Johnston, van Roekel & Schembri (2015) On the conventionalization of mouth actions in Auslan...

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TITLE PAGE

ON THE CONVENTIONALIZATION OF MOUTH ACTIONS IN AUSLAN

(AUSTRALIAN SIGN LANGUAGE)

Trevor Johnston, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Jane van Roekel, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Adam Schembri, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

SHORT TITLE/RUNNING HEAD

Mouth actions in Auslan

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Research for this study was supported by the Australian Research Council, grant #DP1094572 to Professor

Trevor Johnston. In addition to the annotations created by the three authors of this paper, we also wish to

acknowledge the work of students and research assistants who have also contributed to annotating the

Auslan Corpus. In chronological order since 2005 (most recent first): Lori Whynot, Donovan Cresdee,

Christopher Hansford, Ben Hatchard, Michael Gray, Gabrielle Hodge, Lindsay Ferrara, Julia Allen, Gerry

Shearim, Karin Banna, Louise de Beuzeville, Dani Fried, and Della Goswell. This study grew out of a pilot

BA honours research project by Jane van Roekel, supervised by Trevor Johnston.

LEAD AUTHOR CONTACT DETAILS

Professor Trevor Johnston

Department of Linguistics, Building C5A, Room 546

Macquarie University, North Ryde, New South Wales, Australia, 2109

[email protected]

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ABSTRACT

This study investigates the conventionalization of mouth actions in Auslan (Australian Sign Language).

Signed languages were once thought of as simply manual languages because the hands produce the signs

which individually and in groups are the symbolic units most easily equated with the words, phrases and

clauses of spoken languages. However, it has long been acknowledged that non-manual activity, such as

movements of the body, head and the face play a very important role. In this context, mouth actions that

occur while communicating in signed languages have posed a number of questions for linguists: Are the

silent mouthings of spoken language words simply borrowings from the respective majority community

spoken language(s)? Are those mouth actions that are not silent mouthings of spoken words conventionalized

linguistic units proper to each signed language, culturally linked semi-conventional gestural units shared by

signers with members of the majority speaking community, or even gestures and expressions common to all

humans? We use a corpus-based approach to gather evidence of the extent of the use of mouth actions in

naturalistic Auslan—making comparisons with other signed languages where data is available—and the

form/meaning pairings that these mouth actions instantiate.

Keywords: mouthings, mouth gestures, non-manuals, constructed action, Auslan, Australian Sign Language

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ON THE CONVENTIONALIZATION OF MOUTH ACTIONS IN AUSLAN

(AUSTRALIAN SIGN LANGUAGE)

INTRODUCTION

In this study, we report on the distribution of different types of mouth actions in Auslan (Australian Sign

Language), making comparisons with other signed languages where possible. We describe the characteristics

of mouth actions in Auslan and quantify the alignment of the attested form/meaning pairings found in a

recently created linguistic corpus of the language, i.e., a dataset which is representative of native and near-

native signer usage across a number of text-types, linguistically annotated, and machine readable

(searchable). We do this in order to gauge the extent and degree of language-specific conventionalization of

these actions. Mouth actions that occur while communicating in signed languages have posed a number of

questions for linguists: Are the silent mouthings of spoken language words simply borrowings from the

respective majority community spoken language(s)? Are those mouth actions that are not silent mouthings of

spoken words conventionalized linguistic units proper to each signed language, culturally linked semi-

conventional gestural units shared by signers with members of the majority speaking community, or even

gestures and expressions common to all humans? Our thesis is that, though there are pairings that suggest

some conventionalization of usage, much of the contribution mouth actions make to individual signs or

signed utterances may not be, unlike what has been claimed in the literature, specific to any particular signed

language or even signed languages generally. Rather, many mouth actions appear to be either part of the oral

and facial expression repertoires used by all humans—moderated by local cultural norms and, for hearing

people, constrained by the use of speech—or are co-articulated mouth patterns derived from the relevant

ambient spoken language.

The relevance of this study for our understanding of language is three-fold. First, it demonstrates the

importance of complementing intuitions and elicited datasets in signed language research with corpus-based

usage data: these cast doubt on earlier claims of high degrees of linguistic conventionalization, even

obligatoriness, in this area. Second, it underlines the complex relationship between signed and spoken

languages in many signing communities: the important role of mouthing must be acknowledged. Third, there

is a deep synergy between language in spoken and signed modalities: both use oral and manual gestures.

BACKGROUND

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Signed languages were once thought of as essentially manual languages because the hands produced the

basic symbolic units of these languages (i.e., the signs) and these were readily equated with the words of

languages—and the phrases and clauses that words are the constituents of—with which linguists were

already familiar. Very quickly in the linguistic study of signed languages, however, it was realised that non-

manual activity which involves movements of the body, head and the face (especially involving the upper

face or eyebrows) play an important role in understanding the grammar of these languages (Baker & Padden

1978; Liddell 1978).

It has also long been known that there are many distinct signed languages. Most deaf signed language

using communities around the world use historically unrelated languages that are, for the most part, mutually

unintelligible. Despite these differences, signed languages across the world nonetheless appear to have many

features in common (Newport & Supalla 2000; Woll, Sutton-Spence, & Elton 2001), partly because their

visual-spatial modality allows room for meaningful uses of space, simultaneity and, in particular iconicity

(e.g., Cuxac 1999, 2000; Taub 2001; Perniss, Thompson & Vigliocco 2010; Meir, Padden, Aronoff &

Sandler 2013), and partly because the sociolinguistic situation of deaf signing communities around the world

is similar (e.g., Van Herreweghe & Vermeerbergen 2004; Lucas 2006; Quinto-Pozos 2007). Importantly, the

spatial, temporal and visual representational affordances of gesture-based face-to-face languages appear to

have been spontaneously and independently exploited in similar ways time and time again in different signed

languages. For example, the use of tilts, shakes and nods of the head, the raising and lowering of the eye-

brows, and the widening or narrowing of the aperture of the eyes have been observed repeatedly and their

functions in the grammars of signed languages have been described in varying detail with different amounts

of empirical support. That is, despite strong claims that some of these are formal syntactic markers of

relative clauses, content questions, conditionals and so forth, debate has continued not only on their functions

but also on whether they are syntactic or prosodic, and their degree of conventionalization or

grammaticalization in particular languages (cf. Pfau & Quer 2010).1

The mouth is prominent site of non-manual activity and movements of the mouth are an obvious

accompaniment to manual signing. The linguistic status of mouth actions in signed languages, like other

non-manuals, is also a question of debate (e.g., Vinson, Thompson, Skinner, Fox, & Vigliocco 2010).

1 See for example (in chronological order): Liddell 1980; Baker-Shenk 1983; Aarons, Bahan, Kegl, & Neidle 1992;

Johnston 1992; Nespor & Sandler 1999; Sandler 1999a, 1999b; Wilbur & Patschke 1999; Neidle, Kegl, Maclaughlin, Bahan, & Lee 2000; Tang 2006; Sandler & Lillo-Martin 2006; Zeshan 2006; Dachkovsky & Sandler 2009; Vos, Kooij, & Crasborn 2009; Wilbur 2009; Pfau & Quer 2010; Sandler 2010; Elliot & Jacobs 2013.

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Previous research

Non-manual activity that is centred on the mouth (mouth actions) has been documented for a number of

signed languages and appears to be a characteristic of all those studied to date. The least problematic in

terms of categorization and identification is the class of mouth actions that are transparently complete or

partial silent articulations of the spoken words of the ambient spoken language. The remaining mouth actions

have the common characteristic in that they are not related to the articulation of spoken words, yet, at the

same time, they appear to fulfil a variety of functions which are not well understood. Since the publication of

a major overview of mouth actions in signed languages edited by Boyes Braem and Sutton-Spence (2001)

these two general types have usually been referred to as mouthings and mouth gestures respectively.2

An early issue of interest was the proportion of signs found to co-occur with mouth actions, especially

mouthings, in various signed languages (e.g., Schermer 1990). This was partly in response to well known

early claims that American Sign Language (ASL) used very limited amounts of mouthing when compared to

other signed languages (Padden 1980, Baker-Shenk 1983, Boyes Braem 2001). Another area of debate,

besides frequency, concerned the status of mouthings: were they an integral part of a signed language or

were they marginal, stemming from language contact or borrowing? Addressing both these questions

involved describing what mouthing and mouth gestures did and thus categorizing them into general types.

More recent publications by Fontana (2008), Lewin and Schembri (2011), Bank, Crasborn, and van Hout

(2011, 2013, submitted), and Sandler (2012) on mouth actions in Italian, British, Netherlands, and Israeli

signed languages respectively give a good overview of the research, particularly that since 2001.

Mouthings

Briefly, research has shown that mouthings frequently accompany manual signs in many signed languages,

including ASL,3 and there is some evidence—though the datasets have never been very large or varied—that

the rate varies according to text-type. They occur very frequently with fingerspellings. Mouthings have been

shown to occur more with nouns and morphologically simple verbs than with morphologically complex

2 For earlier research on this topic see Anderson and Reilly (1998) for ASL; Engberg-Pedersen (1993) for Danish SL

(henceforth we will use the abbreviation SL for “Sign Language” when naming a particular signed language), Ebbinghaus and Hessmann (1990) for German SL, Schermer (1985) for Netherlands SL, Schroeder (1985) for Norwegian SL, Bergman (1984) for Swedish SL, Vogt-Svendsen (1983) for Norwegian SL, Lawson (1983) for British SL, and Liddell (1978) for American SL. The Boyes Braem & Sutton-Spence volume included papers relating to British SL, Finnish SL, German SL, Indo-Pakistani SL, Italian SL, Netherlands SL, Norwegian SL, Swedish SL, and Swiss German SL. Some of

these papers are cited individually elsewhere in this study. 3 Nadolske & Rosenstock (2007:35) report that “Our finindgs indicate that—contrary to what has been claimed in the

literature—mouthings contribute significantly to the form and semantic aspects of ASL, in a similar manner to what has been claimed for European sign languages.”

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signs such as indicating verbs (also known as agreement and spatial verbs) or with depicting signs (also

known as classifier signs), both of which may have aspects of their handshape, movement and/or location

modified meaningfully. Mouthing has been shown to add meaning to some signs by indicating a more

specific reading of a sign, e.g., the Auslan sign SPOUSE with the English mouthings ‘wife’ or ‘husband’

(Johnston & Schembri 2007). Indeed, for Schermer (2001) in these type of environments mouthing is often

obligatory in Netherlands SL (NGT). A mouthing can even add independent semantic information. Vogt-

Svendsen (2001) cites the example of the Swedish word for ‘red’ being mouthed along with the Swedish SL

sign PULL-OVER to mean ‘a red pull-over’. Although mouthings are often closely temporally aligned with

their co-articulated sign, they may be stretched, reduced, or repeated to maintain an alignment with the

duration and rhythm of the manual sign, especially if the sign has itself been modified (Fontana 2008).

Finally, the mouthing itself may spread regressively or progressively to adjacent signs (Crasborn, van der

Kooij, Waters, Woll, & Mesch 2008; Bank et al. 2013).

Mouth gestures

Mouth gestures are all other communicative mouth actions that are not mouthings. They have been described

as mouth actions that ‘do not derive from spoken language’ (Boyes Braem & Sutton-Spence 2001).

However, this needs qualification. It has yet to be shown that signers and speakers in the same speech

community and/or culture do not share any of the same or similar mouth action repertoires. Though some

research has been conducted on facial expressions that occur when speaking, as correlates of intonation and

stress or ‘audio-visual prosody’ (Krahmer & Swerts 2009), little or no research has been conducted on mouth

gestures made in face-to-face communication especially at moments when speakers are not actually

speaking but perhaps gesturing. Thus the extent to which the mouth gestures are actually sourced from or

related to the predominantly spoken language community in which signers are invariably embedded is as yet

unknown.

Some mouth gestures look like voiceless syllables. These syllabic mouth gestures are usually described

using letters, e.g., PAH, AP, THAM, WOOF, POW. The manual signs they co-occur with have been called multi-

channel signs because the mouth gestures add specific semantic components to the sign, e.g., Lawson (1983)

claimed that PAH means ‘success’ in British Sign Language (BSL) and is obligatorily produced with a sign

meaning ‘success’, ‘at last’, or ‘finally’. Woll (2001) proposed an alternative theory in which these mouth

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movements echo hand movements, e.g., when a manual sign includes an abrupt closing of the hand, the

mouth will parallel this by snapping shut. Woll terms this ‘echo phonology’ as the mouth ‘echoes’ the

movement of the hand. Under this theory, these mouth gestures are devoid of semantic content but match

classes of manual movement such as opening, closing and twisting, e.g., PAH accompanies signs where the

handshape opens or the hands separate (often twisting apart).

Other mouth gestures are thought to act as morphemes with an adverbial or adjectival function (Liddell

1980). The classic example, given in Liddell for ASL and supported by other ASL researchers (McIntire &

Reilly 1988), and identified for other signed languages (Crasborn et al. 2008) including BSL (Lewin &

Schembri 2011) and Auslan (Johnston & Schembri 2007), is the protruding tongue (often written TH) to

mean something like ‘carelessly’. Other modifying ‘adverbial’ mouth gestures identified for some signed

languages have included EE for ‘effort’ (showing the teeth in a smile-like action), and MM (similar to a lip

pout) for ‘effortlessness’. ‘Adjectivals’ have included PUFFED-CHEEKS for ‘large/long things’, and SUCKED-

IN-CHEEKS for ‘small things’ (illustrated in Table 3 below). Woll (2001) categorized the syllabic type of

mouth gestures echoes and this second type as adverbials. She called a third sub-type enactions (henceforth,

we will use our preferred term, enactments). In enactments, the mouth gesture is part of the representation by

the signer of an event—a type of role-playing or mimesis—in which the mouth was involved one way or

another.

In an early study of Auslan (Johnston 1992), it was observed that some mouth gestures appear to have a

prosodic role. The upper face (eyebrows, eyes) and the lower face (mouth, tongue, cheeks) appeared to make

different contributions to visual prosody in Auslan—the former analogous to pitch, the second analogous to

stress. In other studies, mouthings that spread over two or more signs (‘stretched’ mouthings) have been

noted for their stress-like qualities in Swiss German SL (Boyes Braem 2001) and for their effect of binding

constituents together into a prosodic word when spreading from host to clitic (Sander 1999c) or into even

larger prosodic units such as noun phrases or verb phrases (Boyes Braem 2001). The prosodic role of some

mouth gestures, not just stretched mouthings, will once again be raised here, later in this paper.

Since 2001, researchers have continued descriptive work on mouth actions as well as investigating mouth

gestures as a part of non-manual grammatical signals.4 For a study of spreading behaviour in mouthings in

4 The research literature published in English in reverse chronological order would include, but is not limited to: Sandler

(2012) for Israeli SL, Lewin and Schembri (2011) for BSL; Pfau and Quer (2010) for SLs generally; Sandler (2009) and Dachkovsky and Sandler (2009) for Israeli SL; Fontana (2008) for Italian SL; Nadolske and Rosenstock (2007) for

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three signed languages, Crasborn et al. (2008) called mouthings M-type mouth actions; adverbials mouth

gestures were called A-type (and now also included adjectival mouth gestures as some modified nouns), and

echoes became part of a slightly broader E-type category (for ‘semantically empty’ following Woll (2001)).

Enactments were discriminated into two sub-types—those involving only the mouth in which the mouth

represents itself doing the action described by the sign, such as BITE, LAUGH or LICK (these were called 4-

type for ‘mouth for mouth’): and W-type (for ‘whole of face’) in which the mouth is simply part of a large

whole-of-face expression, e.g., an open mouth with wide eyes for surprise. Crasborn et al. note that W-type

mouth gestures are not part of any potential mouth-based semiotic system because any mouth action form is

linked to the whole face and consequently its interpretation is a function of the enactment and not a function

of a possible conventional value attributable to the mouth form.

Gestural versus linguistic

More recently, some researchers have focussed on the question of the gestural nature of some mouth actions

in that they have the same kind of relationship to the conventional manual signs of a signed language as do

manual gestures to the conventional spoken words of a spoken language (Pizzuto 2003). Fontana (2008),

drawing on the work of Kendon (2004, 2008) and McNeill (2000), makes the radical suggestion that all

mouth actions can be analysed this way. A similar but more conservative observation is made in Dachkovsky

& Sandler (2009) and Sandler (2009) who identify a category of gestural iconic mouth actions to distinguish

them from syllabic E-type (or ‘lexical’) mouth components and from the conventional adverbial and

adjectival A-type modifiers already identified by other researchers (which they do not question).

The iconic category comes from the work of McNeill (1992) who, drawing on the work of earlier

twentieth century researchers (e.g. Efron, 1972; Kendon, 1980), explored how gesticulation played an

important role in both clarifying meaning and structuring discourse in spoken language. He divided gestures

into four categories, deictic, iconic, metaphoric and beat gestures. Iconic and metaphoric gestures portray

visually some aspect of the referent. Iconic gestures are usually made for concrete objects and events/actions

with a representation that physically resembles them (objects typically through an image and events/actions

typically through a mimetic enactment). Metaphoric gestures are usually employed to refer to ideas and

abstract expressions.

American SL (ASL); Johnston and Schembri (2007) for Australian SL; Torigoe and Wataru (2002) for Japanese (Okinawa) home sign.

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Sandler found that some mouth gestures in Israel SL are mimetic replicas (oral mimes) and others act as

iconic gestures (symbolic icons), e.g., a round bowling ball was represented by puffed cheeks, a zigzag shape

by a sideways mouth movement, and the whoosh of an object swung through the air by an exhaled ‘faa’.

Different signers have varying versions of these iconic mouth gestures so there is no standardised or

conventionalised form. These iconic mouth gestures fit in well with McNeil’s (1992) classification of

gestures versus linguistic forms. It should be remembered that Sandler (2012) agrees with most signed

language researchers that, despite their gestural origins, many other mouth gestures and facial signals are

fully language-dedicated gestures that are an integral part of the lexis and syntax of signed languages, i.e.,

they are linguistic.

These three understandings of the linguistic (or gestural) status of mouth actions in signed languages are

illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Three possible categorizations of mouth actions

THIS STUDY

We document the distribution of types of mouth actions in Auslan—making comparisons with other signed

languages where possible—and describe their overall characteristics in order to test the language-specific

conventionalization of these actions.5

Methodology

5 Research towards this study was partially funded by an Australian Research Council grant #DP1094572.

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Fifty video texts were selected from the Auslan corpus for analysis. All signs and all mouth actions were

examined and all mouthings and mouth gestures were identified, categorized and annotated using ELAN

multi-media annotation software.6 Annotations were exported into a database spreadsheet for further

processing. We conducted a statistical analysis of this data using Rbrul, with a multivariate logistic

regression model being used to identify predictors of mouthing and mouth gestures in the data (Johnson

2009). Like the program GoldVarb, developed by Rand & Sankoff (1991), Rbrul can quantitatively evaluate

the influence of multiple factors on variation.

Data

The data in this study have been drawn from the Auslan corpus of native or near-native signers (for further

details see Johnston & Schembri 2006). For this study, 50 video clips were selected from the corpus,

representing 38 individuals and 3 text types (monologue, dialogue, and elicited). The total duration of the

data was 5 hours and 58 minutes, representing 17,002 manual sign tokens. The signed texts ranged from 1:32

to 38:30 minutes in length. The 50 video clips consisted of 25 monologues (these were narratives, all of

which involved retellings of two Aesop’s fables); 10 dialogic texts (free conversation or responses to a series

of interview questions); and 15 sessions of 40 elicited picture descriptions.

Annotations

The 50 texts had been previously annotated according to guidelines detailed in the Auslan Corpus

Annotation Guidelines7 and in Johnston (2010). They were selected because they had previously received the

most detailed annotations of all the 459 corpus annotation files, and would thus require the least amount of

additional work, besides the study-specific annotations, to complete. That is, the majority had been almost

completely annotated for glosses and translations, as well as for clause boundaries and periods of enactment

or constructed action (a term for all forms of enactment or mimetic behaviour in signed languages, compare

with constructed dialogue from Tannen, 1986), and tagged for the relationships between clauses (e.g.,

embedded, dependent), the part of speech of clause constituents, and the argument roles of signs within the

clause (e.g., agent versus patient, etc.). Part of speech tagging, particularly relevant to this study, cannot be

carried out without first identifying clauses. Some files already had mouthings identified. We thus only had

6 http://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/download/.

7 http://www.auslan.org.au/corpus/annotations, last updated June 2014.

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to complete the incomplete files before then adding the study-specific annotations: namely, annotations for

the state of the mouth as (i) a mouthing, (ii) a mouth gesture (which were further specified for sub-type as

explained below), or (iii) a period of no mouth action.

Annotations were added to two glossing and two grammatical class tiers. A tier for each hand is required

because it is possible to articulate two signs at the same time (one on each hand) so each may need to be

glossed separately. When this happens, the grammatical class of each sign/hand may also be different and

thus two tiers need to be available. Annotations for mouth gestures were made on the ‘mouth gesture form’

tier (called MouthGestF), and on the ‘mouth gesture meaning’ tier (called MouthGestM). The annotations for

mouthings were made on the ‘mouthing form’ tier (called Mouthing) (Figure 2).

Figure 2 The ELAN tiers used to annotate mouth actions [SSNc2a00:00:29.000]

The annotation schema for mouthings is summarized in Table 1.

Table 1

The annotation schema for mouthings

M-type (mouthing) Annotation Examples

Complete articulation COMPLETE-WORD RACE, RABBIT, VILLAGE, FAR

Initial segment I(NITIAL) V(ILLAGE), SA(ME), DIFF(ERENT), SH(EEP)

Medial segment (ME)DI(AL) (NO)TH(ING), (RE)MEM(BER) , (B)E(ST)

Final segment (FI)NAL (SUCCESS)FUL, (FIN)ISH, (IM)PROVE. (TO)DAY

Initial & final segment only IN(I)TIAL F(INI)SH, D(EA)F, S(UC)CESFUL

‘suppressed’ articulation* (SUPPRESSED) (LADY), (HAVE)

unreadable* Unreadable

anticipatory spreading

(regressive mouthing) MOUTHING-regr

ID gloss PT:PRO1SG EXPLAIN Mouthing EXPLAIN-regr EXPLAIN

“I explained…”

delayed spreading

(progressive mouthing) MOUTHING-prog

ID gloss FINISH PT:PRO1SG Mouthing FINISH FINISH-prog

“….I finished”

* A ‘suppressed’ mouthing annotation is used in a few instances where the annotators are convinced there is underlying movement

congruent with articulating a word associated with a sign, but the mouth does not actually open, e.g. the ‘y’ of ‘lady’ when signing LADY.

They are identified to distinguish them from mouth gestures, e.g. a EE-like mouth gesture. Where annotators were certain a word was

being mouthed—there are articulatory motions—but were simply unable to lip-read it, it is annotated as unreadable.

Mouth gestures were divided into types that were based on Crasborn et al. (2008) but further sub-

categorised, as illustrated in Figure 3. We did this because our first attempt to annotate mouth actions using

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the existing categories appeared inadequate—we believed finer discrimination was necessary in order to

properly identify and account for each type.

Figure 3 Types of mouth actions annotated in this study

For example, A-types were divided into two-subtypes: the adverbials (and adjectivals), as described in

Crasborn et al. (2008), and prosodic mouth gestures. We did this because the latter did not appear to modify

the meaning of co-occurring signs like other ‘traditional’ A-types. They appeared to have an emphatic role,

not unlike stress in speech. (For possible manual correlates of stress in signed languages generally, see

Wilbur’s (1999) study of stress in ASL). Their most important characteristic appears to be a tensed posture

of the mouth which is held, even if relatively briefly, without changing dynamically, rather than any precise

form of the mouth posture itself, e.g., the WIDE or ‘EE’ mouth gesture used with a pointing sign, as in the two

signs on the left of the bottom row in Table 2. This sub-type was identified so that they could be compared

and contrasted to the ‘traditional’ category of adverbial mouth gestures: were they really ‘morphemes’ being

added to signs (as the A-type category is meant to capture) or actually part of the prosody?

A-type mouth gestures were annotated using a coding schema adapted from Sutton-Spence and Day

(2001) in their study of BSL. The schema attempts to capture objectively and consistently major features of

mouth gestures (mouth-open/mouth-closed, teeth-visible/teeth-invisible, puffed-cheeks/no-puffed-cheeks,

tongue/no-tongue, narrow/wide, etc.). The adaptation was adequate for our purposes and had the advantage

of allowing for an easy and direct comparison with the BSL data (see Appendix).

Some typical examples of the most general mouth gestures are illustrated in Table 2. We usually refer to

the mouth gestures in this paper by the short-hand glosses, but the codes indicate the range of related forms

covered by a single gloss.

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Table 2

Mouth gesture (MG) form codes and glosses used for typical exemplars

BLOW

air moves inwards or outwards through the lips which may be pursed or rounded

CN8, CN17, ON16-18

BOTTOM-LIP-OUT bottom lip is pushed forward, out

or up

CN3, CN20, ON11, ON14

DOWN the corners of the mouth are pulled down, mouth

can be open or closed, lips can be pressed

together, tense or relaxed CN4, CN22, ON4, ON9, ON15

LIP-CURL

top lip is pulled up on one or both sides, as in a sneer

CN1, ON5, ON10

LIPS-OUT lips pushed forward, as in a pout or

“shh”

CN11-14, CN16, ON16

LIPS-PRESSED (‘MM’) lips are pressed together but the mouth corners are

relaxed

CN5, CN6, CN21, CN23,

OPEN

mouth is open ON1-3

PUFF puffed cheeks

CP1-8

SLIGHTLY-OPEN mouth is slightly open

ON6, ON12

SUCKED-IN

cheeks are sucked inwards CN24

TONGUE (‘TH’) tongue pokes out or is visibly forward all OT codes & CN19

TRILL (‘BRRR’) lips vibrate

CN7, CN9-10, CN13-15, CN18, CP5,

WIDE (‘EEE’)

the corners of the mouth are pulled wide, mouth can be open or closed, lips can be pressed together, tense or relaxed CN2, ON7, ON8, ON13, ON14

Five sub-types of W-type mouth gesturers were also identified. First, mouth actions that were part of

involuntary or spontaneous expressions (or indexes) of the state of the mind of the signer (e.g., amused,

confused, concerned) were categorized as spontaneous W-type. These were not coded for the present study

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because we do not consider them to be candidates for inclusion in any semiotic system that is potentially

language-specific. Second, expressions or subtle meta-comments about what the signer is signing (i.e., the

signer’s attitude) were categorized as editorial W-type expressions. An example would be the use of LIP-

CURL (Table 2) together with furrowed brow, squinting of the eyes and a backward, recoiling, movement of

the head while producing HE SAY after signing YOU FAT (i.e., YOU FAT, HE SAY) to convey disapproval of the

overly direct and thus inappropriate comment being quoted. They were identified in order to gauge their

overall role in Auslan and, especially, how they differed from the A- or E-type mouth gestures. Third, mouth

gestures that were part of enactments were categorized as constructed action W-types. They involved the

whole face and the meaning was dependent on this context. If the constructed action involved the production

of one of the common recurring mouth gestures (as described above), the appropriate gloss for that was also

added to the annotation. The fourth sub-type were congruent W-types. These were expressions which carry

very little modifying communicative load and were, in fact, little more than a ‘congruent default expression’

i.e., they simply matched the semantics of the lexical sign, such as smiling while signing HAPPY, or looking

sombre when signing FUNERAL. These whole face affective expressions often appeared when particular

semantically appropriate lexical signs were cited. This phenomenon has led some researchers to claim they

are obligatory conventional non-manual components. However, though it would be decidedly odd to sign

HAPPY in isolation with a negative or sad expression (just as it would be odd to read out the English

headword depression from an English dictionary in a joyous manner), this does not mean the expression is

lexically specified merely because of a sympathetic ‘collocation’ of the congruent expression. Systematic

annotation of text quickly revealed that signs of this type can be signed with a neutral expression. We

identified these separately in order to quantify and compare them to any similar mouth gestures that do not

involve the whole face (if any) and to test if they really are obligatory. The fifth subtype, adverbial

expressive W-types, were clearly intended to modify and add meaning to the manual sign(s), unlike

congruent W-types, e.g., signing DANCE while performing it in a ‘lively’ or ‘energetic’ fashion with an

overall facial expression of enjoyment. However, they were not classified along with other A-types because

they were not restricted to the mouth and were strongly enacting, i.e., one way or another the signer was

engaging in constructed action. The annotation schema we used for mouth gestures is summarized in Table

3.

15

Table 3

The annotation schema for mouth gestures

Mouth gesture MouthGestF tier begins with MouthGestM tier contains

E-type (echo or empty) SYLL:GLOSS (= Syllable) various meanings as needed temporary tag tier: -IM (imagistic), -MI (mimetic), -ME (metaphorical)

A-type (modifying)

prosodic GLOSS/CODE(H) (H = held) (see Table 3)

meaning glosses: ACTIVITY, EMPHASIS

prosodic (non-specific) No annotation Tag tier: -MH (mouthing held)

adverbial GLOSS/CODE (see Table 3)

meaning glosses: LARGE-AMOUNT, CARELESS, UNPLEASANT, SMOOTH, EASE, EFFORT, SMALL-AMOUNT

temporary tag tier: -IM (imagistic), -MI (mimetic), -ME (metaphorical)

4-type (mouth for mouth) CMO (= Congruent Mouth Only) ENACTMENT

W-type (whole-of-face)

spontaneous no annotation

editorial COMMENT no further annotation or various meanings as needed

CA (Constructed Action) CA: (= Constructed Action) no further annotation or various descriptions as needed

CA using an A-type CA:GLOSS/CODE (Table 3) add after the CA: the A-type mouth gesture gloss/code

congruent CWF (=Congruent Whole Face) meaning glosses: EXPRESSION, ENACTMENT, EMPHASIS

adverbial expressive CA:ADV ( = Adverbial) EXPRESSION

Spreading mouth gesture ANNOTATION-cont on all subsequent co-articulated manual sign(s)

The time alignment of mouth action annotations When a mouth gesture is clearly articulated across 50% of

the duration of an adjacent sign, it is annotated separately on each co-articulated sign it spreads over with –

cont (for ‘continued’). When a mouthing begins before its target sign it is marked as –regr (for ‘regressive’)

on the sign during which it begins; where a mouthing persists beyond its target sign it is marked as –prog

(for ‘progressive’). Again, a 50% spreading criteria is applied. (The ‘target’ of a mouthing can usually be

easily identified but mouth gestures need not have an unambiguous single target, so they are simply marked

as continued from the sign in which they begin.) Only significant spreading is annotated in our dataset—the

exact onset and offset time of mouth gestures is not a focus of this study (other studies have explored this,

see Sandler 1999b; Crasborn et al. 2008; Bank et al. 2013).

Results

Overall distribution

About one in five signs were not accompanied by any noteworthy mouth activity, which is not unlike other

signed languages described to date (Table 4).

Table 4

Mouth action rates in Auslan compared with other signed languages*

Auslan BSL NGT SSL

16

Mouth actions 77% 71% 65% 90%

No mouth actions 23% 29% 35% 10%

* Data are taken from Crasborn et al. (2008).

The Auslan data also show that about half of all manual signs were accompanied by mouthing, and that

mouth gestures are relatively infrequent, especially 4-type, A-type and E-type (Figure 4).

Figure 4 Rate of mouth actions with manual signs

Approximately 73.6% of all mouth actions (i.e., excluding sign tokens with no mouth action) are, in fact,

mouthings, which is higher than in previous descriptions of other signed languages, although similar to the

recent corpus-based study of NGT (NGT-2 in Table 5) which also included several text-types.

Table 5

Each mouth action type as a % of all mouth actions compared to other signed languages*

Auslan BSL NGT SSL HKSL NGT-2

M-type 73.6% 51% 39% 57% 35% 80%

A-type** 8.3% 21% 30% 14% 17.5% n/a

E-type 0.5% 2% 8% 7% 9.5% n/a

4-type 0.5% 6% 6% 6% 2.5% n/a

W-type 17.1% 20% 17% 16% 36% n/a

* NGT-2 data from Bank et al. (2011, 2013), HKSL data from Siu Wai-yan (2007) ** Our W-type (adverbial expressives) are included for comparion because they appear most likely to have been coded as A-type by the other researchers.

Some of the differences in this data may be due to the finer discrimination of sub-types of the major

categories in the Auslan data, particularly the identification and annotation of mouthings. In our experience,

mouthings—whether complete or incomplete—are often not noticed on first viewing, or are often mistaken

for mouth gestures, by researchers for whom Auslan is a second language. They may only know the

17

‘standard mouthing’ (see below), or may not realize that some signers actually have larger English

vocabularies than they credit them with. They are thus not primed to see a mouthing.

Equally important are the single genre and small datasets that have been used. For example, the large

number of 4-types in the three European signed languages is almost certainly due to the fact that these

narratives involve a wolf, or a dog and a bone and present multiple opportunities for this kind of

representation. This bias was no longer present in the NGT-2 data.

Distribution by sign type

Studies of lexicology (Johnston & Schembri 1999; Brentari & Padden 2001; Cormier, Schembri & Tyrone,

2008), lexical frequency (Morford & MacFarlane 2003; McKee & Kennedy 2006; Johnston 2012; Fenlon,

Schembri, Rentelis, Vinson, & Cormier 2014), and lexicalization and grammaticalization (Janzen 2012;

Johnston & Ferrara 2012) in signed languages have revealed that they consist of different types of signs (e.g.,

core lexicon, productive lexicon, and gestural elements). If we are to understand the grammatical

organization of these languages, we need to ensure we properly distinguish between the types of signs in our

analyses, and not be misled by over-simplistic or ad-hoc glosses. Briefly, signed languages use not only fully

conventional lexical signs (more or less the equivalent to the conventional words of spoken languages)8 and

gestures, but also signs that appear to be blends of gestures and lexical signs (pointing signs, indicating

verbs, depicting signs). As the data in Figure 5 show, different sign types have very different rates of co-

articulated mouth actions, even before we consider what grammatical role tokens of each type may play in

any given clause or utterance.

8 And thus not to be confused with ‘lexical’ in the sense of ‘content’ (as opposed to ‘function’) words. Fully lexical signs

include examples of both ‘content’ and ‘function’ signs. The distinction ‘content’ versus ‘function’ is covered in the next section dealing with mouthings and grammatical class.

18

Figure 5 Mouth actions by sign type (ranked by decreasing % of mouthing)

Fingerspelled signs are clearly the type of sign most strongly associated with mouthing, but several

individuals from the corpus have very low rates, e.g., one mouths with only 28% of her fingerspellings.

Depicting signs and gestures were the least likely type of sign to have a co-occurring mouthing, though

they were the most likely to co-occur with a mouth gesture, by a considerable degree.

Multivariatiate logistic regression analysis, using Rbrul, showed that sign type was a significant predictor

of the use of mouthing (p = <0.001). The results (Table 6) are presented as log odds, with positive values

indicating an increased likelihood to favour a particular behaviour, while negative values indicate an

increased likelihood to disfavour this behaviour. Fingerspelled items (3.339), lexical signs (1.146) and

possessive signs (0.896) all strongly favoured mouthing, while pronominals (–0.128), locatives (–0.481),

buoys (–0.548), determiners (–0.692), depicting signs (–1.282) and gestures (–2.249) all disfavoured

mouthing.

Table 6

Sign type and mouthing

Application value: presence of mouthing

All factor groups significant at p <.05

Factor Group Factor Log odds Tokens % with mouthing

Sign type Fingerspelling 3.339 797 93

Lexical signs 1.146 11657 66

Pointing signs: Possessives

0.896 139 64.7

Pointing signs: pronouns

–0.128 1628 42.4

19

Pointing signs: locatives

–0.481 169 23.7

Buoys –0.548 127 37

Pointing signs: determiners

–0.692 139 18.7

Depicting signs –1.282 939 14.5

Gestures –2.249 1403 8.3

An additional Rbrul run (Table 7) showed the sign type was also a significant predictor of the use of mouth

gestures (p = <0.001). Gestures (2.313) and depicting signs (1.517) strongly favoured the use of mouth

gestures, as did buoys to a lesser extent (0.636). Pronouns (–0.053), lexical signs (–0.078), locatives (–0.097)

and possessives (–0.326) disfavoured mouth gestures to a certain extent, whereas determiners (–0.901) and

especially fingerspelling (–3.011) strongly disfavoured them.

Table 7

Sign type and mouth gestures

Application value: presence of mouth gestures All factor groups significant at p <.05

Factor Group Factor Log odds Tokens % with mouth gestures

Sign type Gestures 2.313 1403 62.8

Depicting signs 1.517 939 47

Buoys 0.636 127 20.5

Pointing signs: pronouns

–0.053 1628 13.6

Lexical signs –0.078 11657 15.6

Pointing signs: locatives

–0.097 169 21.3

Pointing signs: possessives

–0.326 139 11.5

Pointing signs: determiners

–0.901 139 11.5

Fingerspelling –3.011 797 1

The type of sign least likely to have any kind of mouth action (mouthing or mouth gesture) were

determiners, closely followed by locatives. Figure 6 shows there are considerable differences in mouth action

rates depending on the primary functional role of the pointing signs. On the whole, non-possessive pointing

signs (pronouns, locatives and determiners in Figure 5) had the least mouth activity, and none were mouthed

in the majority of cases. Possessive pointing signs had relatively high rates of mouthing compared to other

pointing signs. First and second person points were much more likely to be mouthed than locatives or

determiners.

20

Figure 6 Mouth actions with pointing signs (ranked by decreasing % of mouthing)

An Rbrul analysis (Table 8) found that the type of pointing sign was a significant predictor of the use of

mouthing (p = <0.001), although many of the types were represented only by small numbers of tokens. First

singular (1.943) and second singular (1.481) possessives strongly favoured mouthing. Other pointing signs

which favoured the use of mouthing included third person plural (0.820) and first person plural (0.715)

possessives, together with second person (0.456) and first person singular (0.075) pronominals. The

following forms disfavoured the use of mouthing: third person plural pronouns (–0.053), locative pointing

signs (–0.246), third person singular possessive (–0.314), determiners (–0.615), third person singular

pronouns (–0.652) and buoys (–2.093).

Table 8

Pointing signs and mouthing

Application value: presence of mouthing All factor groups significant at p <.05


Pointing sign type 1sg possessives 1.943 67 82.1

2sg possessives 1.481 10 80

3pl possessives 0.820 15 53.3

1pl pronouns 0.715 24 62.5

2sg pronouns 0.456 160 53.8

1sg pronouns 0.075 844 47.7

3pl pronouns –0.053 125 42.4

Locatives –0.246 154 22.7

3sg possessives –0.314 44 36.4

Determiners –0.615 139 18.7

3sg pronouns –0.652 459 26.8

21

Buoys –2.093 27 11.2

Distribution by grammatical class

Mouth action rates in Auslan varied according to the grammatical class of the accompanying manual sign

(Figure 7).

Figure 7 Mouth action rates by grammatical class (ranked by decreasing % of mouthing)

Lexicalised nouns showed more mouthing than other classes of sign and even depicting signs functioning as

nominals were more likely to co-occur with mouthing than depicting verbs. Verbs, plain or indicating, were

more likely to co-occur with mouth gestures than mouthing. Apart from nouns, some of the highest mouthing

rates are with numbers and function words (prepositions, auxiliaries, conjunctions and wh-question words

and wh-relativizers).

These observations were confirmed by Rbrul analysis (Table 9), with grammatical class a significant

predictor of mouthing (p = <0.001). We found that numerals (2.283), nouns (1.804) and prepositions (1.582)

strongly favoured mouthing, as did relativizers (1.294), auxiliaries (1.066), adjectives (0.938), conjunctions

(0.919), question signs (0.381). Adverbs only slightly favoured mouthing (0.076). Plain and indicating verbs

(–0.298), negators (–0.360), depicting nouns (–0.375), pronouns (–0.984), locatives (–1.067), determiners (–

1.259), interjections (–2.116) and depicting verbs (–3.207) all disfavoured mouthing.

Table 9

22

Grammatical class and mouthing

Application value: presence of mouthing All factor groups significant at p <.05


Grammatical class Numerals 2.283 114 89.5

Plain nouns 1.804 1089 81.2

Prepositions 1.582 105 80

Wh-relativizers 1.294 13 76.9

Auxiliaries 1.066 81 72.8

Adjectives 0.938 327 67.6

Conjunctions 0.919 93 68.8

Wh-question signs 0.381 72 50

Adverbs 0.076 492 47

Plain & indicating

verbs

–0.298 1656 38.2

Buoys –0.360 2 50

Negators –0.375 47 42.6

Depicting nouns –0.677 66 27.3

Pronouns –0.984 464 30.2

Locatives –1.067 22 22.7


Interjections –2.116 521 11.9

Depicting verbs –3.207 413 2.9

Grammatical class was also a significant predictor of the use of mouth gestures (p = <0.001) (Table 10).

Depicting verbs most strongly favoured mouth gestures (2.538) followed by interjections (2054), buoys

(1.868), negators (1.366), plain and indicating verbs (1.108), depicting nouns (1.101), locatives (0.257),

adverbs (0.192), and pronouns (0.097). Question signs were neutral (0.000), while the following signs

disfavoured mouth gestures: adjectives (–0.251), relativizers (–0.296), determiners (–0.467), conjunctions (–

0.910), nouns (–1.602), prepositions (–1.785), numerals (–2.455), and auxiliaries (–2.813).

Table 10

Grammatical class and mouth gestures

Application value: presence of mouth gestures All factor groups significant at p <.05

Factor Group Factor Log odds Tokens % with mouth gestures

Grammatical class Depicting verbs 2.538 413 75.8

Interjections 2.054 521 57.6

Buoys 1.868 2 50

Negators 1.366 47 40.4

Plain & indicating verbs

1.108 1656 41

Depicting nouns 1.101 66 45.5

Locatives 0.257 22 27.3

Adverbs 0.192 492 22.2

Pronouns 0.097 464 18.1

Wh-question signs 0.000 72 20.8

Adjectives –0.251 327 15.6

Wh-relativizers –0.296 13 15.4


Conjunctions –0.910 93 7.5

Plain nouns –1.602 1089 4.9

Prepositions –1.785 105 3.8

Numerals –2.455 114 1.8

23

Auxiliaries –2.813 81 1.2

This distribution of mouthing over signs of different grammatical classes observed in the data was, once

again, comparable to other signed languages for which data is available (Table 11).

Table 11

Distribution of mouthing by grammatical class of manual sign

Auslan BSL NGT SSL ASL* HKSL IrishSL*

Noun 35.8% 40.3% 39.4% 42.5% 27.1% 84% 32%

Verb 26.9% 24.4% 30.6% 20.9% 15.4% 9% 23%

Adverbial 8.4% 6.4% 11.1% 10.1% 20.5% n/a n/a

Adjective 8.8% 12.3% 5.6% 11.2% 26.7% 2.5% 27%

Other 20.1% 16.7% 13.4% 15.2% 10.3% 4.5% 18%

* ASL and IrishSL figures calculated from data reported in Nadolske and Rosenstock (2007) and Militzer (2013)

The only true outlier in Table 11 is HKSL. Three of the signed languages from communities in which

English is the dominant spoken and written language (Auslan, BSL and ASL) are somewhat similar in

distribution with Auslan and BSL, unsurprisingly, very similar indeed. The fourth English-related signed

language, Irish SL, had no category of adverbials included in the analysis and hence the data are difficult to

compare. Given the distribution of other categories and given that the adjectival category actually could

include many adverbials, it too may be fairly similar to the other Western and English-related signed

languages in the final analysis.

Standard mouthings and lexical frequency

Our data confirms the long made observation that some signs appear to be consistently mouthed with the

same word, called a ‘standard mouthing’ (Bank et al. 2011).9 Of 1,314 fully lexical sign types in the dataset,

442 had a token count of 5 or greater. Considering only these—in order to reduce the bias of signs with very

few tokens—we found that only 38 had only one associated mouthing: MORE, HELP, EASY, RAM, HOW,

FATHER, NOW, BALL, ENGLISH, AFTER, DOG, FIRST, MELBOURNE, SHOULD, THAN, TIME, TRAIN, WITH,

WORLD, ACCESS, FIVE, LOVE, WASTE, WEEK, BEGIN, CITY, CLASS, DEAF-CLUB, FEW, GOVERNMENT, HAPPY,

NEW, NEW-ZEALAND, PROBLEM, RETURN, VERY. It was much more common, therefore, for lexical sign types

to co-occur with more than one type of mouthing. Nonetheless, one of the co-occurring mouthings was

usually more frequent that any of the others and could thus also be regarded as the standard mouthing. Not

9 The existence of standard mouthings is actually one of the most salient criteria for selecting an English word to act as

the ID gloss for lexical signs in the Auslan Corpus.

24

surprisingly these mouthings are usually of words semantically related to the core meaning of the sign (and

its standard mouthing), e.g., beer, pub, bar with BEER. Seven of the fully lexical sign types with multiple

mouthings actually had ten or more unique attested mouthings (SAME, GO, SAY, GROUP, REAL, AREA, LOOK).

Most of these mouthings represented wordings semantically related to the core meaning of the sign (e.g.,

true, truth, real, really, actually, sure, honestly with REAL; or same, like, too, also, but, mean, with SAME),

but they also included co-articulations in which the mouthing added additional information for which there

was no separate articulated sign, e.g., have with GROUP, meaning ‘there was/existed a group’; or I’m with

SAY, meaning ‘I said “I’m…”’ or people with LOOK, meaning “people looked” (cf. Vogt-Svendsen 2001).

The data also reveal that only a handful of fully lexical signs were always mouthed, i.e., almost all, even

those with only one associated mouthing, had tokens that also had either no mouthing whatsoever or were

accompanied with a mouth gesture.

Several signs were produced with mouthing at rates much higher than other signs of the same grammatical

class, e.g., HAVE and FINISH. Unlike most other verbs, HAVE is almost always produced with a mouthing

(92%), almost always with ‘have’ and by ‘had’ when not; and FINISH is accompanied by a mouthing (as

‘finish’) in 85% of tokens. These mouthing rates are quite high and are comparable to the identical signs

HAVE and FINISH in BSL which Sutton-Spence and Day (2001) report as ‘near obligatory’.

Of signs with a token count of 5 or greater in the dataset, 26 fully lexical signs never co-occurred with

mouthing (SPRINT, COINCIDENCE, SUPPOSE, TEASE, SURPRISE, OBJECT, INJECTION, DISAPPEAR, AMERINDIAN,

EXCELLENT, LEARN, DO-THERE, ELIMINATE, AGE-YEARS(ONE), ATTEND, GO-TRACE, MAYBE, AUTOMATIC,

COLLECT, DELICIOUS, DEMOTE, MEET-SEE, PATIENCE, PUSH-ASIDE, RUN, UNTIL).

In order to conduct an Rbrul analysis relating the use of standard mouthings and lexical frequency, we

eliminated signs that occurred five times or less, reasoning that a sign occurring at such low rates in the data

could not be said to have a standard mouthing due to the lack of sufficient tokens. We identified a subset of

lexical signs that appeared to occur with the same English mouthing 50% of the time or more, and we

categorised this subset as those with standard mouthings.

We then ran an Rbrul analysis, with lexical frequency as a continuous dependent variable, and mouthing

status as a fixed effect, and participant as a random effect (Table 12). We found that lexical frequency was a

significant predictor of the use of standard mouthing (p =<0.001), so that standard mouthings were favoured

with higher frequency (98.593) compared to non-standard mouthing (–31.812) and no mouthing (–66.780).

25

Table 12

Lexical frequency and standard mouthings

Application value: lexical frequency as a continuous variable All factor groups significant at p <.05

Factor Group Factor Log odds Tokens mean

Mouthing status Standard mouthing 98.593 510 420.857

Non-standard mouthing

–31.812 7175 291.372

No mouthing –66.780 3129 249.043

Characteristics of different types of mouth actions

M-types Insofar as can be discerned from lip-reading alone, most mouthings appeared to be fully articulated

(over 95%) (Table 13). Incomplete mouthings were overwhelmingly initial segments only, cf. NGT (Bank et

al. 2013). A small number of mouthing tokens (approximately 20) were not accompanied by any manual sign

yet they were clearly not redundant. They provided essential disambiguating or logico-cohesive information

to the utterance. They were conjunctions, prepositions or adverbial including ‘but’, ‘or’, ‘for’, ‘just’,

‘maybe’; sentence modifiers like ‘I don’t know’, ‘I think’; or other interactives like ‘no’, ‘yes’, ‘not true’.

Table 13

Type of mouthing

Degree of articulation Tokens

Full articulation 9197

Initial segment 289

Medial segment 16

Final segment 24

Initial & final segment only 24

Suppressed articulation 6

Unreadable 81

Total 9639

E-types Empty, echo or syllabic mouth gestures were rare in the data, but in all cases they had the minimal

effect of making the meaning of the co-occurring manual sign more emphatic. A full list of types and tokens

is given in Table 14.

Table 14

E-type mouth gestures in the dataset (N = 63)

Gloss MouthGestF Tokens Gloss MouthGestF Tokens

COINCIDENCE PAH 11 WELL-KNOWN PAH 1

REAL AP 7 DSS(H):ANIMAL-RUNNING PAH 1

26

FINISH.FINALLY PAH 5 ELIMINATE THAM 1

AUTOMATIC WOOF 4 SLEEP PAH 1

HAVE-NOT POOH 3 DSS(B):OBJECT-PASSES PAH 1

BAN AP 3 SPEED-DUST BOOM 1

PECULIAR PAH-PAH 2 DSM(B):ANIMAL-OVER-LINE PAH 1

LEARN-LESSON PAH 2 DSM(B):ANIMAL-STOPS PAH 1

VANISH AP 2 DIMINISH THAM 1

ZOOM-OFF POW 1 AFTERGLOW AM 1

RELIEVED PAH 1 FOUND-OUT PAH 1

UNUSUAL PAH 1 LEARN OOM_INHALE 1

REAL ALAM 1 ELIMINATE ALAM 1

EMPTY THAP 1 DSS(H):ANIMAL-RUNNING PAH 1

WITNESS PAH 1 TOO-LATE PAH 1

WIPE-UP ALAM 1 SPASMODIC AP 1

COHHLEAR-IMPLANT PAH 1 DSS(4):ASSEMBLY-LINE PAH 1

The number of different syllabic mouth patterns in this dataset is actually quite small, at 12 forms, and in

every case some discernible meaning is associated with the mouth gesture in addition to the underlying

emphasis (Table 15). These forms also have consistent, though admittedly general, meanings across usage

contexts, i.e., they are not semantically empty as such as suggested in the literature.

Table 15

E-type mouth gestures by associated meanings in context

Mouth gesture form Specific contextual meanings # echo

phonology # echo

metaphorical # NOT echo

# tokens total

PAH suddenly, quickly 25 4 2 31

AP suddenly, abruptly 8 5 0 13

WOOF without-impediment, automatic 0 0 4 4

ALAM all-gone, disappear from view abruptly

1 2 0 3

POOH nothing, negative, remove, blow away

0 3 0 3

THAM all-gone, disappear from view 0 2 0 2

PAH-PAH peculiar, strange 0 0 2 2

AM sudden, complete 1 0 0 1

BOOM all-gone, complete, energetic 1 0 0 1

OOM_INHALE close-shave, sharp, risky, dangerous 0 1 0 1

POW sudden, energetic 1 0 0 1

THAP all-gone, disappear from view

abruptly 0 1 0 1

Totals 37 18 8 63

The underlying emphasis appears to stem from the parallel reinforcement of the form of the manual sign by

the mouth gesture: the syllabic opening and closing of the mouth aligns itself with opening and closing of

handshapes, the striking of surfaces, or the sudden change in hand orientation (twisting, turning and

27

bending). These mouth gestures thus generally conform to the characterization of echo phonology proposed

by Woll (2001).

One syllabic mouth gesture—PAH—did not display in one instance the type of echoing predicted or

attributed to it. In this instance, PAH was aligned with the rapidly closing handshape in SLEEP, which is the

opposite of the opening movement it normally aligns with and ‘echoes’. Nonetheless, in all instances PAH

has to be said to be optionally ‘added’ because, again in contrast to some of the earlier literature (Sutton-

Spence & Woll 1999),10

signs in this class of ‘multi-channel signs’, such COINCIDENCE, FINISH, or REAL can

occur without this mouth gesture: of 19 instances of COINCIDENCE, 11 occur with PAH, 1 with A-type lips-

pressed, 2 with W-type expressions, and 4 with no mouth action at all; of 32 tokens of FINISH, 5 with PAH,

and 27 with mouthing; and of 179 tokens of REAL only 7 tokens occur with AP (137 tokens are mouthed).

Syllabic mouth gestures are attested across a variety of signed languages. According to Crasborn et al.

(2008) they accompany 1.3% of signs in BSL, 4.9% in NGT and 6.1% in SSL. In our dataset, they occurred

with only 0.4% of signs, a much lower rate than the BSL data.

Adverbial A-types Only a very small percentage of A-types are potential candidates for conventional mouth-

based adverbials (i.e., with their own dedicated or language-specific semantic meaning) that are applied as a

modifier to the co-occurring manual sign. The data suggest that combinations of manual signs and these

mouth gestures (with may occur with other non-manual elements) can produce specific meanings in

particular usage contexts, but that overall the semantic component of the mouth gesture is very broad. Only a

very small set of recurring semantic descriptors was needed to capture the apparent contribution of these

mouth gestures—LARGE-AMOUNT, CARELESS, UNPLEASANT, SMOOTH, EASE, EFFORT and SMALL-AMOUNT

(Table 16).

Table 16

Form/meaning pairings for adverbial A-type mouth gestures* (N = 187)

MouthGestF MouthGestM Specific contextual meanings Tokens

TONGUE CARELESS carelessly, easily, with ease, without regard, petulantly, with deliberate careless

enjoyment, reckless, slipshod, insouciant 109

TRILL EASE easily, unimpeded, with enjoyment 16

10

Woll (2001) does qualify this earlier claim by saying the mouth gesture is only obligatory in the citation form,

presumably recognizing that usage data may not support a stronger claim. However, it is not clear if this better accounts for the data. Many signs cited out of a usage context are accompanied by typical mouthings and mouth gestures, especially if they can have a range of meanings, as part of creating a more specific meaning for that form. Thus, it is not clear if the use of mouthing and mouth gestures to modify a sign’s meaning should be confounded with obligatoriness.

28

MouthGestF MouthGestM Specific contextual meanings Tokens

BLOW SMALL-AMOUNT little remaining, blown away, 12

BLOW SMOOTH smooth, unimpeded, quickly, ongoing 11

TRILL LARGE-AMOUNT large amount, a lot of, unimpeded, energetic, powerful, engine/machine-powered 8

TONGUE UNPLEASANT unpleasant, distasteful, bad 7

PUFF LARGE-AMOUNT large amount, a lot of, powerful 6

BOTTOM-LIP-OUT CARELESS careless, easily, without regard, petulantly, with deliberate careless enjoyment, reckless, slipshod, insouciant

3

LIPS-OUT EASE easily, without regard, petulantly, with enjoyment 2

LIPS-OUT SMALL-AMOUNT small amount, trivial, insignificant, nothing to worry about 2

LIPS-PRESSED EASE easily but deliberately, enjoyable 2

LIPS-OUT LARGE-AMOUNT large amount 1

PUFF CARELESS careless 1

TONGUE SMOOTH smooth 1

WIDE EFFORT effort 1

LIPS-PRESSED EFFORT effort 1

LIPS-OUT UNCLEAR n/a 1

SUCKED-IN SMALL-AMOUNT small amount 1

DOWN CARELESS careless 1

SLIGHTLY-OPEN EFFORT effort, concentration 1

* Again tokens with more than one possible descriptor were aggregated with a single descriptor that was the most

salient.

Prosodic A-types The majority of A-types appear to be prosodic in character, according to our definitions.

These mouth gestures tended to accentuate an action qua action, i.e., as an unfolding process, not unlike

Sandler’s ‘protracted action’ category of mouth gestures (2009). (She, however, analyses ‘protracted action’

expressions as conventional adverbial modifiers proper to Israeli SL, not mouth gestures.) We judged that

only two broad labels are needed to capture the effect of these prosodic mouth gestures: EMPHASIS and

ACTIVITY (Table 17). EMPHASIS was the broader default reading accounting for 71% of tokens, ACTIVITY

accounted for the force of the remaining 29%.

The actual mouth gesture used with each token varied considerably (and idiosyncratically) when collated

according to our form-based coding system. Nonetheless one underlying feature—a tensed mouth—did unite

most of them (all but TRILL, PUFF and BLOW). This supports earlier descriptions of Auslan in which a facial

‘grimace’ was said to indicate emphasis or stress (Johnston & Schembri 2007). If we use the broader general

form descriptors for A-type mouth gestures (which seem more appropriate and manageable given this

variability, see Table 2), we can see that the tensed mouth gestures account for 78% of the prosodic mouth

gestures. DOWN, WIDE, LIPS-PRESSED and TRILL account for 62% of EMPHASIS, and WIDE is the most

frequent for ACTIVITY.

29

Table 17

Form/meaning pairings for prosodic A-type mouth gestures*

MG form (= EMPHASIS) Tokens MG form (= ACTIVITY) Tokens

DOWN 88 WIDE 66

WIDE 78 TRILL 28

LIPS-PRESSED 65 SLIGHTLY-OPEN 22

TRILL 63 LIPS-PRESSED 22

SLIGHTLY-OPEN 38 DOWN 19

LIP-CURL 34 BOTTOM-LIP-OUT 13

PUFF 31 PUFF 8

BOTTOM-LIP-OUT 27 LIPS-OUT 8

OPEN 23 BLOW 4

BLOW 16 OPEN 3

LIPS-OUT 13 LIP-CURL 1

Totals 476 Totals 194

* A number of mouth gestures need to be translated from the formal

codes using more than one of these descriptors (e.g., “blow, lips-out”). In

these cases, the tokens were aggregated into the most salient descriptor with the same general meaning.

4-types The number of mouth for mouth gestures was extremely low. The token frequencies are

unremarkably linked to the narratives chosen for the re-tells or the elicitation materials. Insofar as these are

all mimetic of the mouth action involved in the process designated by the co-articulated manual sign, they

are also ‘iconic’.

Table 18

Mouth for mouth (N = 62)

ID-gloss Tokens ID-gloss Tokens ID-gloss Tokens

GRAZE 11 EAT 5 HEARING 2

CAPTURE 10 SHOUT 3 CATCH 1

YELL 10 LAUGH 2 DSS(5):ANIMAL-TEETH 1

AMERINDIAN 6 CHEW 2 BITE 1

SPEECH 5 ANGRY 2 CHATTER-BOX 1

W-types From the data presented in Figure 4 one can calculate that 71.4% of mouth gestures alone are of the

W-type. Of these we find that 42.6% are of the constructed action sub-type. There are very few of the other

types. Indeed, constructed actions represent 30.4% of all mouth gesture types (i.e., mouth actions excluding

mouthings). These were further coded on the MouthGestM tier as ENACTMENTS (global enactments of the

subject of the constructed action, including their facial expression), or EXPRESSIONS (presentations of just the

face expression of the subject during the constructed action). A large majority were of the second type. Many

ENACTMENTS and EXPRESSIONs used mouth actions found in the A-type mouth gesture repertoire to convey

30

similar meanings, e.g., TONGUE for ‘carelessly’. As a result, at minimum 10% of all putative adverbial A-

type mouth gestures in the dataset that clearly modify a co-articulated manual sign in some way are actually

part of enactments, i.e., constructed action W-types.

Iconicity

The gestural nature of some mouth actions has been recognized by all researchers. The very category of W-

types is intended to identify a large proportion of these. Indeed, most of the mimetic replicas and some of the

symbolic iconics that Sander (2009) identifies in Israel SL fall into this category. However, some mouth

actions that do not include the whole face, and thus fall into the A-type and E-type categories as coded in this

and other cited studies, also appear to be drawing on mimetic replicas or symbolic iconics—the form of these

mouth actions are related to their meanings. Consider the A-type puffed cheeks mouth action meaning

LARGE-AMOUNT, or the E-types in which the movement of the hands (which the mouth ‘echoes’) is itself

iconic, e.g., when the fingers close to represent something getting smaller and smaller in DISAPPEAR. So, in

order to assess the amount of gestural iconicity that may be present in our mouth action data, and evaluate it

in the light of Sandler’s (2009) observations, we identified those A- and E-type tokens in our data where

iconic motivation is present and identified its type (i.e., as imagistic, mimetic, or metaphoric). We could then

combine these token counts with W-types token count.

Among the 63 identified E-types, 18 were examples of echo phonology in which the form was an iconic

metaphor. Of the A-types, at least 82 (45%) of the 187 ‘traditional’ adverbial A-types (i.e., those not in the

sub-group prosodic) were iconic in some way (usually metaphoric). Consequently, approximately 40% (100

of 250 tokens) of A- and E-type mouth gestures appear to be symbolic iconics. The majority fell into two

main groups: those involving the puffing of the cheeks with or without the expulsion of air or the vibrating

of the lips and were associated with the intensification/augmentation; and those involving the pursing of the

lips or narrowing of the mouth, with or without the sucking in of the cheeks and the inhalation or expulsion

of air, and were associated with diminution/attenuation on the one hand, or care/precision on the other.

The forms the remaining prosodic A-types assume appear to be directly related to the stress or emphasis

they impart and are thus also non-arbitrary. Indeed, we suggest these prosodic mouth actions are expressions

deaf or hearing people spontaneously make when ‘doing or uttering with stress’ or imitating someone doing

so. They may be considered mimetic replicas of an action produced with stress or emphasis, if not actually

31

indexic reflexes (the actual manifestation of stressed production). If considered in this light, then in as many

as 80% of all A- and E-types, the form of the mouth action maps onto the meaning in an iconically motivated

way (imagistically, mimetically) which may also be metaphorical. Some of these may even be indexic. When

these are combined with W-types, fully 96% of all mouth gestures thus appear to be iconically motivated.

Spreading

Spreading behaviour in mouthings in the Auslan data appears less frequent than that reported for other

signed languages, despite the fact that the criteria we used for annotating spreading was the same as the other

projects (i.e., that the mouth action must spread over at least 50% of the duration of the adjacent sign). Once

again it is possible that different annotation practices may partially explain this (see Table 5). The spreading

behaviour of mouth gestures when considered alone is, however, comparable to some of the spreading rates

reported for the two of the other signed languages. By nature, mouth gestures are not as strongly aligned with

single signs, having a significant prosodic nature.

Table 19

Spreading data

Mouth action Tokens Percent with spreading

Auslan BSL NGT-1 SSL Auslan BSL NGT SSL NGT-2

M-type (mouthing) 9639 560 299 831 3.5% 25% 20% 12.5% 12.5%

Mouth gesture 3459 539 458 624 13.3% n/a n/a n/a n/a

E-type 63 20 58 99 0% 10% 5.3% 11.1% n/a

A-type 861 231 230 205 8.3% n/a n/a n/a n/a

4-type 62 63 45 87 0% n/a n/a n/a n/a

W-type 2472 225 125 233 15.7% n/a n/a n/a n/a

Nonetheless, the spreading behaviour itself is similar to that which has been described with other signed

languages, in terms of direction and source and target. There were examples of all of the types of spreading

mentioned in the literature: the most common with mouthings were progressive (88%) but some were

regressive (12%) (cf., 94.1% and 5.2% respectively for NGT-2); of these, the majority were from content or

lexical signs to function signs or to pointing or depicting signs, e.g. 49% spread over an adjacent pointing

sign (cf. 58.3% for NGT-2). The next most frequent were spreadings between lexical signs and the

fingerspellings that represent the English equivalent of the sign’s intended meaning (the target and source in

these examples is uncertain because fingerspellings appeared on either side of the lexical sign).

32

Variation

Individual variation There was enormous variation between individuals in the dataset in their use of mouth

actions. The rate of mouthing by individuals ranged from a low of 5% to a high of 82%. Mouth gesture rates

ranged from a low of 2% to a high of 43% (Figure 8). The mouthing rates for the six individuals in the BSL,

NGT and SSL datasets which are based on two signers from each language (Crasborn et al. 2008) have been

included in Figure 8 for comparison. (Because only mouthing rates were reported in Crasborn et al., the rates

for mouth gestures and no mouth actions are absent and there are white/empty bars above these data points in

the graph.)

Figure 8 Mouth action rates for individual signers

Overall there is a tendency for signers to use mouth gesture less frequently as mouthing rates increase. This

is not surprising: the more one mouths, the less opportunity one has to perform a mouth gesture.

Text-type variation Mouth action rates vary across text-types (Table 20). Although Sutton Spence and Day

found rates over 70% for some registers in BSL, their narrative samples had rates around 44%.

Table 20

Mouth action rates across text-types

No mouth action M-type E-type A-type 4-type W-type

Monologue (narratives, retell)

30.8 20.4 55.4 26.2 72.6 45.6

Dialogue (conversation, interview)

53.3 68.5 44.6 49.8 17.7 48.0

Elicited 15.8 11.1 0.0 23.9 9.7 6.4

33

(sentence elicitation, picture stimulus)

The fact that the individuals and the number of individuals represented in each text-type count is different

may account for some of the range, or lack of range, in variation. However, 11 individuals in the dataset

have examples of production in at least two text-types, and one has an example from each of the three text-

types (Figure 11). This data gives us confidence that the differences in Table 20 are not driven merely by

individual differences, which we still expect to be significant. The data appear to support the notion that rates

do vary with text-type. Nine of the eleven individuals show a difference in mouthing rates in the same

direction (namely more mouthings in dialogues, and more W-type in the monologues) between each of two

or more text-types.

Figure 9 Mouthing rates in different text-types with same participant

In a Rbrul analysis, text type was found to be a significant predictor of mouth action types (p = <0.001).

Monologues strongly favoured 4-type mouth (1.349) and E-type (0.976) mouth gestures, while weakly

disfavouring A-type (–0.111) and W-type (–0.299) mouth gestures, and particularly disfavouring mouthing

(–1.095) (Table 21). In contrast, dialogues favoured mouthing (0.801), a lack of any mouth actions (0.600),

W-type (0.460) mouth gestures, and disfavoured A-type (–0.455), E-type (–0.653) and 4-type (–0.752)

mouth gestures (Table 22).

Table 21

Monologues and mouth action types

Application value: use of mouth action types

34

All factor groups significant at p <.05

Factor Group Factor Log odds Tokens % with mouth action type

Monologues 4-type 1.349 62 72.6

E-type 0.976 63 55.6

A-type –0.111 884 46.5

W-type –0.299 2463 46.1

No mouth action –0.819 3939 30.8

Mouthing –1.095 9586 20.3

Table 22

Dialogues and mouth action types

Application value: use of mouth action types All factor groups significant at p <.05

Factor Group Factor Log odds Tokens % with mouth action type

Dialogues Mouthing 0.801 9586 68.6

No mouth action 0.600 3939 54.0

W-type 0.460 2463 47.6

A-type –0.455 884 27.9

E-type –0.653 63 44.4

4-type –0.752 62 17.7

Multivariate analysis of social factors We conducted multivariate logistical regression analyses using Rbrul

on the occurrence of mouthing and mouth gestures with the following social factors as independent

variables: signer’s sex, age, nativeness and region, with participant as a random effect in a mixed effect

model. Although participant variation was significant, we found none of the social factors were predictors of

the use of either mouthing or mouth gestures.

Discussion

Methodology

Type and size of datasets At 17,002 manual sign tokens, the Auslan dataset used in this study is much larger

and varied than previous studies of BSL, NGT, SSL and HKSL already cited, or even the next largest study

(at 11,905) recently completed which we have referred to as the NGT-2 dataset (Bank et al. submitted).

Previous researchers called for further research with significantly larger numbers of signers to help

distinguishing between variation between individual signers and differences between signed languages

(recall Figure 8). Our dataset enables us to see quite a wide distribution in the rate of mouth actions for

individuals, despite the fact that we have deliberately restricted our corpus to native or near-native signers.

One cannot fail to see from Figure 8 that if we were to randomly select two individuals from our dataset to

represent Auslan mouthing rates (or rather had only selected two individuals in the first instance), the results

35

would most likely have been quite misleading. Similarly, the spreading data for NGT-1 are quite different to

the spreading data for NGT-2.

It is relevant in this context to note that it has been taken as axiomatic by many signed language

researchers that almost all of the symbolic communicative behaviour of signing deaf people is ‘linguistic’ in

the narrow sense. However, this is actually simply a working assumption, in some cases driven by linguistic

theories which assume the autonomy of language from other aspects of cognition and communication. If

gesture plays a significant role in face-to-face communication (spoken or signed), then some symbolic

behaviour may not be linguistic in the sense of being part of a highly conventionalised, rule-governed system

in which most of the forms—in either primary modality—are actually language-specific. Possibilities in

wording and morpho-syntactic coding are often highly constrained by the very nature of linguistic systems,

i.e., some constructional schemas are obligatory in certain contexts and thus many aspects of linguistic

symbolic behaviour can be sampled from relatively small numbers of users precisely because of this.

However, if the substantive symbols are not actually ‘linguistic’ in the sense we have described, it is unlikely

that any single individual, or small sample of individuals, will provide data upon which can be generalized

core constructional schemas of the language. There is reason to believe that some aspects of signing

behaviour (like mouth actions) fall into this category.

It is for this very reason we have adopted a corpus-based approach in this study (and in other areas of the

description of Auslan). Nonetheless, one may reasonably contend that no datasets yet presented, including

our own, are sufficiently representative of native signer usage for our observations to be unlikely to be

revised in the future. This needs to be borne in mind.

Coding and categorization In a first parse of the data, A-type mouth gesture forms were annotated using the

glosses as shown in Table 2. When this first round of data was analysed, our results regarding form/meaning

pairings were no different than reported above and discussed below. Given the strong claims made in the

literature on the conventionalization of some mouth gestures, we considered that our coding and

categorization was perhaps too general to capture this, so we then used the Sutton-Spence and Day (2001)

schema, which we adapted (see Appendix), and returned to the primary data and re-coded the entire dataset.

The finer coding did not alter the outcome: there remained the range of variation in forms that we originally

observed, i.e., the more discrete and detail features did not align in any discernable pattern, and the relative

36

importance of the co-text and context of utterance in describing the meaning of these forms was also

unchanged.11

Categorizing mouth gestures is neither simple nor straightforward. Mouth gestures often overlap, e.g., if

the mouth is widened, with the lips closed, the lips will often be pressed together, or different lip

configurations can occur with a slightly open mouth. This is evident from an examination of the form-based

codes we used. Moreover, decisions about how to label the meaning of mouth gestures are even more

subjective and thus potentially open to re-interpretation by other researchers, even if reviewed by a native

signer (as they were). Inconsistencies could also arise if an annotator classifies a mouth action as a non-W-

type and fails to notice that the whole face is actually involved or that the mouth action is performed during a

period of constructed action. Again, one needs to keep this in mind.

Language contact and the conventionalization of mouth actions

Relationship of English mouthings to Auslan signs The majority of manual sign tokens (56.7%) co-occur

with mouthing (Figure 4). Given mouthing rates range from 6% to 84% (Figure 8), can it still be suggested

that mouthing is an obligatory formational component of some signs?

The strongest claim has been made for fingerspelled signs. Only some 6% of fingerspellings have no

mouthing (or mouth gesture) (Figure 5). Several individuals in the dataset, however, have very low rates of

mouthing with fingerspelling e.g., MVS who is from a multi-generational deaf family, mouths only 4 of 14

fingerspellings (a rate of only 28%). MVS is not difficult to read for a native signer and her signing style

should certainly not be considered atypical.12

The next strongest claim has been made for the mouthing co-occurring with so-called ‘ambiguous’ signs,

such as Auslan SPOUSE or NGT SIBLING.13

True, all 5 instances of SPOUSE in the dataset were indeed

mouthed ‘wife’ or ‘husband’ and it is clear that signers intend to make this semantic distinction. They

11

The Ekman and Friesen (1978) Facial Action Coding System has also been used by other researchers investigating

non-manuals in signed languages (e.g., Dachkovsky & Sandler 2009). We chose not to use this system because it would have required a significant additional investment in resources for annotators to learn it. The lack of any real change in identifying form/meaning pairings using the system used for BSL instead of the original gloss-based system leads us to believe that the even greater detail of the facial coding system would also not have altered the outcome. 12

Anecdotally, the first author can report that most non-native signers have great difficulty reading fingerspelling without mouthing support, so it is not surprising that fingerspelling attracts such high rates of mouthing—the vast majority of signers in the Auslan-using community are not native signers. It would thus be habitual for even a native signer to mouth, as our data show. 13

A correction is in order. Auslan SPOUSE is no more ambiguous for husband or wife than Chinese TA is for he or she or

it. The languages simply do not make a gender distinction at the lexical level for these concepts. SPOUSE unambiguously means ‘person to whom one is married’ and TA means ‘a singular person/entity which is neither first or second person referent’. They are only ‘ambiguous’ for someone in whose language and culture a gender or animacy distinction is obligatorily made.

37

certainly never mouth ‘spouse’. (In fact, some Auslan signers would not know what this English word

means.) However, sampling the much larger Auslan Corpus reveals that, of 37 tokens of SPOUSE, 23 are

mouthed (as ‘wife’, ‘husband’, ‘marry/ied’) and 14 have no mouthing (in all of these senses).14

The fact that

fully one third of SPOUSE tokens have no mouthing suggests that the use of mouthing is not obligatory and

not specified in the signer’s mental lexicon. In the dataset, gender or grammatical function is often simply

inferred from context without any formal (including mouthed) marker: e.g., POSS1SG SPOUSE (unmouthed,

signed by a man) means my wife; or PRO1SG SPOUSE PRO3SG (unmouthed) means I married him/her.

Nonetheless, basic core culturally shared distinctions are made and expected. For Auslan signs, this does

mean a default mouthing of ‘wife’, ‘husband’, or even, ‘marry’ when signing SPOUSE, even if it is not

obligatory. Their interlocutors, who are often second language learners of Auslan and speakers of English as

a first language, give and demand clarification.

A similar default coupling occurs with vocabulary items that name basic level cognitive categories that

one can expect to recur and overlap cross-linguistically and cross-culturally, e.g., tree, flower, boy, girl, dog,

cat, mother, father, man, woman and so on (Taylor 1991). The fact that signers and speakers share

essentially the same culture, reinforces the likelihood of overlap and convergence. The fact that Auslan and

English are in different modalities means that double coding (mouthed in English while manually signed in

Auslan) can occur without any expressive or receptive conflict. Indicative mouthing rates for these types of

concepts from the data set include: TREE (87%), FLOWER (78%), BOY (77%), GIRL (85%), DOG (95%), CAT

(72%), MOTHER (84%), FATHER (100%), MAN (78%), WOMAN (80%), LADY (91%).

Moreover, despite the fact that many signs are associated with a standard mouthing, as shown earlier,

across the lexicon the relationship of manual signs to mouthing is simply not one-to-one: it is one to many.

Most signs can co-occur with different mouthings (and sometimes mouth gestures) that specify, limit, or

extend the core meaning of the sign (Johnston & Schembri 1999; Bank et al. 2011).

The reported findings thus confirm that mouthing is not obligatory in the sense that they are not part of the

lexical specification of any sign, a position long-held by Auslan researchers (Johnston & Schembri 1999)

and other researchers (e.g., Ebbinghaus & Hessmann 2001). Rather, mouthings represent the parallel or

simultaneous expression of elements from a second language, and thus the phenomenon is best described as

14

The fact that an Auslan sign may function as a noun or a verb is unremarkable. Remember, the ID gloss does not capture this distinction.

38

code-blending (Emmorey, Borinstein, & Thompson 2005; van den Bogaerde & Baker 2005; Bank et al.

submitted). Data on slips of the hand and tongue by deaf and hearing BSL signers, suggesting that the

mouthing and manual components have separate mental representations, supports this position (Vinson et al.

2010).

Mouthings are ‘obligatory’ only in the sense that if an Auslan signer wishes to make the semantic

distinction afforded by the mouthing in a situation where context does not render this inferable—and

continue to use just the intended manual sign—then they must use that mouthing. Otherwise, they must

choose another way of incorporating English (e.g., by an interpolated fingerspelling) or instead use

circumlocution in Auslan.

Researchers have suggested that mouthing is primarily or solely a language contact phenomenon or that

formal or oralist education has had an impact on mouthing rates (Hohenberger & Happ 2001; Nadolske &

Rosenstock 2007; Bank et al. 2011, submitted). With respect to the former, though we do not have data on

our corpus participants signing to non-native or hearing signers for comparison, our data are taken from sets

of two native (or near-native) signers (and each knew the other was a fluent signer) with a third native signer

researcher (known to be native to the other two). Our data do show that mouthing is present in large degree

in most texts, so immediate contact in the context of utterance with non-native or hearing signers cannot be

driving this behaviour.

With respect to the impact of formal education for deaf children, reports of deaf signers from communities

who have no formal education and are illiterate show that they use spoken language related mouthings in

their sign production (Nyst 2007; Fontana 2008). For example, Fontana observes that for home signers in

Okinawa and Italian SL signers in Sicily, speech is part of the communicative economy of deaf individuals

and deaf communities everywhere. In the life experience of all deaf people, there will be inevitable exposure

to some signs and gestures that are invariably accompanied by the same mouthing when performed by

hearing people (signers or non-signers). Deaf people cannot help but observe this: observing and

internalizing mouth actions (including mouthing) is an inevitable part of being a deaf person in a hearing

world.

39

Consequently, in Auslan, as in NGT (Bank et al. 2013) and presumably many other signed languages,

mouthing is ubiquitous.15

As Bank et al. have also remarked, this has implications for the independence of

signed from spoken languages in developed urban communities with long histories of deaf education and

widespread basic literacy. We would agree, at minimum, that monolingual speakers of these languages do

not, in fact, exist. All signers display some degree of bilingualism and thus language contact.

Form/meaning pairings in Auslan The majority of mouth gestures (71.4%) were categorized as W-type

(Figure 4) and are indexic expressions, or mimetic and gestural enactments of one kind or another. The small

number of 4-type mouth gestures are also mimetic. Of the A-type mouth gestures, we have determined that

fully two in three appear to fulfil a prosodic function, with little evidence of language specific codification.

Of the remaining ‘tradtional’ non-prosodic (adverbial) A-types, we consider some 45% to be iconic. We also

identified the use of A-types within W-types (during constructed action) and this may be relevant to the

question of conventionalization. It would appear that many adverbial A-type mouth gestures represent

expressive or iconic/mimetic mouth enactments that can also be used with some signs when no overt

constructed action is actually being performed, rather than being examples in which constructed action has

‘co-opted’ adverbial A-types. It is not clear to what we extent we can consider the above mouth gesture types

as specific to any signed language, and it is likely that many form part of a more general semiotic system.

The remaining non-iconic A-types vary in form and effect. It was difficult to identify recurring form

groups and the meanings they conveyed except in the most general of terms. They seemed to have more

subtle, global meanings, to be read in combination with other aspects of the delivery, rather than a specific,

defined meaning.

There has only ever been one good potential candidate in this category: TH. It has long been identified as

the archetypical A-type modifying mouth gesture ‘morpheme’ meaning something like ‘carelessly’ (or ‘with

ease’ which is a suggested second distinctive meaning proposed for BSL, see Lewin & Schembri 2011).

However, the use of this mouth-centred facial gesture does not appear to be specific to signed languages.

Studies, some that predate the work of Liddell (1980), on expressive and communicative human facial

15

Kata Kolok, the signed language of a Balinese village with multi-generational deafness, has been reported to have ‘virtually no mouthings’ (Vos & Zeshan 2012). We too have individuals in our dataset who have extremely low levels of

mouthings (but they still use a considerable number of mouth gestures), so this is not surprising. Lack of formal education and/or an integrated fingerspelling system together with cultural practices that may lead hearing interlocutors to believe that speaking or even mouthing to deaf people is pointless could well have this effect on a community-wide basis.

40

expressions have documented the meanings and functions of tongue protrusion (TH) in great detail (e.g.,

Smith, Chase, & Lieblich 1974; Rozin & Cohen 2013). Few signed language researchers, apart from Fontana

(2008), appear to be aware of this work on humans and primates.

Data from human children and adults show that tongue protrusion is common and is used to index and

communicate distaste, displeasure or disgust; attention or care; recklessness or carelessness;

unencumberedness or ease; and distain or rejection. Some of these meanings clearly overlap the values of

‘carelessly’ or ‘with ease’ that are attributed to this mouth gesture in signed languages. However, the

apparent specificity of these meanings to these signed languages has much to do with how one describes the

meanings of various facial expression (Elliot & Jacobs 2013). The research of Smith et al. (1974), for

example, shows that there are really only two underlying functions of tongue protrusion (a) indexing

distaste/displeasure/disgust and (b) expressing ‘social exclusion’ (i.e., a desire to be uninterrupted or a

rejection of social engagement), with the former probably lying at the basis of the latter (one can readily

appreciate how physical rejection could extend metaphorically to social rejection). When an appropriate

general label is given to the latter (which Smith et al. call ‘social exclusion’), one can see how its semantic

force would vary according to what co-occurs at the time of the tongue protrusion (i.e., the context) and the

positive or negative overall facial expression it is made with. For example, signing DRIVE + negative face +

TH = recklessly, carelessly, i.e., ‘drive in such a way as to reject the concerns or attitudes of others, namely

carelessly’; DRIVE + positive or neutral face + TH = carefree, easily, i.e., ‘drive in such a way as to reject the

concerns or attitudes of others as unnecessary because it is not difficult and you are competent, namely with

ease’; CUT + neutral face + squint + TH = cut with one’s full attention, i.e., keeping (social) interruptions at

bay, namely carefully, attentively or precisely). Signers are able to produce a specific conventional meaning

with a manual sign while they produce a mouth gesture. This provides signers with greater control on the

context in which inferences using the ‘social exclusion’ gesture TH could be constrained. Speakers, on the

other hand, need their mouths to speak so do not have the opportunity to do this.16

The conventionality lies not in the TH mouth gesture but in the conventional signs that with which they co-

occur (and the wider signed context). If one does not know a conventional lexical manual sign meaning

‘drive’ is being produced (driving is an act one would normally do with care and attention), one lacks the

16

Indeed, it is this very phenomenon that prompts Sandler (2009, p. 241) to suggest that the site of ‘co-language’ gesture is inverted in signed languages (“Speakers gesture with their hands, and signers gesture with their mouths”). However, we do not think the division of labor is as neat or as categorical as this suggests (see Conclusion).

41

intended and assumed inferential context. The fact that a similar mouth gesture has been identified in quite a

few signed languages leaves little doubt it is not language-specific. Finally, the fact that no human cultures

so far investigated appear to lack it suggests it is not specific to language, as such.

This leaves very few other mouth gestures that may be considered candidates as conventional language-

specific mouth gestures. The E-type mouth gesture PAH, is one possible example. First of all, like the

example of TH above, one needs to discount one meaning associated with it as overly specific and derived

from an association with a frequently, but not exclusively, co-occurring lexical sign: FINISH (or alternatively

glosses as SUCCESS or FINALLY in both Auslan and BSL). On the other hand, one may argue that it has begun

to be interpreted as a semantic component (‘suddenly’) which can be added to any sign, regardless of

whether or not it echoes that sign’s movement parameter. For example, PAH occurs with SLEEP to mean ‘fell

swiftly into a deep sleep’ which is not a standard pairing (the mouth gesture opens, where as the handshape

closes). It also occurs with depicting signs which do not have a standard form and thus no standard mouth

gesture. (They are productive signs with both conventional components, like handshape, and nonce

components, like placement and movement.) There may even be no formational parameter which is ‘echoed’

in the PAH.

A second E-type candidate may be WOOF because in the study dataset it always occurred with

AUTOMATIC. However, there are two reasons why it clearly would be incorrect to attribute “automaticity” to

the meaning of WOOF. First, across the entire Auslan corpus there are attested examples of AUTOMATIC also

co-occurring with FAA, ALAM, and FEE, all with the same effect as WOOF, with the mouth gesture type TRILL,

and the mouthing ‘own’ (probably an abbreviation for “on its own”). Second, it also occurs with no

mouthing or mouth gesture.

So though the strongest claims to linguistic status have been made for some E- and A-types of mouth

gestures, it would appear that their language-specific conventionalization is, at best, incipient. Moreover, as a

group they only occur in small numbers and may be considered to be a marginal phenomenon.

Overall, the data support earlier suggestions that few Auslan mouth gestures have very clearly specifiable

language-specific forms and are obligatory in any meaningful sense (Johnston & Schembri 2007). Rather

than being a part of the phonological specification of some signs or separable formal morphemes added to

signs and phrases, they are on the whole contextual symbolic units (gestures of one kind or another) and/or

are prosodic.

42

Conclusion

Mouth actions, other facial expressions, head and body movements, and other aspects of sign articulation

(e.g., speed and stress) all contribute in various complex ways to meaning creation in Auslan (Johnston &

Schembri 2007; see also references found at footnotes 1 and 2). However, positing a conventional codified

system for mouth actions as part of this dynamic appears not to be supported by the usage evidence, at least

for Auslan.

The strongest candidates for conventional status were the so-called lexically specified mouth actions

(mouthings and echo phonology). But in both cases, no specifiable mouth action appears to obligatorily co-

occur with particular signs, and exceptions and variation abound. Mouthings appear to be examples of

language blending, even if constant and intimate language contact does mean many signs have a standard

paired mouthing. Mouth gestures do add meaning to co-articulated signs but these meanings are relatively

general and the actual mouth forms employed vary from person to person. Overall, we have seen that there

are often no mouth actions at all in environments in the data were it would be assumed or predicted to occur

had the mouth action the linguistic role attributed, e.g., mouthings with fingerspelling or with lexical

specification, or mouth gestures of a certain form with classes of signs with particular morpho-phonological

characteristics. These facts do not suggest highly codified usage.

Mouth gestures also appear to have parallels in face-to-face spoken language production, although there

has been virtually no research on non-manual gesture use in spoken language. Although infrequent (because

speakers are most of the time busy speaking so the mouth is not available to gesture), observation of day-to-

day spoken language interactions suggests a hearing person’s manual gesture can be accompanied by a

mouth gesture which echoes the dynamics of the former, e.g., a fist opening to five handshape with an

opening mouth (from a plosive-like to an open vowel-like syllable) to express rapidly throwing something,

something suddenly opening or exploding, a spitting or expelling action, or something splattering on a

surface.

In this context, it would seem that the definition often given of mouth gestures as mouth actions that are

unlike mouthing in that they ‘do not derive from spoken language’ (Boyes Braem & Sutton-Spence 2001)—

as if they arose spontaneously within signed languages and were sign language dedicated—needs

qualification. Most mouth gestures that occur in signed languages appear to be part of the repertoire of facial

expressions used by members of the wider culture in which deaf signers find themselves. Of course, some

43

mouth gestures may be negatively sanctioned in some cultures and, thus, be suppressed and rarely produced,

yet they would remain comprehensible to anyone in such a culture given the appropriate context.

So mouth gestures also are often sourced from spoken language insofar as speakers constitute the vast

majority of any human community. Everyone, signers included, imitate the faces of the people they interact

with on a daily and ‘face-to-face’ level. It is true that many mouth actions are actually the articulation of

spoken words (mouthings as far as a deaf person is concerned), but many are not. Most of the data do not

suggest that all mouth gestures are autonomous to signed languages or that they have their own unique

meaning and function in these languages.

We would conclude that mouth actions in Auslan are thus significantly less conventional and more

gestural than has been proposed in the literature for a number of other signed languages. We believe that

other signed languages may not be very different, but certainty in this regard requires analysing much larger

and representative datasets of naturalistic data then has hitherto been the case.

We believe mouth actions exist along a continuum of indexicality, iconicity and conventionality (Figure

10). Highly conventional (i.e., linguistic) mouth gestures, should they exist in some signed languages, would

only account for a small proportion of all mouth actions in any signed language. Mouthings are linguistic in

the sense that they are instances of code blending.

Figure 10 A continuum of conventionalization in mouth actions

Mouth actions work as part of signed languages which we believe, like all human languages, are best

described as heterogeneous semiotic systems (Schembri 2001; de Beuzeville, Johnston, & Schembri 2009;

Johnston 2013). Mouth actions are additions that support other facets of the utterance to create a synthesized

meaning in context. These mouth actions, both the mouth gestures and the mouthings, add meaning to the

primary conventional semiotic units of the linguistic system, the symbolic constructions of the language (the

individual signs and multi-sign strings). In this sense, mouth actions as a whole perform a role not unlike that

44

often attributed to co-speech gesture: adding meaning which is formally un-stated or under-stated in the

wording (i.e., the linguistic coding). However, it would be a mistake to equate mouth actions with co-speech

gesture if by this we imply this is the primary or sole locus of ‘gesturing’ within signed languages (cf.

Sandler 2009). We do not believe that it is only on the mouth that gesture-in-sign resides (‘co-sign gesture’

as it were) because gestural elements can also be found in other levels of the lexico-grammar of these

languages (Liddell 2003; Wilcox 2004; de Beuzeville et al. 2009; Johnston & Schembri 2010; Janzen 2012).

They are not only manifested in mouth actions.

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Appendix

Mouth gesture form codes and glosses used in this study and their equivalents in the Sutton-Spence

and Day (2001) coding schema from which they were adapted.

‘Closed’ mouth gestures ‘Open’ mouth gestures Tongue-related mouth gestures

Auslan study codes

SS&Day Auslan study glosses

Auslan study codes

SS&Day Auslan study glosses

Auslan study codes

SS&Day Auslan study gloss

CN1 CN14 LIP-CURL ON1 OL12 OPEN OT1TL OL18 TONGUE

CN2 CN16 WIDE ON2 OL13 OPEN OT1TM OL19 TONGUE

CN3 CN15 n/a ON3 OL13 OPEN OT1TR OL20 TONGUE

CN4 CN17 DOWN ON4 n/a DOWN OT1BL OL18 TONGUE

CN5 CN18? LIPS-PRESSED ON5 n/a n/a OT1BM OL19 TONGUE

CN6 CN18 n/a ON6 OL12 SLIGHTLY OPEN OT1BR OL20 TONGUE

CN7 CN19 TRILL ON7 OL13 WIDE OT1WL OL18 TONGUE

CN8 CN20 BLOW ON OL13 WIDE OT1WM OL19 TONGUE

CN9 CN22 TRILL ON9 n/a DOWN OT1WR OL20 TONGUE

CN10 CN21 TRILL ON10 n/a LIP-CURL OT2 OL15 TONGUE

CN11 CN23 LIPS-OUT ON11 OL14 BOTTOM-LIP-OUT OT3 n/a TONGUE

CN12 CN7 LIPS‐OUT ON12 OL6 SLIGHTLY OPEN OT4TL OL9 TONGUE

CN13 CN8 LIPS-OUT/TRILL ON13 OT7 WIDE OT4TM OL9 TONGUE

CN14 CN9 LIPS-OUT ON14 OL7 WIDE OT4TR OL9 TONGUE

CN15 CN12 TRILL ON15 n/a DOWN OT4BL OL10 TONGUE

CN16 CN13 LIPS-OUT ON16 OL8 LIPS-OUT OT4BM OL10 TONGUE

CN17 CN10 TRILL ON17 n/a BLOW OT4BR OL10 TONGUE

CN18 CN11 TRILL ON18 n/a BLOW OT4WL OL11 TONGUE

CN19 CN2 TONGUE ON19 n/a BLOW OT4WM OL11 TONGUE

CN20 CN3 BOTTOM‐LIP‐OUT OT4WR OL11 TONGUE

CN21 CN4 PRESSED OT5 OT1 TONGUE

CN22 CN5 DOWN OT6 n/a TONGUE

CN23 CN6 PRESSED OT7TL OL1,OT8 TONGUE

OT7TM OL2,OT8 TONGUE

CP1 CN1 PUFF OT7TR OL3,OT8 TONGUE

CP2 CP1 PUFF OT7BL OL4,OT9 TONGUE

CP3 CP3,4,5 PUFF OT7BM OL4,OT9 TONGUE

CP4 CP2 PUFF OT7BR OL4,OT9 TONGUE

CP5 n/a TRILL OT7WL OL5,OT10 TONGUE

CP6 CP7 PUFF/TRILL OT7WM OL5,OT10 TONGUE

CP7 CP6 PUFF/TRILL/BLOW OT7WR OL5,OT10 TONGUE

CP8 CP8 PUFF/BLOW OT8 OT1 TONGUE

OT9 n/a TONGUE

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