Phonology Analysis

The signs glossed as BROTHER and SISTER are a good starting place for
understanding a number of concepts in phonology. The two are a minimal pair, they
demonstrate assimilation and they are examples of words whose structure is arbitrary rather
than iconic.
Minimal pair describes words that are contrastive in meaning... and are identical in all
segments except one (Valli et. al p. 37). In order to determine that two signs or words are
identical in all segments except one, we must know its bundle of articulatory features. In
analyzing the parts of a spoken language we would look to the place of articulation, the manner
of articulation, and whether or not the sound is voiced or voiceless. To analyze signs we also
consider their bundle of articulatory features, those being handshape, movement,
location/placement, palm orientation, and nonmanual signals. For two handed signs, both
hands will have an articulatory bundle to describe. Having described two signs articulatory
bundles we will know they are minimal pairs if they differ in only one aspect. So while WORK
and COFFEE share the features of handshape and location, they are not a minimal pair
because their contact location, palm orientation, and movement are all different. BROTHER
and SISTER, on the other hand, are a minimal pair. Here is a rendering of the two signs using
the Liddell and Johnson Movement-Hold Model:

BROTHER

Strong Hand

Weak Hand

Unit 1

Uniet 2

Unit 3

Timing Unit

Handshape

Placement

Near or touching
center forehead

Outside wrist in contact

with inner wrist of weak
hand

Palm Orientation

Facing contra side

Facing contra side

Nonmanual signal

Handshape

Placement

Neutral space about

chest level

No movement. Neutral
space about chest
level

Palm Orientation

Facing ipsi side

Facing ipsi side

Nonmanual signal

SISTER

Strong Hand

Weak Hand

Unit 1

Uniet 2

Unit 3

Timing Unit

Handshape

Placement

Near or touching
center chin

Outside wrist in contact

with inner wrist of weak
hand

Palm Orientation

Facing contra side

Facing contra side

Nonmanual signal

Handshape

Placement

Neutral space about

chest level

No movement. Neutral
space about chest
level

Palm Orientation

Facing ipsi side

Facing ipsi side

Nonmanual signal

We can see that these two signs are identical in every phoneme except for the starting location.
BROTHER and SISTER, though independent lexical units now, were once made up of
two signs each, BOY SAME and GIRL SAME. There are multiple ways to sign BROTHER and
SISTER, but the way diagramed above especially shows the phonological process of
assimilation. Assimilation is when a segment takes on the characteristics of another segment
near it (Valli et. al p. 50). In earlier versions of these signs, the weak hand handshape
phoneme would have been a 1-handshape because the weak hand was only used to sign the
distinct morpheme of SAME and may not have been articulated during the BOY segment of the
BOY SAME sequence. The pronunciation of BROTHER and SISTER diagramed above show
that both strong and weak hands share handshape phonemes throughout the entire signs. This
change from having distinct handshape phonemes on both hands to using the same handshape
phonemes on both hands is an example of assimilation. My theory, though I cant confirm it, is
that there was two way assimilation between the 1-handshape of SAME and the A-handshape
of GIRL. The weak hand could have taken on the thumb out characteristic of GIRL while
maintaining the extended pointer finger of SAME resulting in an L-handshape phoneme on the
weak hand, while GIRL simultaneously took on the extended pointer of SAME while maintaining
the extended thumb resulting in the same L-handshape of the weak hand. BROTHER could
then have borrowed the new handshape pattern from the assimilated version of SISTER. Even
if my theory isnt correct, the change from distinct handshapes across two signs to identical
handshapes is an example of assimilation.
One way of discussing words and languages is to analyze them in terms of their iconicity
and arbitrariness. Iconicity refers to signs and spoken words that share features with the thing
they describe. Because spoken languages are aural, iconic words will generally sound like the
thing they describe, while in visual languages iconic signs will look like the thing they describe.

BROTHER and SISTER are examples of arbitrary signs in ASL. Their meanings do not mimic
brothers and sisters visually and their meaning is not decipherable strictly from seeing the signs
produced. Though the placement of a person sign on the top half or bottom half of the head
has iconic meaning for someone versed in ASL, the actual placement that indicates gender is
not representative of those genders in any way so such signs can not be said to be iconic. An
example of an iconic sign is TREE. In the sign TREE, the extended fingers of the 5-handshape
phoneme are visually representative of the branches on a tree and the forearm shares the
characteristics of a tree trunk.
Hold reduction and movement epenthesis are also phonological processes that could
apply to an analysis of the signs BROTHER and SISTER, but this paper has concerned itself
with showing the two signs connections to the phonological concepts of minimal pair and
assimilation as well as the linguistics distinction between arbitrary and iconic words.