What handshape tells us about active versus inactive articulators

Jonathan Keane It is widely assumed in the articulatory phonology literature that when an articulator is not active (unspecified in the gestural score) it assumes a neutral state. One example of this is that the velum, when not active, assumes a closed position; only when it is actively opened does it deviate from that position. is assumption makes predictions about speech that seem to be fairly robust: nasal sounds are more marked than non-nasal, and nasalization spreads from nasal sounds, etc. is neutral position, however, is at odds with the position that the velum assumes naturally when people are at rest (eg not speaking), which is open1, allowing for air to be drawn into the respiratory system from the nose ormouth. is being the case, theremust be somemuscular activity on the velum during periods that have previously been described as inactivity in order to keep it closed. One solution to this apparent problem is to specify gestures for periods previously assumed to have no activity, although these gestures would necessarily be weaker than active articulator gestures. ere are two major predictions that come from the fact that the targets associated with nonactive gestures are not a physiologically neutral state, but rather a state that is default for speech. First, it is possible that the targets for nonactive gestures will differ cross linguistically with different languages having different default states. is is supported in work on spoken languages looking at default targets of nonactive articulators, or what are described as articulatory settings which vary from language to language (Wilson and Gick, ; Wilson, ; Gick et al., ). Second, it’s possible that the targets for nonactive gestures will vary depending on the targets of the active gestures. is will be used in the development of the articulatory phonology model of handshape proposed here for the configuration of the nonactive (nonselected) fingers. Since the earliest theories of sign language phonology, handshapes have divided the fingers into selected and non-selected groups (Mandel (), ff). Mandel describes the selected fingers as the foreground and the nonselected fingers as the background. is talk presents an articulatory model of handshape () which explicitly links this distinction to the distinction of active and inactive articulators used widely in speech (Browman and Goldstein, ). is link makes critical, testable predictions (eg hypothesis  below) about the nature of handshape variation due to coarticulatory pressure. e  is based on articulatory phonology (following Browman and Goldstein ()) and can explain the phonetic implementation of handshape from phonological specifications2. It explains variation due to articulatory effects (eg coarticulation) because it uses dynamic articulator gestures. at is, the articulators that make up the hand are not static, sequential configurations (ie discrete units), but rather individual articulator gestures overlapping across segments. is ability to model gradient phonetic implementation and contextual variation represents a critical improvement over previous phonological models.