Poetry and song in a language without sound

Cognition, 4 (1976) 45-97 0 Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne - Printed in the Netherlands

3

Poetry and song in a language without sound*l**

EDWARDS. KLIMA

University of California at San Diego

URSULA BELLUGI

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Abstract

We examine distinctive characteristics of a primary language (American Sign Language) which is manual-visual rather than oral-aural. It is proposed that attributes of the mode of this language predispose not only the language itself but also its art forms to certain special characteristics. An analysis is presented of some instances of ‘art-sign’, a poetic tradition developing within our own time, where gestural analogs are suggested to poetry and perhaps even to song.

1. Ihtroduction

In the context of recent studies devoted to linguistics and the voice, it may appear perverse to offer a contribution which not only has nothing to do with the voice as a source of sound in the auditory channel of communication - but, what is more, has nothing to do with sound whatsoever. What we plan to discuss is some recent research on an art-form utilizing a type of primary human communication system - one of the sign languages of the deaf - which is articulated through manual and other non-vocal gestures and is perceived visually rather than auditorily. The sign language that we shall be examining is the so-called American Sign Language (abbreviated as ASL), and we shall refer to the heightened use of this silent language of signs as ‘art-sign’.

*Contribution to seminar, “Musique et Linguistique”, organized by I.R.C.A.M. (April 29 - May 3, 1975). **This research was supported in part by National Science Foundation Grant #CSOC-7401780 and

the National Institutes of Health Grant #NS-09811 to The Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

46 Edward S. Klima and Ursula Bellugi

Let us begin, however, with some general remarks about sign language. Although not acoustically based, the sign language we shall discuss certainly qualifies as a language - not only in the loose metaphorical sense in which we speak, e.g., of the language of the bees or the language of love, and not even with the extension which may be involved in speaking of music itself as a language. When we refer to sign languages as “languages”, we mean that they have sentential units which have a strict semantic-propositional interpretation (providing among other things for the possibility of para- phrase); that they also have a hierarchically organized syntax - open-ended in terms of possible messages - and furthermore, that at the formational level of the individual lexical units (the individual signs) as well as at the syntactic level, there are specific constraints as to well-formedness. What is more, there is a definite sense among those with a sign language as a native language (for example, the offspring, deaf and hearing, of deaf parents - offspring who learned sign language as their first language) that the sign decidedly has a citation form - a form which exists out of any specific real- life context. That is, the sign is not situation-bound as are some affective units of communication. (We presume, for example, that a scream does not have a citation form in this sense; nor presumably would an element of free pantomime.) Thus, an ASL sign as such is no more bound to a particular context than is a word of spoken language. We must be careful to point out parenthetically, however, that in order for there to be ‘communication’ in the general sense of the term, there need not necessarily be syntax in the restricted sense in which human languages have syntax. A string of nominals can communicate admirably, as in the possible, essentially non-syntactic utterance: “The animals; the hunters; the kill.” By means of such utterances, relationships are suggested but - and this is a significant difference - not explicitly stated. A speech act of a totally different sort is involved. If all possible English utterances were of the nature of just such unstructured strings, it would be appropriate to describe English as not having a syntax. But in English as well as in all other human languages that have ever been examined there is a means not only of suggesting relationships but also of casting them in the form of explicit statements. The syntactically structured sentence: “The animals killed the hunters” (as contrasted with the syntactically different sentence: “The hunters killed the animals”) is a means for just such a statement and manifests the characteristics that we associate with syntax. ASL certainly has a syntax in this strict linguistic sense of the term.

In referring to sign languages as primary languages we mean that they are not directly connected with (not based on) the units of vocal language. Thus written words, though perceived visually and produced manually, do not themselves represent a primary communication system but rather a

Poetry and song in a language without sound 47

secondary system based, of course, on such primary languages as English, French, etc. American Sign Language is the visual-gestural language that has evolved among the deaf in the United States. ASL, incidentally, was influenced strongly in the first quarter of the 19th century by contact with the French language of signs. Before that time there was undoubtedly a sign language in use among the deaf in the United States, but around 18 15 Gallaudet brought the teachings of the Abbe de 1’Epee to America. This importation undoubtedly enriched the indigenous sign language to a very great extent. In other publications we and our colleagues have reported on some of the changes that ASL has undergone since the 19th century (Frishberg, 1975). In short, the form of individual signs has tended to reduce itself to a combination of a limited set of formational parameters. These parameters include, according to our analysis and that first proposed by Stokoe, Casterline, and Croneberg (1965): Hand Configuration (of one or both hands), Relationship between the hands, Orientation of the hands, Place of Articulation with respect to the rest of the body, and type of Movement of the hands. There are definitely strict formational constraints on the form of actual (and possible) signs in ASL. There is, in other words, an analogue to “phonology” in sign languages like ASL. The mere fact that certain, but not all, gestures are recognized as possible signs, though they are not necessarily actual signs of ASL, is itself, of course, an indication that the formational level of the lexical items (the signs) represents a rule-governed system like that of the phonology of the word. But a sign is not in its internal constitution like a string of letters written in the air. In fact, there does exist a form of manual communication (distinct from ASL) used in certain situations by the deaf, and by the hearing in communication with the deaf, in which each letter of the English alphabet is represented by a certain configuration of the fingers. This is called fingerspelling and, of course, fingerspelling is not a primary system of communication any more than handwriting is. Let us emphasize that we are dealing here not with fingerspelling but with a totally different sort of system - sign language proper - and the organization of the basic lexical units of sign language is radically different from that of the word. Whereas the word - at least at one level of analysis - is constituted of a sequence of phonological segments; the simple sign is essentially a simultaneous occurrence of a particular value (a particular realization) of each of the formational parameters mentioned above.

Let us take, for example, the English word “feeling” and its ASL translation equivalent represented in Figure l* and glossed as FEELING**. The

*The illustrations for this paper were made by Frank A. Paul.

**See overleaf.


English word consists of a string of segments (the phonemes /f/,/?/,/l/,/$,/n/) arranged in a particular order in two syllables. By contrast, the sign with an equivalent meaning is articulated by one hand alone, the palm facing the body (Orientation); the hand is flat and spread with the middle finger bent in (Hand Configuration), contacting the middle of the chest (Place of Articulation) and stroking upward twice (representing the parameter of Movement). Incidentally, it is not surprising to find such a fundamental contrast. at the lexical level. between auditory symbols and visual symbols.

Figure 1.

As Jakobson pointed out, there is a strong tendency for the auditory to be sequential, whereas the visual tends to be very rich in simultaneous com- ponents (Jakobson, 1967). And even at the morphological level, the modulation of meaning typically (but of course not exclusively) accomplished in spoken language by the addition of affixes (i.e. again predominantly sequential elements) finds its counterpart in sign language by simultaneous, super-

**In Notational Conventions: The English translation-equivalents of ASL signs are represented in

capital letters, as in UNDERSTAND. (Naturally the form of the ASL sign need have no relation to

the form of the English word.) If more than one English word is required to translate a single sign,

we hyphenate the two words - e.g., LOOK-AT. Words which have been fingerspelled (not signed)

appear with hyphens between each letter - e.g., B-O-Y-S.

In order to convey descriptions of sign-plays discussed here, we have adopted further notations.

Two overlapping signs, or two signs made simultaneously, are indicated by a slash ~ e.g., EXCITED/

DEPRESSED. If one sign is made and then blended with another sign, z represents the blending.

If one value of a sign is changed to create a sign-play, the English translation-equivalent still appears

in capital letters, but the modulation in meaning appears in lower case - e.g., UNDERSTAND-a-little. In addition, certain examples have two illustrations, one representing the standard form of the

ASL sign, and the other the sign-play. When we refer to the sign-play, it is enclosed in quotation

marks. The standard form of the sign appears in capital letters without quotation marks.


imposed changes in, for example, the parameter of Movement. On the other hand, sign language does have its sequential aspects: The compounding of two signs, a sequential process, is one way of introducing new lexical items; and the sentence in sign language consists essentially of a sequential series of signs just as the sentences of spoken language consist of a series of words.

Before touching on the poetics of ASL, let us add two more general remarks. You will notice that we have spoken about sign language as a type of system just as we referred to spoken language as a type of system; we have also referred to sign languages in the plural; for indeed there are different sign languages ‘as there are different spoken languages. It is quite erroneous to consider sign languages like ASL or Chinese Sign Language, which we have also studied to some extent, to be any sort of universuj shared system of gestural communication. Individual signs in such a language as ASL are not merely pantomimic gestures, although the source of many signs is indeed often in pantomime. But as such pantomimic gestures become ‘domes- ticated’ - to conform ultimately to the particular parameters that are part of the system - they tend to lose their iconic aspect and become more and more like arbitrary symbols - arbitrary in much the same way as words are arbitrary. There undoubtedly does, however, remain a difference in the degree to which these gestural, visual symbols - as opposed to vocal symbols - retain iconic, representational characteristics. In deaf communication, mimetic aspects are still very much alive - in the sense that when new objects enter into the culture and “look for” appropriate names in sign language, one method of creating a designation for such objects is to use pantomime. But we have noticed that very quickly this pantomimic way of symbolizing first becomes stylized and then often becomes totally con- ventionalized so as finally to partake of only the restricted parameters of the system.

The objective of this paper, however, is not to make a detailed description of a sign language such as ASL as it is used in ordinary deaf conversation, how it is .perceived, or how it has changed historically. Elsewhere we have written about aspects of the linguistic structure of the language* and about various psycholinguistic experiments we and others have conducted which show the similarities and differences between sign language and spoken language* * (though to be precise most of these investigations deal with ASL and English). Similarly, it is not our intention here to deal with

*Bellugi and Klima (1975): Klima (1975). See also Frishberg (1975), Fischer (1975), Stokoe (1972).

A collection of articles about sign language is now in preparation: Klima and Bellugi (to appear).

**Bellugi and Siple (1974), Bellugi and Fischer (1972), Bellugi, Klima and Siple (1975).


the innateness issue: Whether speech is special and whether the ‘linguistic’ faculty is specially tied to sound. Is there language without speech? Our own research shows that there most certainly is. Does the mode (the channel) make a difference? Our research suggests that it probably does. Is this difference an essential one - i.e., do the differences make sign language a qualitatively different system? This can be answered only after a great deal more research. Of course it seems obvious that speech constitutes part of the biological foundations of language. How else can one explain the relative ease with which any normal human being with the faculty for hearing can tune into the processes necessary for producing and perceiving such a very subtle signal. But if speech is specially selected for; if sound constitutes such a natural signal for language, then it is all the more miraculous how the human mind - or perhaps ‘mind’ makes the process seem too conscious, too much a matter of intellect - let’s say, rather, how the human disposition, when deprived of the faculty that makes sound accessible, seizes on and perfects an alternate form that enables the deeper linguistic faculties to give expression to ideas. In this paper, however, our objective is tp investigate certain other basic human faculties. Whether or not they are universal, they are decidedly very significant aspects of a great many cultures of the world. We are referring now to the heightened use of language in creating that special and complex type of symbol called poetry, where elements of the linguistic system are used to create new systems. In addition, we are asking a further question: In certain types of heightened, multiply structured signing that we have observed, is there not a silent-language analogue to that special blend of sound with sound - speech sound with musical sound - that, in the auditory channel constitutes song?

While the study of poetry for its own sake requires no justification, it is important to remember that the analysis of such heightened uses of language can also inform us about the psychological reality of linguistic constructs. For spoken languages, the results of analysis of the poetic function have shown a sensitivity, on the part of native speakers, to grammatical elements of the language for their own sake: to sound as sound, to grammatical categories as grammatical categories - an awareness of these as more than just fleeting vehicles for the expression of meaning. And, of course, the combining of phonation and vocalization reveals among other things a sense of the play between these two types of signals - simultaneously occurring in the same modality and yet belonging to two distinct systems.

From the very onset of our study of ASL, our research group has been interested in whether there are any analogues, in this language without sound, to such heightened uses of language that would similarly constitute

Poetry and song in a language without sound 5 1

independent support for the grammatical constructs and general structural principles that have been proposed.

2. The poetic function in wit

2.1. Plays on words

Let us consider what is involved in the poetic function in general. In terms of propositional or referential content, it matters little that in English, for example, worst (the superlative of bad) and wurst meaning ‘sausage’ sound the same, or that June, moon, croon, swoon have the same vowel-sound and final consonant - i.e., that they rhyme. But there are functions of language outside of the purely referential for which such otherwise incidental similarities become significant in terms of the totality of what is communicated - in terms of the total import of an utterance. Among cases where this is obviously true for the English speech community are puns; such a punning ad-slogan for mustard as “It brings the best out of the worst (wurst)” derives its full import from the wurst/worst ambiguity in English. And, of course, just such rhymes as June, moors, swoon, croon provide the basis for a superimposed structure of sound whereby mere sentences take on, in addition, that special significance of the patterning embodying verse - albeit the sentences may express inanities and the verse may be doggerel. What is special about plays on words, verse, and poetry in general is a heightened awareness of linguistic phenomena as linguistic phenomena. As Jakobson (1960, p. 356) puts it: “The set toward the message as such, focus on the message for its own sake, is the poetic function of language.”

Like “art for art’s sake”, language for language’s sake would be pure poetic function. While the poetic function certainly dominates in various forms of language-based art - and certainly very much so in lyric poetry - the poetic ‘function is also represented in everyday language use, though in a less structured way.

In what follows, we shall show that the poetic function is represented also in the linguistic activities of the deaf using the primary visual-gestural language called American Sign Language (ASL).

2.2 Remarks about wit and plays on signs in ASL

Uninformed “glottocentric” views of sign language as a collection of unstructured pantomimic gestures could lead some to wonder whether ,such structure-bound activities as punning and other linguistic play are possible -


or at any rate, natural - to sign language, for such activity relies so heavily on subtle correspondences and quickly grasped associations of not only meaning but also, very significantly, ofform. One might even be led to ask if the general sort of structural properties present in all spoken languages - those that provide the basis for such linguistic play - might not somehow be absent from sign language. Moreover, since such manipulation of linguistic units as appear in verse and linguistic play inform us about significant structural properties of languages, it is all the more relevant to ask whether comparable language-based phenomena occur in ASL.

One form of linguistic play popular among some speakers of English involves the calculated use of a word in an utterance in such a way as to suggest, at the same time, the different meaning of another word or words having the same (or nearly the same) sound. When a critic talks of an unin- spired TV series as “the bland leading the bland”, he is punning - playing on the similarity in sound between “bland” and “blind”, and on a cliche, although cliches are not essential to punning, as is seen in “Bad coffee every morning can be the grounds for divorce.” Linguistic play is not limited to cases where one and the same signal, in a single instance of uttering, indepen- dently represents two or more words, each with its own meaning. Sometimes parts of two words overlap, as when the Christmas season is referred to as “the alcoholidays”. Often in linguistic play no ambiguity is present at all. When some particular institution of higher learning is referred to as “more of a collage than a college”, the linguistic play therein involves highlighting the minimal differences in sound between the two otherwise very similar words “collage” and “college” and associating the differences in sound with less obvious differences in the connotations of the two terms with respect to the contrasting sorts of organization typically identified with each.

In spontaneous ASL communication, linguistic play is, in fact, rich and varied. Such sign-play has the same general characteristics as the linguistic play described above: shared aspects of form - deliberately highlighted - producing special (and, if successful, witty) associations of the meanings involved. Significantly, much of the sign-play we have observed reveals processes based on structural characteristics more special to sign language itself. Elsewhere (Klima and Bellugi, 1975) we have exemplified more fully the mechanisms involved in sign play. Here, we shall review those aspects that are also utilized - but in a less incidental, more structured way - in art-sign.

2.2.1. Overlapping of signs In signing, because of the existence of two autonomous articulators (namely, the two hands) there is the logical and physical possibility of producing two


independent signs simultaneously. Moreover, such simultaneity would not be inconsistent with some of the special characteristics of ASL: The relative weakness of order of signs alone as a clue for grammatical function; the apparent tendency to compress information into single units (see Bellugi and Fischer, 1972); and the use of simultaneous (rather than sequential) modi- fications of signs to modulate meaning. In everyday signing, however, aside from the simultaneous production of a ‘pointing’ (pronominal-like) sign with one hand and a lexical sign with the other, we have found that there is no regular production of two independent lexical signs simultaneously.

But overlapping of signs does occur - and quite frequently - in self- conscious signing of preplanned material, in the plays on signs that abound in communication among the deaf, and, as we shall later see, in poetic signing as well. Let us examine two cases of overlapping of signs in wit.

a. Making two signs simultaneouslq~. Two signs are simultaneous when the movement of one sign coincides precisely in time with the movement of a second distinct sign. We captured one such example during a conversation with a deaf student. This particular play on signs involved the signs EXCITED and DEPRESSED, both two-handed symmetrical signs with the middle finger of each hand bent in and brushing the chest. The two signs differ in that in EXCITED the movement is upward and in DEPRESSED it is downward (the spatio-symbolic aspects of the difference in direction are obvious). When asked, during the conversation, how he felt about leaving a city he loved for a choice job in a less appealing location, the young man summed up his feelings by signing simultaneously EXCITED with the right hand and DEPRESSED with the left. The possibility of thus successfully compressing into a single new sign-creation such ambivalence of emotions depended crucially on the fact that the original signs involved had a regular semantic relationship and were also related formationally.

Figure 2. “EXCITED/DEPRESSED” (consult footnote of page 46 for notational conventions).


b. Holding one sign while making another. This involves making one sign and holding the final position and handshape of that sign while making another sign with the other hand. The final positions of both signs are then held. Again, this depends either on choosing signs that are made with one hand only, or on changing a sign so as to make it as a one-handed sign. The following is an example.

On seeing a young deaf man each day with a different girl, we commented that he had an eye for pretty girls. He, in turn, signed what amounted to: “Yes, I’m an expert (girl-) watcher.” But he signed it in a special way. He first made a sign for EYES, one that mimics the eyes with two hands. Then, holding the final position of half the sign with one hand, with a simple twist of the wrist he let his other hand slip into the sign for EXPERT (signing “eyes-pert”, as it were). The combination is particularly effective in ASL because the two signs he chose use the same handshape.

Figure 3. EYES and “EYES/EXPERT” (consult footnote of page 46 for notational

conventions).

c. Blending of two signs. There are various ways of blending two signs into one unit. One can make a sign, and then add the movement of another sign, so that the two signs become one unit. Or one can make a sign and continue its movement throughout what would normally be the transition to the next sign, allowing for slight changes in orientation or location, until one sign has been transformed into another. The following instance exemplifies such blending.

One day when we were particularly inept in our attempts to sign, one of our deaf colleagues good-humoredly signed to us that we were clever, and then by blending formationally related, and semantically appropriate, signs went from CLEVER to DEFLATE to INFLATE to CLEVER once again - suggesting that now the cleverness was diminished but that later it would return again. To accomplish this, she signed CLEVER in the normal way: the cupped hand contacting the forehead. Then without relaxing that contact (as would happen ordinarily in the transition between two distinct signs), she closed the cupped hand suggesting a displaced form of the sign


DEFLATE - with active hand displaced from its normal position contacting the back of the base hand in the front of the signer’s chest. Then again without relaxation of the original contact with the forehead, the hand opened; in doing so, suggesting a similarly displaced INFLATE which then became the sign CLEVER once again.

Figure 4. “CLEVERnDEFLATE”.

2.2.2. Substitution of one regular ASL prime for another Another general process that is used in plays on signs - and also in art-sign - is a change in one of the basic parameters of a sign so that there is simple substitution of one prime of that parameter for another. This is essentially a distortion of a sign so that all but one of the basic characteristics of the sign are retained. The result of this sort of linguistic play is a possible .but not an actual sign of ASL: neither a citation form nor a standard modulation of a sign. But it differs from an actual ASL sign in a way that is significant and meaningful - either in terms of ASL morphology, or in terms of more general spatial-gestural symbolism. Appreciating the wit (and often, in fact, recognizing the actual sign behind the distortion) usually depends on knowing the context in which the new sign was created.

The following example shows a change in a prime of Hand Configuration that occurred in a play on signs during a discussion in ASL of a complex technical point about transformational grammar. When asked, “Do you understand?“, the deaf colleague replied with the sign for UNDERSTAND, but instead of flicking open the index finger, she made the sign with the little finger. The basis for this distortion is clear: The little finger occurs in a symbolic way in some signs where it conveys the notion of thinness (SPAGHETTI, THREAD, SKINNY-PERSON) or extreme smallness (TINY, INFINITESIMAL). The substitution of the little finger for the index finger in UNDERSTAND clearly carried the meaning “understand a little”.


Figure 5. UNDERSTAND and “UNDERSTAND-a-little”

The processes of sign-play which we have been describing involve manipulations of signs which are, on the whole, special to the form of sign language itself. The overlapping of two signs, for example, depends on the existence of two independent articulators - the two hands. The blending of two signs involves the fusion of properties of the signs. Lewis Carroll attempted to achieve something similar in speech in his blends of, say, “furious” and “fuming” into “frumious”. But the essentially sequential nature of word segments does not lend itself in quite the same way to the creation of such fusions as does a visual-gestural language based on simultaneously occurring parameters. In any event, such sign play occurs frequently in spontaneous signing we have captured on video-tape.

3. The poetic function in poetry

3. I. Remarks on poetic structure in English verse

The poetic function figures most complexly, of course, in poetry itself, where linguistic form becomes the basis for the patterns constituting the multiple layers of structure underlying a poem. In spoken language, we can distinguish several major types of poetic structure. The first of these we shall call Internal Poetic Structure. By Internal Poetic Structure we mean structure which is constituted from elements that are completely internal to the linguistic system proper (i.e., in the case of sign language, constituted from the form of standard signs in ASL - constituted from parts of the grammatical code itself). The two sub-types of Internal Poetic Structure to which we shall address our attention here we refer to as ConventionaZ Poetic Structure (provided or even demanded by tradition) and Individual Poetic Structure (individual to the particular poem). In the English literary tradition, such metrical schemes as iambic pentameter constitute the basis for a kind of Conventional Poetic Structure. For this structure, the fact that


a syllable has greater stress than the syllables immediately surrounding it becomes significant, as do the number of such significantly stressed syllables. Similarly, various end-rhyme schemes that establish recurring sound patterns (e.g. aabb, abab, abba) are part of Conventional Poetic Structure in the English tradition,* as are larger designs like the Elizabethan sonnet-form, and the haiku form borrowed from Japanese poetic tradition.

In structurally complex poetry, however, Conventional Poetic Structure will be overlaid and interwoven with more innovative Individual Poetic Structure, consisting of more subtle patterning of not only sound texture but also of other linguistic elements - syntactic, lexical, semantic and thematic. The eight lines of Blake’s “Infant Sorrow”, analyzed thoroughly by Jakobson (1970), exemplify the distinction between Conventional and Individual poetic structure - both constructed from aspects of the grammatical code itself.

INFANT SORROW

My mother groan’d! my father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt: t

verb pret.

Helpless, naked, piping loud: Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

(c)loud

Struggling in my father’s hands, Striving against my swaddling bands, I

noun pl.

Bound and weary I thought best To sulk upon my mother’s breast. t

b(r)est

The Conventional Poetic Structure of “Infant Sorrow” consists of four rhyming couplets: aa, bb, cc, dd (wept: leapt: : loud: cloud: : hands : bands: : best: breast). The individual lines are all equivalent to one another in being iambic tetrameter. For the purpose of illustrating the Individual Poetic Structure of the poem we shall restrict our attention to only certain limited aspects of the additional patterns manifested by the words occurring in line- final and line-initial positions (though, as Jakobson’s analysis shows, the poem is replete with structurally significant equivalences). Not only do the line-final words constitute conventional rhymed couplets, they also reveal a special pattern of heightened rhyme that reinforces the division of the poem’s four couplets into two structurally equivalent quatrains. The “grammatical” rhyme wept: leapt (grammatically equivalent in both being

*Though in the modern English literary tradition, rhyme may be one of the most common

mechanisms involved in poetic structure, historically this was not always the case. In fact, rhyme was

borrowed from Oriental poetic traditions.


preterite verbs) in the first quatrain is paralleled by the “grammatical” rhyme hands: bands (both plural nouns) in the second quatrain; in addition, the end couplets of both quatrains are set equivalent in that each reveals “inclusive” rhyme: The sound-form of loud is literally “included” in the sound-form of cloud; the sound-form of best in that of breast. Further Individual Poetic Structure involving the reinforcement of the division of the poem into two quatrains is an equivalent alliterative pattern occurring in line-final words of both quatrains: Three instances of prevocalic !. in the line- final words of the first quatrain (leapt, loud, cloud) paralleled by three instances of initial b in the line-final - i.e., structurally equivalent - words of the second quatrain (bands, best, breast).

As a final illustrative example of Individual Poetic Structure in this poem we could cite the following: In the first quatrain one particular structural configuration consists of the repetition, at the beginning of a word in line- initial position, of the dominant alliterative sound 1 (&ke repeating leapt, loud, cloud); this is paralleled in the final quatrain (line-initial Bound repeating the b in band, best, breast). What is critical in all these examples is that elements of the linguistic code (phonemes, word-classes) are used in a patterned, structure-creating manner rather than just as incidental ornaments.

Let us stop for a moment to consider such structural devices in terms of their possible function in poetry. We assume that one of the technical problems being tackled in short lyric poetry is that of counterbalancing - in this particular complex symbol - the sequential, temporal aspects of language: The fact that one word necessarily either precedes or follows another in a sentence; one clause either precedes or follows another clause. If one of the technical problems of creating an appropriate structure for such a symbol is, for example, to remove the necessity for there to be only one definite direction in the progression of the grammatical and thematic units - if one of the technical problems is to give what is essentially a line also the characteristics of a mass, then one approach to such an end is certainly the intermeshing of linguistic units by means of just such patterns of correspondences that can, for example, make the end equivalent to the beginning and at the same time, by perhaps a different strand in the fabric, equivalent to the middle. To a limited extent, this is reflected by the conventions, in cultures with a writing system, according to which poems are laid out in a block on the printed page. Except in very special cases, however, the printed or written form of the poem is irrelevant to the poem itself, and such mis- leading expressions as the ‘lines’ of a poem refer, in fact, to structural units defined by the signal/meaning structure of the poem itself. For example, it is not that a line in certain metrical pattern consists of such-and-such con-


figurations of stressed and unstressed syllables but rather that such-and-such configuration may count as a line. When used to describe a unit of ASL poetry, the term ‘line’ can only be understood in its abstract sense.

3.2. Analysis of poetic structure in ASL art-sign

In sign language ‘art-sign’, we have identified the following types of poetic structure. We have found Internal Poetic Structure, corresponding to Internal Poetic Structure in the poetry of spoken languages, but the patterning of linguistic\ forms in art-sign is by-and-large Individual rather than Conventional. In addition, we have discovered two types of external structure, different from poetic structure in spoken language, and special to sign language poetry. One type we shall distinguish as External Poetic Struc- ture, in which the basic principles include: a) creating a balance between the two hands; b) creating and maintaining a flow of movement between signs; and c) manipulating the parameters of the signs. Then there is yet another kind of external structure, an Imposed Superstructure: a kind of design in space along with rhythmic and temporal patterning which may be superimposed on the signs and the signing, just as in a song we may have melodic structure superimposed on the words of a poem.

The sources for our discussion of poetic or art-sign structure are varied,* but our primary source is from deaf people who are or have been associated with National Theater of the Deaf, a remarkably talented group of deaf actors (with an occasional hearing person, often one who has had deaf parents). Several of the actors have worked with us in our research at one time or another, generously giving of their time and enormous creative talents. The members of the National Theater of the Deaf have been developing a poetic tradition in sign language within our own time. This blossoming tradition involving the heightened use of sign language is based, as we shall see, on the inherent structural properties of signs and on special characteristics of signing. Aside from formal poems, we have also videotaped “songs” that deaf children invented in sign language, lullabies, children’s sign games, and other aspects of what might be called folk art in sign language.

*Among those who have helped by creating and discussing art-sign for us on video-tape are: Bernard

Bragg, Lou Fant, and Dorothy Miles, all of whom have spent many sessions with us in our work; also

involved have been Jane Wilk, Linda Bove, Pat Graybill, Joe Castronova and Ed Waterstreet. The deaf mem&s of our research group have also shared in interpreting, performing, and discussing poems,

especially Bonnie Gough, Carlene Pedersen, Ted Supalla, and Shanny Mow. For similar assistance we

are also grateful to Sharon Solow, a hearing person of deaf parents.


3.3. ASL poetic processes illustruted in a transluted line

In order to illuminate some of the basic principles of art-sign, we shall present first a resume of an earlier analysis in depth of a single line of poetry (Klima and Bellugi, 1975). Bernard Bragg, who is deaf and a master signer of the National Theater of the Deaf, has spent many days with us in our work and has greatly enriched our research. In order to study the creative process in the development of poetic signing, we gave him as a problem a poem which he had never worked on before. We asked him to translate it into everyday signing, and then to show us the process of changing it into poetic form in ASL until he found what was to him a satisfying solution. The poem was one by E. E. Cummings ~ “since feeling is first” - and was peculiary apt, we felt, for linguists and artists to work on together, since it juxtaposes ‘syntax’ and ‘feeling’.

Table 1. Comparison of art-sign and straight ASL by Bragg

STRAIGHT ASL

FIRST

ART-SIGN

BECAUSE -/FEELING ITSELF/- FOREMOST/-

A dash and a slash before or after a gloss indicates that dne hand involved in the preceding sign main-

tains the position and/or handshape of that sign - one common poetic device in ASL.


The first four lines are:

“since feeling is first, whoever pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you. ..”

We shall present here only the first line, and study the change from ‘straight’ (i.e., everyday non-poetic) signing to poetic ‘art-sign’, in Mr. Bragg’s capable hands. The first row of drawings in Table 1 represents the signs that Mr. Bragg chose to represent the meaning of the first line in straight non- poetic signing, in fact a direct literal translation of the English words into signs of ASL. The second row represents the art-sign re-creation that gradually evolved during the session.

In the straight version, as in normal everyday signing, we find examples of three formational classes of signs:

(a) Signs involving two hands, with both active and operating sym- metrically: (SINCE);

(b) Signs made with one hand only: (FEELING and TRUE); (c) Signs made with one active hand operating on the other as a base:

(FIRST). Since Bragg is right-handed, the one-handed signs in the straight version are made with the right hand, and during those signs the left hand is by his side or otherwise not in use. In this sequence of four signs in the straight version, (Table 2) there are changes in handshape from one sign to the next as follows (using symbols from Stokoe et al., 1965 along with mnemonic designations)*.

The right hand, then, starts with an ‘Index’ hand (‘G’), switches to a ‘Mid-finger’ hand (tr), and back to an ‘Index’ hand for the last two signs. The left hand starts with an ‘Index’ hand, then drops down toward the side of the body and returns with a ‘Fist’ hand (‘A’). Note that in the straight version the hands are not only involved in the movement proper to the signs themselves, but also move back and forth, up and down, in making the transition between signs, gradually changing handshape or at least relaxing during these transitions. For example, at the conclusion of the two-handed sign SINCE, the left hand relaxes and drops to the side, and the

*The symbols used in the Dictionary of American Sign Language (also referred to as “Stokoe

notation”) to represent the distinctive hand configurations of ASL signs are: (a) English letters when-

ever the particular handshape is the same as or similar to that occurring in the manual alphabet,

used for fingerspelling English words; (b) Arabic numerals whenever the handshape is the same as that of the corresponding manual form of the numeral; (c) otherwise arbitrary invented symbols like the

Hand Configuration of FEELING (Table 2).


right hand changes from a ‘G’ to an ‘tl’ while it is moving in the transition from the final position of SINCE to the initial position of FEELING.

Table 2. Handshapes in Bragg’s straight version

Right hand Left hand

1. SINCE

2. FEELING

3. TRUE

4. FIRST

G [active]

6 [active] G [active]

G [active]

G [active]

[unoccupied]

[unoccupied]

A [base]

The ‘G’ hand (or ‘Index’)

The ‘8’ hand (‘Mid-finger’)

The ‘A’ hand (‘Fist’)

3.3.1. Internal Poetic Structure In moving from conversational style to the poetic style of art-sign, Bragg made special changes. While these changes are in fact interrelated, we shall consider them separately for purposes of analysis. Consider first those changes that are associated with the choice of signs, i.e., with Internal Poetic Structure.

Bragg replaced three of the four signs in changing from a ‘straight’ to a ‘poetic’ version. In fact, the only sign that remained the same in the two interpretations is FEELING. In our view, one factor played heavily in motivating the replacement of so many of the signs represented in the sign-for-word rendition: The so-called literal translation of the English word ‘since’ renders in ASL only the temporal sense of the word and is thus semantically inappropriate for the line. * The semantically correct ASL sign is formationally very different from the sign for the English word ‘since’. The appropriate sign - glossed as BECAUSE - has as its Hand

*This was fist brought to our attention by Geoffrey Coulter.


Configuration the ‘Fist’ with thumb extended (A in Stokoe notation); furthermore, the sign moves from contact with the forehead to a final position off to the side of the head. The rest of the changes can certainly be thought of as at least in part motivated by the special characteristics of the sign BECAUSE since the other changes in the choice of signs vis-a- vis the original literal version all result in signs with that particular variation of the ‘Fist’. Instead of TRUE, Bragg chose the sign ITSELF; and instead of FIRST, he created a sign in which a one-handed rendition of MOST (normally a two-handed symmetrical sign) combines with the superlative marker -EST. He himself ‘re-translated’ the resultant blend as ‘mostest’ and we gloss this FOREMOST. While not precisely like the citation form of any single ASL sign, it is certainly interpretable by a deaf viewer.

In this first line of the art-sign version of the poem, then, we have four signs, each of which is made with one hand only. The three made with the right hand share the same handshape - the Fist (A). We have come to feel that this notion of shared handshape similarity is analogous to such phenomena as consonance (alliteration) or assonance in the poetic tradition of spoken language.

3.3.2. Externul Poetic Structure External Poetic Structure, characterized not by the choice of signs, but rather by patterned aspects of their presentation, can be manifested in art- sign a) by maintaining a balance between the two hands and b) by creating a flow of movement between signs.

a. Balance between the two hands. Signers, like everyone else, are generally either right-handed or left-handed, and sign accordingly in everyday signing, using the dominant hand to make one-handed signs; the dominant hand is also the active hand in signs in which one hand acts on the other as a base. Thus in everyday signing there is an imbalance in the use of the two hands by any individual signer. * But whether, in the act of signing, it is the right hand that is active or the left is irrelevant to the grammatical code of ASL (and no two signs are distinguished by one being made with the right hand and the other with the left hand or one with the dominant hand and the other with the non-dominant). However, in the poetic tradition being developed by the National Theater of the Deaf one type of External Poetic Structure may be imposed consisting of a pattern of hand alternation that keeps both hands more equally in use. There are several ways in which

*In a study of more than 2,000 signs of American Sign Language we found that only 35% involve the use of both hands where both hands are active. About 40% of the signs are made with one hand only, and another 25% are made with one hand acting on the other hand which remains stationary

as a base. Thus, for almost two thirds of these signs, one hand is used as the dominant hand.


ASL poets achieve this balance. One method is by ulternuting hands in making consecutive signs. In Bragg’s art-sign version, after signing BECAUSE with his right hand, instead of subsequently signing FEELING also with the right hand, as he would in ordinary conversation, Bragg uses his left (non- dominant) hand for that sign, and leaves BECAUSE hanging in the air as it were. Another method of creating a balance is by overlupping or making parts of two distinct signs simultaneously, a mechanism which we previously referred to in discussing plays on signs. In this one line of art-sign, we note that Bragg engages both hands at all times after the first sign. He holds the sign BECAUSE, which he makes with the right hand, in its final position while making the sign FEELING with his left hand. He then, in turn, holds the sign FEELING (left hand) and in a way that would not occur in everyday colloquial signing, directs toward it the one-handed sign ITSELF, which he makes with his right hand - thus emphasizing the fact that ITSELF refers to FEELING. Continuing to hold the Hand Configuration and final position of the sign FEELING (still with the left hand), he makes the final sign FOREMOST, which he produces with his right hand active.

It is in this sense that in art-sign (as opposed to straight signing) there is more of a balance in the use of the two hands - providing one basis for poetic structure external to the grammatical code proper.

b. Flow of movement. Let us look at the use of the hands in Bragg’s art-sign version:

Table 3. Handshapes in Bragg’s art-sign version

Right hand Left hand

1. BECAUSE

2. FEELING .“: tl 3. ITSELF A : :.: .*

4. FOREMOST A *. .* :.:

Hand Configuration symbol written in dotted lines (.....) is being held through subsequent signs.

This reveals a second general process involved in External Poetic Struc- ture: the creation of a flow of movement (a continuity) between signs. Creating a flow of movement goes beyond the general processes of Internal Poetic Structure whereby signs are chosen so that, for example, the handshapes (part of the grammatical code of ASL) of two consecutive signs are the same. Creating a flow of movement between signs is often accomplished


by interesting sorts of distortions imposed on the form of the signs themselves, again going beyond the grammatical code proper. This, for the most part, is different from what we have found in plays on signs, in spoonerisms, in regular meaningful modulations of signs, or in the memory errors we collected from our short-term memory experiments, and is quite specific to art-sign. The distortions associated with flow of movement involve not only the form of the signs themselves, but also the manipulation of transitions between signs. An effort seems to be made to utilize the transitions between signs in such a way as to avoid ‘wasted’ movement. In distorting transitions between signs, the sign-poet seems to attempt to make every movement - even that involved in pure transitions - ‘meaningful’, displaying the formational properties of the preceding or following sign.

Consider the sequence of signs SINCE and FEELING in straight signing (see Figure 6). The initial position of SINCE is represented by the broken lines near the shoulder, and the final position is represented by the hands in the solid lines in the space in front of the shoulder. Similarly, the initial position of FEELING is represented by the lower drawing of the hand, which is a broken line at the mid-line of the lower torso. The transition between SINCE and FEELING, then, involves dropping the left hand to the side since it is not in use; and, at the same time, moving the right hand from the final location of SINCE to the initial location of FEELING (as represented by the arrow in the second drawing) while changing the handshape from the ‘G’ hand to an ‘8 hand during-this movement. This is what mean by the transition between signs.

we

Figure 6.

66 Edward S. Klima and Ursula Bell@

In the poetic version of the line, Bragg selects and manipulates the form of the signs so that the final position of the hand after making each sign is precisely the starting position of the next sign, as we have already shown. The final position of BECAUSE, which is held throughout the signing of FEELING, becomes the starting position of ITSELF, and the final position of ITSELF is also the starting position for FOREMOST. This would not be the case in the conversational style of signing the same sequence of signs. So we see that the internal and external structures of the line have been made to work together: a) There is a simple patterning (repetition) of an element of the grammatical code: the three signs made with the right hand all share the same handshape; and b) the continuity between the signs, already expressed in the similar handshape, is enhanced by making the final position of one sign coincide with the initial position of the sign following it, without the usual blurred transition or ‘wasted’ movement between signs.

3.3.3. External Kinetic Superstructure There is yet another type of external structure which we will consider, and that is Kinetic Superstructure. We consider this somewhat analogous to the combination of melodic and poetic structure which occurs in song, where melodic structure is superimposed on the words which may as a result undergo certain kinds of distortions from the point of view of the linguistic code, though aspects of melodic and poetic structure may coincide and interact as well.

In the single line of poetic signing under consideration, it may be a little difficult at first to separate clearly devices producing the Kinetic Super- structure from some of the other devices we have discussed. However, if one looks at the flow charts (Figure 7) of the movement of the hands in the non- poetic and poetic renderings of that one line, it becomes clear that in the poetic rendering there has been a further distortion of the signs which creates an enlarged pattern of movement. This is enhanced by other types of distortions we have discussed (such as those eliminating ‘wasted’ movement in transitions), but this further, grosser distortion clearly seems an aim in its own right as well. Bragg has superimposed a special design in space on the signs chosen for his ASL rendition of the poem: a design in space characterized by large, open, non-intersecting movement as is shown in the flow chart of his ASL poetic version of the line.

Thus we have illustrated three aspects of poetic structure in examining closely one poetic line, and the way in which it has been molded, shaped and changed in passing from non-poetic straight signing to poetic art-sign. There is Internal Poetic Structure involving the choice of signs - in this case, perhaps an analogue of alliteration. There is External Poetic Structure, in-


Figure 7. FLOW CHARTS OF MOVEMENT: unlabeled sections of the arrows in

the straight ASL version represent transitions.

ART-SIGN

volvmg a balance bettieen the hands (by alternating hands in making one sign after the other and by holding one sign while making another) and involving a flow of movement, a continuity from one sign to another throughout the line (distortion of the transition between signs, in this case making the final position of one sign coincide with the initial position of the next). This merges into an external Kinetic Superstructure, having to do with creating a spatial, rhythmic design, superimposed on the signs themselves.

4. Analysis of original artsign in ASL

Because of the basic difference in the mode, the ASL signed translation of the E. E. Cummings poem involves even more than the standard problems of translating poetry from one spoken language to another: A constant struggle to retain the meaning of the original, to capture some of its structural characteristics and at the same time to create poetic structure appropriate to the language of the translation. The analysis we ‘have presented shows how much Bragg was concerned with these aspects of


translation, and his remarks about the various decisions he made in selecting signs indicate that he was very much aware of these problems.

4. I. ‘SUMMER “from four haiku poems composed in English and ASL

In this evolving ASL poetic tradition there has also been produced some original poetry in sign. “The Seasons” by Dorothy Miles is a special example - special in that it was composed simultaneously in ASL and in English. Dorothy Miles is a deaf woman, profoundly deaf since the age of eight, who has a brilliant command both of ASL and of English. She formerly acted in the National Theater of the Deaf and is now associated with California State University, Northridge, a university in California with a special program for deaf students. After analyzing the poem we had an opportunity to discuss the poetic process with Miss Miles. We were particularly interested in her decision to compose the poem simultaneously in ASL and English rather than in ASL alone. Her response was that such simultaneous composition was her own special style of poetic expression. The sequence is subtitled “Four Haiku Poems”. We have the feeling that the particular compression and rich imagery of poems in haiku style are especially suited to sign language.

For our analysis of her poem, and long before our discussions with her, we had Miles’ ASL rendition recorded by her several times on video tape. We felt it important to have different recordings in order to see how much variation there would be that would be attributed simply to factors involved in any individual performance.

We shall first restrict our structural analysis of Miles’ ASL and English versions to the verse entitled “Summer”. Later, we shall consider a different rendition of this verse as signed by another signer and also that signer’s rendition of the ASL version of “Winter”, another verse of Miles’ haiku sequence. Of course, our attention will focus on the ASL versions. The following remarks about the English version of “Summer” must suffice. The pure ‘text’ of that version of the verse goes as follows:

“Green depths, green heights; clouds and quiet hours - slow, hot, heavy on the hands.”

4. I. 1. In ternal structure of English version As to conventional structure, Miles chose to cast the English version into standard haiku form. Accordingly, each verse has three lines at one level of structure; the first and the last line with five syllables each, and the middle line with seven syllables.


Internal Poetic Structure Syllable Conventional (Haiku) count

Green depths, green heTghts, clouds 5 Aiid quiet h&i-s, slow, hot, 7 Heavy ijn the hands 5

Superimposed upon this Conventional Poetic Structure, however, is an Individual Internal Poetic Structure in the English version involving, among other things, repeated patterns of similar sounds. In terms of this level of structure, “Summer” is best analyzed as consisting of four structural ‘lines’ with the end of each line delineated by an alliterative word sharing an initial ‘h’ (heights, pours, hot, &znds - /JOUS, of course, constituting orthographic alliteration rather than phonetic alliteration [see Table 41). That the

Table 4. Individual Internal Poetic Structure

A B

I areen depths, Mreenaeights

II q louds and Quiet <$jours,

Ill Slow, @t

IV Heavy on the@ands

I = II = Ill = IV (based on line-final alliteration on /h/ or orthographic ‘8”)

IA = IB (based on hemistich-initial alliteration on /g/j

IIA = IIB (same as the preceding relationship but on /k/)

Thus IA : IB :: IIA : IIB

IVA parallels IVB (a similarity based on each hemistich simply containing a

member of an alliterative pair: heavy and hands - a looser symmetry

manifested also by I and II)

Thus IVA : IVB :: IA : IB:: IIA : IIB

repeated velar /g/ in the two occurrences of green in the first line is structurally significant is highlighted by the fact the equivalent positions in the next line similarly contain an alliterative pair, in this case each with an initial /k/-sound (also velar): clouds and quiet. The two half-lines (hemistiches) of the first two lines are thus struct&ally equivalent. The first two lines also share a looser sort of symmetry with the final line whose two hemistiches are similar to those of the first two lines in that each contains an alliterative pair - based on /h/ in the final line, where, however, the alliterative pair does not occur in the same position in the hemistich. Table 4 presents a sketch of these aspects of the structure of the English version of this verse.


4. I. 2. Internal structure of rendition A in ASL The ‘text’ (i.e., sequence of signs in their citation form) of the ASL version of “Summer” as signed by Miles runs as follows:

in

“GREEN DEEP BELOW, GREEN HIGH ABOVE; WHITE CLOUDS AND QUIET HOUR - SLOW, HOT, HEAVY ON HANDS”.

Miles’ ASL rendition suggests division into three basic units - ‘lines’ - terms of verse structure:

line I GREEN DEEP BELOW, GREEN HIGH ABOVE; line II WHITE CLOUDS AND QUIET HOUR line III SLOW, HOT, HEAVY ON HANDS.

Table 5 is an actual tracing from the video tape itself. From even a very cursory examination of the ‘text’ and restricting our analysis to one parameter alone ~- that of Hand Configuration in the overall manual arrangements used - it is immediately clear that this verse constrains itself to a very restricted number of the hand configurations occurring in the language, variously estimated at between 19 (Stokoe et al., 1965) and 40 (Woodward, 1973), depending on the basis of analysis. In the sixteen sign tokens occurring in the verse (only fifteen different signs since GREEN appears twice), the very similar handshapes notated here a: ‘Five-finger’ hand occur in the citation form of thirteen of the signs, sometimes as an active hand, sometimes as a base, sometimes as both. The variants of ‘Five- finger’ hands that occur in this verse are the following in the notation developed by Stokoe et al. in the Dictionary of ASL.

Figure 8. ‘Five-finger hand’: Handshapes with all five fingers extended

. . . 5

(bent and spread)

5 (straight and spread,

B (straight and compact)

t=l

n

12 E

dward S. N

ima and U

rsula Bellugi

Table 5, (Rendition A)

“SUM

MER

” ,bv Dorothv

Miles (M

tles Renditions

GR

EEN

DEEP B

ELO

W

GR

EEN

HIGH

ABOVE

SlC%

!J H

OT

HEAVY O

N

HANDS

Readers: Leave flap open

for later reference


In addition, through a distortion which is part of the External Poetic Structure of the verse, this same ‘Five-finger’ hand is found as some aspect of all the signs in the first line after the first GREEN. It occurs as a part of the sign, even in citation form, in the case of DEEP, BELOW, and ABOVE. In addition, although HIGH and GREEN are both normally one-handed signs occurring without another hand in ordinary signing, Miles keeps the left hand as a kind of reference base or “surface indicator” throughout the signing of DEEP BELOW, GREEN HIGH ABOVE. This provides a consistency of form to the signs of the first line, and is a poetic modification of the signs GREEN and HIGH. Thus, some aspect of the final form of every sign in the verse, with the exception of the first GREEN, involves a ‘Five-finger’ hand, and most of the signs are restricted to that handshape.

In poetic structure, more significant than mere frequency is patterning - in this case the patterning of the restricted set of hand configurations used in the verse. The first line has two parallel halves, each beginning with the ‘Index’ hand (i.e., in the first and second GREEN) and each ending with an active ‘Five-finger’ hand operating respectively below and above a base ‘Five-finger’ hand (i.e., in BELOW and ABOVE), in similar arcs, as Table 5 reveals. The second signs of each half of the first line are DEEP and HIGH; DEEP uses an ‘Index’ hand as active as does GREEN, and HIGH uses a hand which we can call ‘Index + mid’. Those two handshapes are minimally different from one another - extension of the index finger as opposed to index finger along with middle finger.

Figure 9.

‘Index’ (G) ‘Index-mid’ (H)

As we have noted, the base ‘Five-finger’ hand proper to the citation form of DEEP is prolonged as a surface indicator in BELOW, and then extended during the signing of the second GREEN and HIGH, and maintained during ABOVE. This extension of the base ‘Five-finger’ hand through the signing

7’4 Edward S. Klima and Ursula Bellugi

Table 6. Outline of the Individual Internal Poetic Structure of “SUMMER” (Miles’

rendition) in terms of Hand Configuration

II* Five B 0 w/-//TE

Five :

EA.

B

Five / Five SLOW

Five HOT

Five : Five HEOVY

Five / Five ON

Five / Five HANDS

The ‘Five-finger’ hands are abbreviated here as Five. A colon (:) indicates two symmetrical hands. A

slash indicates a two-handed sign, with the active hand to the left. The boxing shows the parallelisms developed within each line.


of HIGH constitutes an element of External Poetic Structure that further enhances the similarity between DEEP and HIGH. Of course, in addition, the two halves of the first line are semantically patterned as well. The first signs of each are the same - GREEN and GREEN; the second signs in each are opposite - DEEP and HIGH; as are the third signs in each - BELOW and ABOVE.

In the second line, WHITE CLOUDS AND QUIET HOUR, there is further Internal Poetic Structure. WHITE and AND are each one-handed signs which have a ‘Five-finger’ hand closing to a ‘tapered 0’ and each is followed by a two-handed ‘Five-finger’ sign (CLOUDS and QUIET). This is all the more striking as a device resulting in Individual Internal Poetic Structure in the ASL version of the poem in that the sign WHITE, the first sign setting up this pattern, is not represented by a word in the English version. Finally, HOUR, the last sign of the second line, echoes in its active right hand the ‘Index’ hand motif characteristic of the first line and combines it with the ‘Five-finger’ hand that dominates the second line and, in fact, the whole verse.

The third (and final) line of the stanza, SLOW, HOT, HEAVY ON HANDS, consists exclusively of uses and interactions of the ‘Five-finger’ hand in signs which are made in front of the chest with the hands touching or in close proximity and which vary in the relation of the hands’ movement, intensity, and orientation. Table 6 gives an outline of the Individual Internal Poetic Structure of the poem in terms of Hand Configuration.

4.1.3. Internal structure of rendition B in ASL In order to study the heightened use of sign language, we have sometimes asked several different signers to create individual poetic renditions starting from the same poem. In the case of Dorothy Miles’ haiku poems, for example, one of the ‘native’ signers, Lou Fant, who has also been with the National Theater of the Deaf, was videotaped while performing his rendition of the poems for us on different occasions. He began from the English version, and then created his own ASL rendition from that. In order to show the different aspects of ASL which can be used in art-sign, we will present an analysis of Fant’s rendition here, and then continue the investigation of different levels of poetic structure side-by-side in Fant’s and Miles’ renditions of the same verse. Table 7 shows Fant’s rendition in actual tracings of selected images from the screen of the videotape monitor.

The choice of signs in Fant’s rendition is not radically different from that of Miles. However, Fant exploits one kind of handshape similarity in the first and second lines which is worthy of mention. But let us consider first the differences. Fant makes the title a part of the first line of the poem, as is

76 Edward S. Klima and Ursula Bellugl

indicated by his phrasing. He expresses ‘depths’ of the English version not by a separate sign but rather by extending the sign GREEN in a wide sweep of the arm which gives the impression of the sign GREEN moving into the horizontal distance away from him. ‘Green heights’ is expressed with two signs; first, the sign GREEN, this time moving upward with a sweep of the arm overhead; and then the sign HEIGHTS. Fant’s first line, then, is: SUMMER: GREEN-depths,* GREEN HEIGHTS. His rendition differs from Miles’ in the direction of more structural regularity: All four signs of his rendition of this ‘line’ involve an ‘Index’ hand as active. SUMMER begins with an ‘Index’ hand and closes as it moves across the forehead. GREEN both times involves an ‘Index’ hand with a slight variation in the thumb position. And finally, the sign HEIGHTS (instead of Miles’ HIGH, with ‘Index + mid’) is made with an ‘Index’ hand acting on a base. The dominant structural motif of the ‘Index’ hand in the first line is echoed by the ‘Index’ hand active in HOUR, the last sign of the second line of Fant’s rendition: WHITE CLOUDS AND QUIET HOUR. Finally, in keeping with the restricted set of hand configurations used in the rest of the verse (all variants of the ‘Five-finger’ hand), the sign HEIGHTS that Fant chose has a ‘Five- finger’ hand as its base.

In the second line, we find the same parallelism that was in Miles’ ASL rendition: The first signs of each hemistich, WHITE and AND, are both made with a ‘Five-finger’ hand closing to an ‘0’ hand, and each is followed by two-handed signs made with ‘Five-finger’ hands (CLOUDS and QUIET). The final line, as in Miles’ version, is composed of signs which use only ‘Five-finger’ hands: SLOW, HOT, HEAVY ON HANDS. Thus, we have again a sense of ‘alliteration’ in Fant’s version: The ‘Index’ hands are characteristic of the signs in the first line and echoed in the sign at the end of the second line; and the ‘Five-finger’ hands predominate throughout the second and third lines of the poem.

4.1.4. External structure of rendition A in ASL The type of external structural patterns that we noted in Bragg’s art-sign version of “since feeling is first” and that we shall discuss in Fant’s rendition of “Summer” are largely absent from Miles’ rendition of her own poem in ASL. This helps us to understand that the particular distortions and

*GREEN-depths: The incorporation, into the meaning of the sign GREEN, of the extent of green-

ness is a modulation of the basic form of the sign; we symbolize such modulations by adding an English equivalent in minuscules to the base form in capitals, thus GREEN-depths. In fact, the second occurrence of the sign GREEN in this ‘line’ also includes a modulation indicating that the greenness

extends also far up. A more precise glossing could have represented the hemistich by, for example, GREEN-soaring HEIGHTS.

I I I I I

“SU

MM

ER

” bv D

orothv M

iles (F

ant R

endition)

Readers:

Leave flap

open for

later reference


mechanisms characteristic of External Poetic Structure are by no means a necessary condition of art-sign or of poetic effect. As we shall see in the next section, however, Miles achieves an art-sign structure in other ways. In our conversations with Miles (as a matter of fact, after our analysis), we discovered that it was her intention to keep the signs as close to their normal form as possible. We find little spatial displacement, little extreme manipulation of the signs from their more nearly citation form. Miles does not, as some other sign-poets do, alternate in the use of the hands. Miles uses her right hand as active for all the one-handed signs (GREEN, HIGH, WHITE, AND, and HOT) and for all the signs involving one hand acting on another as a base (DEEP, HOUR, SLOW, and ON). There is very little overlapping of signs: During the one-handed signs there is no attempt to make use of the left hand; it is either by her side as in HOT, or it is off to the side and without a specific shape, as in WHITE and AND. Miles is a right-handed signer, even in her poetic rendition, and she does not alternate hands to impose a balance in the use of the two hands, nor does she make a special effort to overlap signs.

We also find little evidence of other kinds of distortion. We did point out that Miles adds a ‘surface indicator’ (in the ‘Five-finger’ hand) to the signs GREEN and HIGH to create a continuity in the first line of the verse. One sign is definitely exaggerated: Her sign for SLOW starts as the normal sign does, moving along the back of the base hand, but then it becomes exaggerated and distorted, moving slowly up the whole length of her arm. This allows for a smooth transition between the sign SLOW and the sign HOT, for at the end of SLOW the hand is up near her shoulder and, thus, much nearer the starting position of HOT (at the mouth) than it normally would be. There is one other change from the citation form of a sign - a change that results in a special patterning in hand orientation. The sign HANDS is ordinarily made with hands compact and palms down. Miles modifies the form of the sign so that the orientation of the hands is palm upward. The structural motivation for the change becomes clear when we examine the palm orientations of the signs that precede HANDS in the ‘line’. SLOW, the first sign in the line, has palms down. The second sign in the line, HOT, has within itself a change in palm orientation from palm up to palm down. The next sign, HEAVY, has palms up, followed by ON with palms down. Finally, comes the sign HANDS, which with Miles’ alteration in palm orientation, here has palms up and thus continues the pattern of alternating palm orientations set up by the citation forms of the preceding signs: down - up - down - up - down - up .* ___ .- Actually, this change in the form of the sign

*In the Miles rendition, after the final sign HANDS the hands move slowly to a relaxed, neutral

position - right hand on left, significantly with both palms facing down, thus continuing the pattern of alternating hand orientations already established in the ‘line’.


HANDS is a substitution of one prime of the parameter of Orientation for another; since the change remains within the linguistic code of ASL, this particular motivated distortion should properly be considered as an aspect of the Internal Poetic Structure of the verse. Miles also makes one further change in the sign HANDS, making the hand loose and somewhat spread (rather than compact, as in the citation form). The result of this change is that all of the signs of the ‘line’ are uniformly loose.

Even with these minor variations in the form of signs, Miles clearly does not intend to make major distortions in the interests of creating any semblance of what could appropriately be called a ‘design in space’. In Miles’ version of “Summer” (and this characterizes the other ASL verses by her as well) the signs are made within the normal signing space. This is quite different from the Kinetic Superstructure involving exaggerated spatial displacement that Bragg imposed. Miles does choose her signs carefully to create an Individual Internal Structure, and we shall see that she uses a very special type of External Superstructure, quite different from the other heightened forms we are presenting here.

4.1.5. Rhythmic Superstructure of rendition A in ASL A careful examination of Miles’ rendition of “Summer” reveals a special sort of Superstructure, not spatial but rather temporal and rhythmic. In the first place, each of the three ‘lines’ of this verse is of about equal temporal length; i.e., each takes 7.5 seconds (+ 0.3), although the length of the individual signs varies. The first and second hemistiches of the first ‘line’, as well as the last hemistich of the final ‘line’, each show a pattern of four accents and enclose a series of three internal hemistiches with fewer accents. Furthermore, there is a special rhythmic patterning to the three enclosing hemistiches with four accents each. The rhythm of the first hemistich of the first ‘line’ is repeated with only a slight variation in the following hemistich: there is syncopation on the second accent - the second hand twist - of GREEN. Then in the final hemistich of the verse, that variation is itself repeated, but again with a slight modification: the syncopation is broken down into two separate and distinct accents. Table 8 sketches this rhythmic- temporal superstructure, which we are tempted to compare with certain characteristics of recitative as opposed to aria. *

The slurred, half-staccato notes representing GREEN, CLOUDS, and HANDS indicate two distinct accents within one sign. Rest notes indicate long transitions between signs. The final long rest at the end of IIIB represents an exaggeratedly slow return of the hand to neutral position (not

*This comparison was first suggested to us by Linda Vickerman, one of the participants of the

I.R.C.A.M. seminar.


represented in the sketch in Table 5). The relative length of the signs as represented by the notes was calculated by counting individual fields on the video tape (60 fields per second).*

Table 8. Rhythmic-temporal superstructure of ‘Summer” (Miles rendition)

A z3

I

II

aI

,n 1 cl- . . GREEN DEEP BELOW

cl ol . SLOW HOT H&40’ ON HANDS

GREEN HIGH ABOVE

sJ I J AND QUlET HOUR

J n,r- . . IA parallels IB parallels 1115 in rhythmic structure I = II = III

4.1.6. External Structure of rendition B in ASL While Miles’ rendition shows a very special type of External Rhythmic Superstructure that is not characterized by the modulations wrought on the citation form of signs by Bragg, Fant’s rendition is very much in keeping with the ,tradition of creating an external structure by modification in the form of signs themselves or in aspects of their presentation.

a. Patterned alternation of the hands. As can be seen immediately from the tracings of the video tape presented in Table 7, in terms of External Poetic Structure, Fant makes a very decided use of the alternation of the hands. That is, he does not always use his right hand as the active hand in one-handed signs or signs which involve one hand acting on the other as a base. SUMMER and GREEN-depths are signed with the right hand active;

7.5 sec.

7.2 sec.

7.7 sec.

*The individual fields were numbered with the aid of a Video Frame Number Generator (Data

Systems Design, Model #440-2) for ease of counting.


the second GREEN is signed with the left hand active; HEIGHTS returns to the right hand active. WHITE in the second line again changes to left hand active. CLOUDS is a double-handed sign, but AND, which follows it, is made with the left hand active. QUIET is a double-handed sign, and HOUR again has the left hand as active. In the third line, SLOW has the right hand active as does the sign that follows it, HOT, HEAVY is a two-handed sign; ON has the right hand active; and HANDS has within itself an alternation of hands: The right hand acts on the left and then they interchange, the left acting on the right. We thus see that Fant alternates the hands consistently in the first two lines. The third line is so heavy with two-handed signs that alternation of the hands does not occur. HOT, the only one-handed sign in the ‘line’, is even accompanied by the other hand (the left) in a definite hand shape. This is motivated by the sign which follows HOT as will be seen in lines lo- 12 in Table 9.

From the alternation of the hands in the second ‘line’, a definite pattern emerges:

WHITE(left) CLOUDS(both) AND(left) QUIET(both) HOUR(left active)

where the first, third, and fifth signs have the left hand active, while the two intervening signs are made with both hands. This pervasive alternation of the hands is clearly part of a general pattern of alternations. Table 9 sum- marizes the overall scheme of hand alternations in Fant’s rendition of “Summer”.

b. Overlapping of signs. The alternation of hands contributes to another poetic mechanism which is characteristic of Fant’s rendition of “Summer” and also of Bragg’s translation of the line from Cummings’ poem, for such hand alternation permits the overlapping of even one-handed signs occurring in sequence. By such overlapping - where the form of a just-executed sign is maintained with one hand while the next sign is made with the other hand - two signs are, in effect, presented simultaneously to the eye.

That hand alternation does contribute to the possibility of overlapping signs becomes clear when we take into account the fact that a great many signs of ASL involve one hand only. (Of the more than 2,000 signs in the Dictionary of American Sign Language, Stokoe et al., 1965, about 40% are one-handed signs.) In everyday signing, one-handed signs are generally made with the dominant hand, and with these signs, the non-dominant hand is not part of the signing picture - either it is at the signer’s side or it is lax in shape and position. This is exemplified in the video tape tracings of the one- handed signs in Miles’ rendition of the verse “Summer” (Table 5). As Miles signs the first GREEN and as she signs HOT, her left hand is by her side. Both of these are one-handed signs. As she signs the one-handed signs

Table 9. Alternation of hands and overlapping signs in Fant’s rendition of ‘Y%.unmer”

by Dorothy Miles

“G’‘-hand

-(closing to)-

“X’‘-hand

f The varieties of the “Five-finger” hand

“B’‘-hand “5’‘-hand

“0” hand

. . . “5”-hand

A symbol written with dots indicates that the hand configuration of a previous sign is maintained with

one hand while subsequent signs are being made by the other hand.

84 Edward S. Klima and Ursula Rellugi

WHITE and AND, her left hand is lax and not part of the signing picture. Whereas this laxness of the unengaged, non-signing hand is typical of the presentation of one-handed signs in everyday signing, Fant never has a lax, ‘unused’ hand after the first two signs of the verse (see Table 7). In fact, Fant emphasizes this modification of one aspect of the presentation of signs and raises it to the status of a major structure-creating mechanism. After the second sign of the verse, both hands are engaged through the verse, and there is much overlapping of signs, so that wherever possible two signs are present simultaneously to the eye. With the one-handed signs the other hand is engaged in the following ways: The second GREEN is made with the left hand, but the hand position and configuration of the first GREEN is still held in the right hand. The sign WHITE is made with the left hand, but the active right hand of HEIGHTS, which precedes it, retains its shape throughout the sign WHITE. The sign AND is made with the left hand, but the final position and shape of the right hand for CLOUDS remains through AND. In the final line, the sign HOT is made with the right hand, while the left hand anticipates the shape and position of the sign which will follow: HEAVY. Thus, Fant is overlapping signs (and images) by holding part of one sign while making another. (Recall that this occurred also in one type of simultaneity of signs used in plays on signs.) Both of these mechanisms - patterned alternation of the hands and overlapping of signs - contribute to keeping the use of the hands in balance throughout the poem. Table 9 shows the interaction of the two devices in Fant’s ASL rendition of “Summer”.

c. Flow of movement. As was the case in Bragg’s translation of the Cummings poem, Fant’s rendition of “Summer” is characterized by pervasive manipulation of the transitions between signs. (Pertinent transitions can be interpolated from Table 7.) For example, the second sign of the verse (GREEN-depths) begins at the same level as the preceding sign rather than in the ‘neutral space’ in front of the signer’s chest, as would be the case in the citation form of the sign. While the left hand forms the next sign - the second occurrence of GREEN, even more distorted than the first in its sweeping movement and its exaggerated ascent to a final position way above the head, and, in fact, far above the normal ‘signing space’ - the right hand maintains the hand configuration and the final position of the previous sign (GREEN-depths). In that position, the right hand turns into the active hand forming its part of the sign HEIGHTS and sweeps up to contact the base hand of HEIGHTS, which itself has maintained the final position of the just- prior sign (GREEN). Similarly, while the left hand signs WHITE, the right hand maintains the final exaggeratedly high position of HEIGHTS and from that position begins the sign CLOUDS. The sign AND, which in ordinary


signing is made in the ‘neutral space’ in front of the signer’s chest, (compare, for example, Miles’ rendition in Table 5) is signed in Fant’s rendition at the same exaggeratedly high position above the head as the sign CLOUDS. The ordinary transition between the two signs from above head downward, at least toward the chest, has been eliminated. In the rest of the signs of the verse as well, the final position of each becomes the starting position of the next sign. A final remark along these lines is appropriate for the sign HOT. HOT itself is a one-handed sign, in this case signed by Fant with his right hand. The left hand in such a case would normally tend to move at least toward a neutral position, as it does in Miles’ rendition. But in this instance of art-sign, the free left hand instead assumes an orientation with palm upward more similar to that of the initial position of the left hand which is engaged in signing HOT. The free left hand, maintaining that neutral orientation and position, then simply turns into one of the hands of the symmetrical two-handed sign HEAVY, thus anticipating it, as mentioned earlier - without any superfluous movement at all (cf., Table 7). It is in this sense that the signs of certain types of art-sign ‘flow into one another’.

4. I. 7. Kinetic Superstructure of rendition B in ASL Very striking visually in the Fant rendition is its superstructure of space and movement, taking the signs not only out of the normal signing space but also creating a very obvious design in space consistent, in this instance, with the theme of the verse: heaviness. I.e., beginning with the second verse the signs slowly descend from far above the signer’s head (a location which is not used in everyday signing) to below the waist.

In terms of this particular superstructure, Fant’s deviations from the ordinary place of articulation are considerable. In fact, in the first two ‘lines’ all the signs except SUMMER and WHITE are signed much higher than they would be in ordinary signing. The upward displacement is particularly striking in AND and QUIET. As was mentioned above, AND is normally signed in the neutral space in front of the chest and QUIET normally begins in front of the mouth. (cf., Table 5 for the normal form of these signs.) In fact, even the sign CLOUDS, which is normally signed just above forehead level and would, in everyday signing, have the highest place of articulation of the fourteen signs found in this rendition, is raised.

A further distortion associated with this generally.descending line involves the two-handed sign HOUR, which has one hand active and uses the other hand as a base. In everyday signing the base would stay in the same location (in front of the chest). In Fant’s rendition, the sign is higher than it ordinarily would be, and the sign as a whole slowly moves down - base and active hand both.


Given that the first GREEN sweeps horizontally across the area in front of the signer’s face from the far left to the far right, we might consider that the general superstructure has taken the shape of a cross, sweeping horizontally at a rather high level from one side to another, then moving directly upward to a position high above the signer’s head, and gradually moving each sign heavily and slowly downward until the final sign is made with the body bent over, shoulders haunched, and the hands low in the signing space. Table 10 shows the signs involved in the dominant descending line.

Table 10. Kinetic Superstructure oj’ “SUMMER *’

HOUR

ON

Poe@ and song in a language without sound 87

4.2. External Poetic Structure in the ASL verse “WINTER ”

The final verse of the Miles haiku sequence is, in the English version, as follows:

Winter: Contrast: Black and white Bare trees, covered ground, hard ice, Soft snow. Birth in death.

Again, Miles has constructed the English version so that it maintains the haiku 5 - 7 - 5 syllable-per-line pattern.

We have studied a number of different renditions of this verse by different signers. Here we shall present the verse in Lou Fant’s ASL rendition because of some of the interesting manipulations of signs which characterize its poetic form. The rhythm of his signing and the internal patterns suggest four structural ‘lines’ with the title WINTER included in the first line. The glosses for the Fant rendition are as follows:

line I WINTER: CONTRAST BLACK, WHITE; line II BARE TREES, COVERED GROUND; line III HARD ICE, SOFT SNOW; line IV BIRTH INTO DEATH.

We shall restrict our considerations here to the external structure of the verse. (Table 12 presents tracings from the screen of the video tape.)

One distinguishing feature of the External Structure of the art-sign rendition of “Winter” by Fant is clearly the constant involvement of both hands. In their citation form, all but two of the signs in Fant’s rendition of “Winter” are two-handed signs. The exceptions are BLACK and WHITE. By alternating hands and overlapping, Fant brings these two one-handed signs also into the pattern. As can be seen from Table 12, in Fant’s rendition the final position of the right hand of the symmetrical, two-handed sign CONTRAST is held while BLACK is made with the left hand; then the final position of BLACK itself is held with the left hand while WHITE is signed with the right hand. A comparison of this sequence of three signs in Fant’s rendition with the same sequence in ‘straight’ signing (Table 11) reveals that there is more involved in the External Structure of this rendition than merely the overlapping of signs. The signs also undergo a distortion that is part of a pattern of distortions characteristic of the other signs in the verse and is consistent not only with the general theme of the verse, winter’s contrasts, but also with thematic oppositions that are developed in the verse: ‘black’ versus ‘white’, ‘bare’ versus ‘covered’, ‘hard’ versus. ‘soft’, ‘birth’ versus ‘death’. It is not the case in this verse that Fant develops an


External Poetic Structure that creates a flow of movement to thread all the signs together in a single consistent way. Rather, he manipulates certain sequences of signs so that either their contrast in form or their similarity is exaggerated. Let us consider first the pair of signs BLACK and WHITE, which constitute thematic opposites in the verse. Whereas, in citation form the movement of the sign BLACK is a brush along a short line across the forehead (cf., Table 1 l), in Fant’s art-sign rendition the hand makes an exaggerated, large, sweeping motion from the forehead in an arc downward and toward the extreme Zeft of the signer, where it is held while WHITE is being made. The sign WHITE itself is not only exaggerated; it is, in fact, in a literal sense, diametrically separated from BLACK and opposed to it in its position in space. For whereas the citation form of WHITE carries the hand from contact with the center of the chest straight out to the neutral space directly in front of the chest, in Fant’s art-sign rendition the hand shoots out, this time to the extreme right of the signer - where its final exaggerated position forms a real spatial ‘contrast’ to that of the left hand still held, at the extreme left, in the final exaggerated position of BLACK.

Table 11. Signs from beginning of Miles’ “Winter” (Fant Rendition)

STRAlGHT ASL

CONTFtAST BLACK WHITE

ART-SIGN

;&_*&f__

I 1 1 CONTRPST &cu WHITE

The form assumed by the pair of signs BLACK and WHITE of the second hemistich of the first ‘line’ in Fant’s poetic rendition bears a special relation to the just prior sign CONTRAST in the first hemistich. As Table 11 indicates, the form of the two-handed sign CONTRAST in the poetic version

Poetry

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89

Table

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by D

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(transrtm

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is itself exaggerated with respect to the spatial displacement of the two hands to the extreme left and extreme right of the signer. Significantly, the exaggerated sweep of BLACK, the sign that follows next, ends in a final sustained position that is an echo of the final position of the corresponding hand in CONTRAST. Next, the right hand, as it shoots out to the extreme right in the sign WHITE, reaches a final position that echoes the final position of the right hand of CONTRAST. In the other ‘lines’ of Fant’s art-sign rendition of “Winter”, there is similar interplay between the form of the signs within hemistiches and between hemistiches. Let us consider first the pair of signs BARE and TREES constituting the first hemistich of the second ‘line’ (cf. Table 12). In citation form, BARE would involve a straight, short movement along the back of the base hand, by an active hand that is flat and spread, the middle finger bent inward. The same handshape occurs in FEELING discussed in relation to Bragg’s translation of the Cummings line and exemplified in Figure 1 and Table 2. In citation form, TREES is made with a ‘Five-finger’ hand, the fingers straight and spread. In Fant’s art-sign rendition of the sequence, the sign BARE is extended in an upward-sweeping arc until the handshape of BARE has ‘become’ the active hand of TREES, with one handshape substituted for another. Similarly, the base hand of BARE slides under the elbow of the active right hand and with minimum transitional movement ‘becomes’ the base of the sign TREES. Through these distortions, the similarity between the two signs of the hemistich has been enhanced and a continuity between them has been superimposed. (In addition, the substitution of the handshape proper to BARE for that of TREES directly associates the notion of ‘bareness’ with that of ‘trees’. In terms of form, this change does not go beyond the linguistic system itself and thus actually figures in the Internal Poetic Structure.)

Likewise, Fant’s art-sign rendition superimposes a continuity between the members of the hemistich pair COVERED and GROUND. An alternation of the hands with overlapping of signs occurs with this pair. The left hand already takes the configuration and the location of the sign GROUND as the sign COVERED is made with the right hand above it. The sign GROUND is generally made with two hands, but here it is one-handed in form, fingertips rubbing together below the hand that has maintained the handshape of the sign COVERED.

Further continuity of signs within the hemistich is manifested by the pair HARD and ICE, both involving extra tension in the hands and arms in Fant’s poetic rendition. SOFT and SNOW, the next pair of signs, differ markedly in their formation from the two signs of the preceding hemistich in that SOFT and SNOW both involve an extra laxness of the muscles of the hands and arms.


The transition also between the two pairs of signs forming the two hemistiches of the third ‘line’ is manipulated to play a part in the External Poetic Structure of the verse (i.e., the transition between HARD ICE and SOFT SNOW). In everyday signing, the final position and hand configuration of the sign ICE in a similar context would be held briefly with muscles tense, but then the muscles and hands would relax before the hand turned upward and progressed through its transition to the sign SOFT. By contrast, in this art-sign rendition the hands maintain the muscle tension and the bent ‘Five- finger’ handshape of ICE throughout the transition to the sign SOFT, only relaxing at the last moment, when the ‘soft’ downward movement of SOFT begins. (The effect of this transition is represented in line III of Table 12.) As a matter of fact, the exaggeration of the transition between the two hemistiches of the third ‘line’ turns out to be part of a definite pattern of transition manipulation between the two halves of each of the first three ‘lines’. For in the preceding line, the transition between TREES and COVERED is also exaggerated. After the movement appropriate to the sign TREES (a twist from the wrist of the vertically oriented hand and forearm), the transition to the next sign begins. But rather than the active hand and forearm becoming lax and the elbow slipping from its contact with the back of the base hand (characteristic of the transition between these signs in everyday signing), the whole forearm retains a quality of tense articulation and, maintaining elbow contact with the base hand, slowly descends from vertical to horizontal position as it describes a 45-degree arc. (See line II of Table 12). The pattern of exaggerated transition is also represented between the hemistiches of the first ‘line’: When the sign CONTRAST is completed, the index fingers of both hands (the symmetrical ‘Index’ hand configuration appropriate to CONTRAST) are kept stiff throughout the transition to BLACK and the left arm moves in an exaggeratedly broad and sweeping curve up to where BLACK begins on the forehead. (See line I in Table 12.)

By contrast, it is once again continuity that characterizes the three signs comprising the final ‘line’ of this art-sign rendition of the verse. The three signs BIRTH INTO DEATH are blended together into one continuous flow. The signs all have the same hand configuration, are all two-handed, and are all made in the same location in front of the torso, with the hands close together or touching. The main difference among the three is in the orientation of the hands and their movement. In fact, the sign INTO is indicated in so minimal a way that it is almost lost, nearly becoming just part of the transition between BIRTH and DEATH.


4.3. Revitalization of iconic-pantomimic associations

In concluding, mention should be made of an additional phenomenon that is particularly prominent in art sign (though apparently not creating definite patterns): the intensification of representational aspects of signs. In all of the ASL renditions of the verses of Miles’ haiku sequence, there are signs whose representational aspects are exaggerated. One means we employed for assessing the degree and effect of such intensification was the following: we asked native signers who had not read the English version to record their impressions of the various renditions after they had viewed them several times on video tape. These reviewers were asked to include in their remarks a discussion of any exaggerations or distortions they had observed.

Let us consider first the title SUMMER, the first sign in Fant’s rendition of that haiku verse. The citation form of SUMMER involves the bent index finger (the ‘X7-hand) brushing across the central part of the forehead. But, in the words of Mr. Shanny Mow, a deaf signer reviewing the video tapes, Fant elaborates the sign by “increasing its length . . . thus producing a more pantomime-like action”, with an outstretched index finger (a ‘G’-hand) that gradually bends into an ‘X’-hand, “Fant ‘wipes’ the entire length of his forehead”. The ‘wiping’ is presumably the wiping, from the forehead, of the sweat from summer’s heat.

In Fant’s rendition of the verse, the sign CLOUDS also undergoes iconic elaboration. Mow describes this in the following words: “[Fant] modulates CLOUDS by a loose balling action and by rotation of the hands slowly across the space overhead - and the clouds even move.” In other words, the movement of the sign itself directly portrays the drifting of the clouds.

Finally, Mow comments on the representational aspects of the exaggeration in the formation of the sign HEAVY in Fant’s rendition: “HEAVY certainly looks heavy, so heavy that the bottom drops. In this action, there is no [actual (author’s interpolation)] suddenness; yet one gets the feeling there is. This doesn’t occur in the regular form of the sign but it surely gives finality to the sinking effect Fant has produced as he moved his signs downward. One begins to feel the oppressive claustrophobic heat and time standing still as the long summer drags on.”

In all renditions of “Summer”, (Tables 5 and 7) the sign SLOW is treated iconically - lengthened both in duration and in space. In the citation form of SLOW, the fingertips of the active flat ‘B’-hand brush once over the back of the base ‘B’-hand from the fingertips to the wrist of the latter. In Miles’ rendition of her own poem, SLOW takes more time than most of the other signs of this particular verse (2.0 seconds, whereas the average duration of signs in this verse is 0.9 seconds). Furthermore, the active hand, as it brushes over the base hand, continues well up onto the upper arm.


A final example of iconic elaboration in art-sign is the sign SNOW in Fant’s rendition of “Winter” (Table 11). As Mow puts it: “The length of SNOW is longer than usual” representing the movement of the snow “from sky to ground” and the fingers, instead of “wiggling sloppily and irregularly” as in everyday signing, are “gently organized”, imitating the fluttering of the snow.

5. Conclusion

In his article “Linguistics and the study of poetic language” Stankiewics ( 1960) characterizes poetic organization as “completely embedded in language and fully determined by its possibilities”. The purpose of the present study has been to examine the form that the poetic function assumes in American Sign Language (ASL), a language which itself has a structural organization fundamentally different from that of oral languages and where, accordingly, the possibilities for poetic organization are also radically different. In this study, we have analyzed several examples of a complex type of composition that we call ‘art-sign’, distinguish4 by three levels of structure. We recognize that in any given instance of art-sign!, mechdnisms associated with the different levels may be interrelated.

One level of structure in art-sign is Internal Poetic Structure, constituted from elements that are completely internal to the ASL linguistic system proper - constituted from parts of the grammatical code itself: realizations of the regular formational parameters of ASL, actual signs, regular grammatical processes. Elsewhere in linguistic and psychological studies of the constitution of the sign in ASL, we and others found evidence that signs consist of simultaneously occurring parameters - among them, Hand Con- figuration, Place of Articulation, Movement, and Orientation. In the present analysis of Internal Poetic Structure in art-sign, we chose to concentrate our attention on the patterned occurrence of signs with similar Hand Configura- tions. In other sign poems that we have recorded, we found patterned uses of similarities in other parameters.

In some instances of art-sign analyzed in this study, one of the mechanisms that results in the similarities that form the basis for Internal Poetic Structure is a restricted type of distortion that involves only parts of the linguistic code: the substitution of one regular ASL formational prime (e.g., one particular Hand Configuration or one particular Orientation) for another - resulting in a form that is no longer the normal form of the sign but which is, nonetheless, a possible sign of ASL.


At the other extreme from Internal Poetic Structure in ASL art-sign is a level of structure which we call Superstructure - analogous, we suggested, to the melodic line superimposed upon the words in song. The Super- structure is superimposed on the form of the signs themselves, and the signs may, as a result, undergo drastic distortions from the point of view of the linguistic code of ASL. In this study, we described Superstructures of two kinds: kinetic and rhythmic. Kinetic Superstructure consists of a special ‘design in space’ superimposed on the signs of the poem. In one instance, the ‘design in space’ was characterized by large, open, non-intersecting movement; in another, it took the shape of an enlarged cross. In another art- sign composition examined here, a special temporal-rhythmic pattern was superimposed on the signs.

Between these two extremes - Internal Poetic Structure constituted exclusively of elements of the linguistic code and a Superstructure constituted of spatial or rhythmic effects that are not otherwise characteristic of signs or of signing - there is a third level of structure, which we refer to as External Poetic Structure. This intermediate level is created not by choosing signs such that elements of the grammatical code can be used as the basis for poetical effects, but rather by playing, in a structured way, on aspects of the presentation of signs. One mechanism involved in External Poetic Structure is patterned alternations of the hands. In casual signing, signers do occasionally switch hands, but such switching is done to create special effects - e.g., to emphasize the distinction between the predicate that goes with one noun sign and the predicate that goes with another. By contrast, in certain examples of art-sign examined in this study, the alternation of the hands is pervasive and becomes an end in itself.

Another mechanism used to create External Poetic Structure is the overlapping of the signs - maintaining the form of the just-executed sign with one hand while making the next sign with the other. This, in effect, presents two signs simultaneously to the eye. The deliberate manipulation of the transitions between signs is still another basis for External Poetic Structure. In ordinary signing, there is a specific movement proper to each sign; between signs the hands relax and change Hand Configuration while moving in transition from the terminal position of the sign just completed to the initial position of the next sign. In art-sign, not only may these transitions be obliterated, extended, or otherwise exaggerated, but such manipulation may even assume a regular pattern through the composition. Characteristic of all these cases of External Poetic Structure is the creation of structured effects - of patterns - through manipulation of what are otherwise ‘incidental’ aspects of the act of signing.


In the introduction to the present study, we asked whether there was not, in certain types of heightened signing, a silent-language analogue to that special blend of sound with sound - phonation with vocalization - that, in the auditory channel, constitutes song. It seems to us that in what we have called art-sign we have the beginnings of a comparable development in the visual channel: the hands simultaneously involved in signing and designing in space.

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Nous exarninons ici les caracteristiques distinctives d’un langage primaire (A.S.L. - Langage Americain

par signes). Ce langage est plutot manuel-visuel qu’oral-auditif. Nous faisons I’hypothese que les

modahtds de ce langage predisposent, non seulement ce langage lui-meme, mais ses formes artistiques

i certaines caracteristiques spdcifiques. Nous presentons une analyse de quelques exernples de ‘signes

artistiques’ et proposons le ddveloppement actuel d’une tradition poetique et peut 6tre lyrique i base

de gestes analogues.

Poetry and song in a language without sound

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