The Status of “Movement” in the Semiotic Phonology of Israeli Sign Language

Abstract

The purpose of the current study is to examine whether “movement” is a significant aspect in describing the structure of the signed word in Israeli Sign Language (ISL). Linguists who focused on creating a Phonological Model for the signed word disagree regarding the “phonemic” status of movement as a central phonological category in sign language. Quantitative content analysis performed in this study examined the distribution of the various movements in 560 sample signs. The results show that movement is a significant morphophonemic component in the structure of the signed word in ISL. Phonologically, it was found that there are movements which, in order to describe them, we need to use an array of articulation features, some of which create meaningful contrasts between the signed words. Semiotically, this research shows that the distribution of the movements in the lexicon of ISL is not random but motivated by a basic meaning attached to each one of the articulatory features.