice of referring expressions is guided by universal or language specific principles. This knowledge can directly contribute to improving education of deaf children who on average have much lower literacy skills than hearing children. By developing a model for how ASL creates referential links between sentences, the project will provide the means to help signing children to understand the parallel processes in English text.