bnevin@CCH.BBN.COM (Bruce E. Nevin) (07/03/88)
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 88 08:16 EDT
From: Bruce E. Nevin <bnevin@cch.bbn.com>
Subject: ASL vs dance
To: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu
cc: bn@cch.bbn.com
I have not studied ASL, but it seems prima facie likely that the gesture
system of a sign language used by the deaf would have both a formal and
an expressive aspect, just as the gesture system of ordinary spoken
phonology does.
In the phonology of a given language, there is a limited inventory of
usually <50 contrasts, differences that make a difference. The phonetic
`content' of these contrasts (the actual sounds used to embody the
contrasts in a given utterance by a given speaker at a given time) is
subject to remarkably free `stretching', which languages exploit for
expressive purposes as well as in dialect variation.
Leigh Lisker long ago speculated that the function of semantically empty
greeting rituals ("Hello, how are you?" "Fine, and you?") is to provide
an opportunity for conversants to tune in on the fundamental frequency
of each other's voice and calibrate for the relative location of
vowel formants. Calibrating for the phonetic envelope each uses to
embody the contrasts of their shared language is also a likely function.
I would expect that deaf folks have to attune themselves to the gestural
style and expressive range of conversants, but I can't think of anything
analogous to the fundamental frequency and vowel formants in phonology.
I would astonished if there were no analogs of phonemic contrasts in ASL
utterances, no fundamental and stable `differences that make a
difference' to other ASL users, and I would be be very interested to
learn what they are like.
In language, it is the formal aspect, the system of contrasts or
`differences that make a difference', and the information structures
that they support, that are the ostensive focus. This is surely the
case with the sign languages of the Deaf also. In dance, by contrast,
it is the expressive aspect that is typically the main point, and the
formal structure is subsidiary, merely a channel for expressive
communication, else the piece is seen as dry, technical, academic,
uninspired. One may apply such adjectives to a conversation, but with
scarcely the same devastating critical effect! Conversely, a critic who
discussed what a choreographer was saying without comment on how she or
he said it would generally be thought to be missing the point.
An interesting thing here is that the expressive aspects of language use
actually do influence people much more than the literal content (words
7%, tone 32%, kinesics 61%: Albert Murahbian, _Public Places & Private
Spaces_; Ray Birdwhistell, _Kinesics & Context_). In this respect, we
very much need an understanding and representation of the expressive
`stretching' of a formal structure, since that is where most of human
communication takes place (as distinct from simple transmission of
literal information). This is a big part of the difference between
linguistic competence (Chomsky) and communicative competence (Hymes).
An AI that has the first (a hard enough problem!) but not the second
will always be missing the point and misconstruing the literal meaning
of what is said. I should think that the notations developed by Ray
Birdwhistell and his colleagues at the Annenberg School of Communication
would be more apt than Laban dance notation, because they concern the
unconscious, culturally inherited expressive art form of ordinary human
communication rather than a consciously cultivated art form. And of
course Manfred Clynes makes claims about the underlying form of all
communicative expression.
Bruce Nevin
bn@cch.bbn.com
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