A preliminary phonemic analysis of Taiwanese Sign Language

• Main Authors: Kuan Ting-Tan, 管丁妲
• Other Authors: Chin-Hsing Tseng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/02905890533684419617

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 特殊教育學系 === 93 === Abstract This research is probing the phonemes and composition rules and restrictions of the phonemes of Taiwanese Sign Language(TSL). And expect that can help us to understand or learn TSL. This research use Hand can be Bridge(手能生橋) to be the material sources, and use five parameters - handshape, location, movement, orientation, and nonmanual activities to decode TSL. After decoding TSL, I analyze these code with EXCEL and SPSS. Found finally: All five parameters are important in TSL. Handshape, location, movement, orientation, and nonmanual activity all can distinguish the meaning of TSL words. It means they all can make minimal pairs. One of the parameters changes, and its meaning becomes different. Besides these five parameters, there still are other factors, which are contacting region, hand arrangement, repeat of the movement, and tense of the movement. There are 56 handshapes, 24 locations, 31 movements, 6 orientations and 37 kinds of nonmanual activity in TSL. It means that there is a set of limited phonemes in TSL. This research also suggests that the majority of the parameters has relation with each other, but the relation waits follow-up study to find.