Adverbial Morphemes in Tactile ASL - Gallaudet University

PDE – Steven D. Collins
Methods
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analysis of specific variables. The data also analyzed how often, when and where the variability
occurred, specifically in the use of adverbial forms. This resulted in a description of the form of
and the use of variability, and an analysis and description of linguistic and social constraints.
The reason the learner uses semantically based categories in this analysis is because the variation
in form observed has direct bearing on the meaning of the adverbials. As I will show, specific
phonological features such as hold, lengthening, and tenseness help produce adverbial meaning
in the TASL forms. Clearly, the categorization of adverbials based on semantic category is both
conventional (see for example, Klima and Bellugi 1979, Liddell 1980; Baker and Cokely 1980;
Padden 1988; Bienvenu and Colonomos 1991; and Bridges and Metzger 1996), and theoretically
supportable. In addition, or perhaps because of these two factors, if the learner were to attempt a
phonetically-based categorization of visual ASL adverbials, this would constitute a dissertation
topic in its own right. This is so because it would be a new area that counters conventions in the
literature with an attempt to reclassify and analyze the visual nature of these linguistic forms.
This question is beyond the scope of this paper’s research questions. It would make an
interesting topic for a future project.
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