The acquisition of sign language: the impact of phonetic complexity on phonology

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The acquisition of sign language: the impact of phonetic complexity on phonology
Wolfgang Mann, Chloe R. Marshall, Kathryn Mason, and Gary Morgan
Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, University College London &
Department of Language and Communication Science, City University London






Key words: sign language development; sign phonology; sign phonetics; language processing
Running head: Nonsense sign repetition

Corresponding author:
Dr. Wolfgang Mann
Department of Language and Communication Science
City University
Northampton Square
London EC1V 0HB
Email: wolfgang.mann.1@city.ac.uk

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Abstract
Research into the effect of phonetic complexity on phonological acquisition has a long history in
spoken languages. This paper considers the effect of phonetics on phonological development in a
signed language. We report on an experiment in which non-word-repetition methodology was adapted
so as to examine in a systematic way how phonetic complexity in two phonological parameters of
signed languages – handshape and movement – affects the perception and articulation of signs. 91 Deaf
children aged 3-11 years acquiring British Sign Language (BSL), and 46 hearing non-signers aged 6-
11, were tested. For Deaf children, repetition accuracy improved with age, correlated with wider BSL
abilities, and was lowest for signs that were phonetically complex. Repetition accuracy was correlated
with fine motor skills for the youngest children. Despite their lower repetition accuracy, the hearing
group were similarly affected by phonetic complexity, suggesting that common visual and motoric
factors are at play when processing linguistic information in the visuo-gestural modality.

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Introduction
Deaf people around the world have created visual ways of talking to each other. Through many
generations of users coming together in schools and associations for Deaf1 people, languages such as
American, British and Nicaraguan Sign Language have been created (Woll, 2003; Senghas, Kita, &
Özyürek, 2004). Not until the mid-twentieth century, however, did linguists demonstrate that signed
languages obey linguistic principles in a way that separates them from mere pantomime and gesture
(Klima & Bellugi, 1979; Stokoe, 1960). This work revealed that signed and spoken languages share
basic linguistic properties, despite the radical modality differences in reception and expression.
Furthermore, children who are exposed to signed languages from birth show remarkable parallels in
onset, rate and patterns of development compared to children learning spoken languages: first signs and
early sign combinations appear at a similar time to first words and early word combinations, and syntax
is also mastered along a similar timescale (Petitto et al, 2001; Chamberlain, Morford, & Mayberry,
2000; Morgan & Woll, 2002; Schick, Marschark, & Spencer, 2005).
Nevertheless, modality does shape how linguistic structure is expressed (Meier, Cormier, &
Quinto-Pozos, 2002; Sandler & Lillo-Martin, 2006), and this is particularly true for phonology, where
the effects of phonetics are most keenly felt (Sandler & Lillo-Martin, 2006). Research into the effect of
phonetic complexity, both perceptual and articulatory, on phonology and on phonological acquisition
has a long history in spoken languages (e.g. Jakobson, 1941; Stampe, 1973), and has returned to the
fore with the advent of Optimality Theory and its emphasis on markedness2 (McCarthy, 2004).

1 Following the conventions of the sign language literature, we use Deaf with an uppercase (D) to refer to members of the
community that use BSL. We use deaf with a lowercase (d) only when discussing the effects of hearing loss.
2 Marked structures are those that are less common cross-linguistically, and such structures tend to be acquired later by
children (Jakobson, 1941). As a first approximation, marked phonological structures tend to be more complex than
unmarked, notwithstanding disagreements over exactly how complexity is best measured (Gierut, 2007).

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The purpose of the present study is to investigate the impact of phonetic complexity on
children’s ability to carry out a phonological task – the repetition of nonsense signs. We tested two
groups: Deaf children who are acquiring British Sign Language (BSL) as a first language (aged 3-11
years), and hearing children with no experience of signing (aged 6-11 years). This method gives us the
opportunity to investigate two things: (1) the systematic manipulation of phonetic (i.e. visual and
motoric) complexity in two phonological parameters - handshape and movement - enables us to
investigate how phonetic complexity impacts on children’s accuracy in perceiving and articulating
nonsense signs and how this changes during development, and (2) the comparison of children who
regularly use sign language (Deaf children) to children with no experience of sign language (hearing
children) enables us to determine whether the effects of sign language phonetics are universal, and to
what extent sign language processing is affected by language experience and language-specific
phonological knowledge.
In the remainder of this introduction, we first discuss the acquisition of phonology and the
relationship between phonetics and phonology in children who are acquiring a spoken language. We
then provide a background to sign language phonology, concentrating on the parameters ‘handshape’
and ‘movement’, as they are the focus of our experimental work. We go on to discuss children’s
acquisition of sign language phonology, and then introduce the methodology that we adjust for use in
our study: non-word repetition. Finally, we outline our hypotheses and predictions.
The acquisition of spoken language phonology and the relationship between phonetics and phonology
There have been many studies detailing phonological development in hearing children (e.g.
Smith, 1973; Locke, 1983; Vihman, 1995; Bernhardt & Stemberger, 1998). Children’s first
phonological forms can be strikingly different to the standard forms used by adults. For example,
young English-speaking children frequently reduce consonant clusters to single consonants (e.g. frog
→ [eNf]), and substitute phonemes (e.g. fish → [eHr]). These errors are generally fairly systematic and

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predictable, and result in simplified forms: a singleton consonant is less complex than a cluster, and the
/R/ in fish has been replaced by the earlier acquired phoneme /r/. Prosodic structure is also simplified in
early child language, for example, by the deletion of unfooted syllables (Demuth, 1996)
Taken together, the afore-mentioned examples can be characterised as the substitution of
complex or ‘marked’ phonological structures by simple, ‘unmarked’, structures. There is a long
tradition of seeing phonological markedness as having its grounding in phonetics (e.g. Stampe, 1973), a
view that has had a resurgence with the popularity of constraint-based models of phonology (see Hayes
& Steriade, 2004; McCarthy, 2004). For example, clusters are considered marked relative to singleton
consonants because of their perceptual and articulatory complexity. Likewise, because children are
acquiring language at a time when their vocal tract is undergoing considerable physiological
development, articulatory pressures influence children’s simplification errors.
Several recent studies have attempted to explore this relationship between phonology and
articulation in some detail. Kirk (2008) investigated substitution errors in English-speaking children’s
clusters, whereby the cluster is retained but its segmental content is altered, e.g ducks → [cUsr] and
swing → [evHM]. The children were aged 1;5 to 2;7. She found that the majority of substitution errors
resulted in clusters where both consonants shared place of articulation (i.e. one of the consonants had
undergone assimilation, as in the aforementioned examples). After considering various alternative
hypotheses, Kirk argued that children produced such forms because they are articulatorily simpler.
Inkelas and Rose (2008) produced a detailed case study of a child (“E”) aged 1;0 to 2;2 whose
speech was characterised by two phonological processes, velar fronting (whereby /j/ and /f/ are
realised as [s] and [c]) and lateral gliding (whereby /k/ is realised as [j]). Both processes only took place
word-initially or in the onsets of strong syllables, with examples of velar fronting including cup →
[sgUo], again → [?!cHm] and conductor → [sUm!cUjs?]. Inkelas and Rose argued that the greater
gestural magnitude of prosodically strong onsets in English interacted with the anatomy of the child’s

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vocal tract (specifically, children have tongues that are relatively large for their mouth, and palates that
are relatively short, compared to adults) so that E produced coronals rather than velars in these
positions. E then extended this pattern to lateral gliding, which developed later and showed similar
prosodic conditioning, even though its existence had less direct articulatory motivation. This account -
the phonologization of a phonetically-motivated effect - therefore appeals to an interplay between
phonology and phonetics in explaining phonological errors.
The existence of so-called ‘chain shifts’ in child speech reveals that not only articulatory, but
also perceptual pressures, lead to phonological errors. A common pattern in child speech is for /S/ to be
replaced by [e] but for /r/ to be produced as [S]; for example, /SHm/ and /eHm/ are both pronounced as
[eHm], but /rHm/ is pronounced as [SHm]. The fact that the child is able to produce [SHm] suggests that the
/SHm/ ~ [eHm] error is a perceptual one; indeed, even adults perceptually confuse /S/ and /e/ (see
discussion of chain shifts in Dinnsen & Barlow, 1998).
All of the above work has been carried out on children who are acquiring a spoken language.
We know that children learn signed and spoken languages in very similar ways, and so we would
expect phonological markedness and phonetic complexity to also play a role in the acquisition of
signed languages. In the next section we explore what phonological markedness and phonetic
complexity in the signed language modality can be defined, and how they impact on phonological
acquisition.

Sign language phonology
As in spoken languages, signed languages systematically organize meaningless phonological
units into meaningful ones (Stokoe, 1960; Brentari, 1998). However, modality differences make the
phonologies of signed and spoken languages appear quite different. Signs are formed through the
combination of several different sources of information articulated on the body of the signer. The three

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main phonological parameters discussed in the literature are: handshape (the configuration of the hand),
movement (how the sign is articulated) and location (where the sign is articulated). Furthermore,
phonological parameters are expressed simultaneously in a sign. For example, in the British Sign
Language (BSL) sign NAME (see first sign in Figure 1), the signer forms the handshape at the same
time she moves it to the forehead location, and she maintains this handshape throughout the sign.
//Insert Figure 1about here//
By combining parameters in different ways, signed languages exhibit minimal pairs similar to
those in spoken languages (e.g. cap/gap; bus/but): there are pairs of signs that share all their parameters
but one. For example, the sign NAME forms a minimal pair with AFTERNOON (see second sign in
figure 1): the two signs are identical with regard to their handshapes and movements involved but differ
in their location (forehead and chin respectively).
In this paper we focus on markedness in just two parameters - handshape and movement, and
we describe these next.
Handshape
In several different areas of research handshape has been identified as the most difficult
parameter to acquire and process. Children who learn to sign late have difficulties mastering this aspect
of signing (Singleton, Morford, & Goldin-Meadow, 1993), handshape comes up as consistently
different when comparing gesture and sign (Schembri, 2005) and in studies of sign perception in
gesturers and signers, handshape stands out as difficult for nonsigners (Brentari 2006).
Different handshapes vary with respect to their phonetic complexity. Handshapes are formed
from different configurations (e.g. open, closed, curved) of specific parts of the hand (fingers, thumb
and wrist). Some handshapes are more difficult to articulate than others, due to constraints on the
anatomy and physiology of the different fingers and their joints (Ann, 1996). For example, only the
thumb, index and little fingers have independent extensor muscles which allow them to be more easily

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extended than the middle and ring fingers in one-finger handshapes (i.e. handshapes where just one
finger is extended and the other fingers are closed; Ann, 1996).
The articulators in signed languages are obviously very different to those in spoken languages.
Yet just as spoken languages have distinctive features which are the phonological correlates of phonetic
dimensions and which form a web of dependencies – “feature geometry”, so signed languages are
proposed to have features and feature geometries. Handshapes with the simplest phonological structure
have the fewest number of selected features and therefore the simplest feature geometry (Brentari,
1998). They are also unmarked.
Complexity and markedness affect how frequently different handshapes are used within and
across languages. Simple, unmarked, handshapes are more frequent in the lexicon than complex,
marked, handshapes (Sutton-Spence & Woll, 1999). Four unmarked handshapes have been proposed
for BSL: ‘G’3 (fist with index finger extended), ‘5’ (with all five digits extended and spread), ‘B’
(fingers extended and together), and ‘A’ (fist), which together count for 50% of signs (Sutton-Spence
& Woll, 1999)4. For example, the ‘G’ handshape occurs in hundreds of BSL signs and also plays a
major role as a person classifier, in pronominal reference and finger spelling (Brien, 1992). In contrast,
the ‘Y’ handshape, formed with an extension of the thumb and little finger, is used much less
frequently, being listed in only ten lexical signs in the BSL Dictionary (Brien, 1992). Furthermore,
marked handshapes are less frequent cross-linguistically than unmarked ones (Ann, 1996).
Movement
The second phonological parameter that we consider in this study is movement. Signs can differ
in their path of primary movement. For example, they may contain a straight or curved movement.
Alternatively, signs may not have any path movement at all, but a hand-internal movement instead,

3 The convention is for handshapes to be named after the letters they represent in the American Sign Language alphabet or
counting system.
4 These handshapes occur in American Sign Language, where they are also considered unmarked, e.g. by Brentari (1998)
(who uses the term ‘1’ handshape instead of the ‘G’ handshape).

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such as finger flicking or wiggling. More phonetically complex than single movements are clusters of
movements, whereby an internal movement is produced simultaneously with a path movement. An
example is the BSL sign FIRE (noun), which consists of an up-and-down movement of both hands
while, at the same time, the fingers move back and forth (wiggle). In an abstract sense this complex
cluster of movements resembles groups of sounds in spoken words where phonemic units are expressed
in sequential clusters e.g. ‘splash’. But additionally in signs like FIRE the two movement components
are packed together so that they show partial or total overlap (Brentari, 1998; Crasborn, 2001).

Acquisition of sign language phonology
Research into the development of sign language phonology is hindered by us having only
partial linguistic descriptions of some signed languages, and far fewer studies of acquisition in those
languages. Despite this, several studies have shown similarities in the development of sign phonology
to previously documented cases in the spoken language literature (Boyes-Braem, 1990; Clibbens &
Harris, 1993; Karnopp, 2002; Meier, 2005; Morgan, 2006). In particular, phonetic complexity and
phonological markedness affect phonological acquisition in signed languages as in spoken languages,
with young children simplifying phonological forms and mastering complex target forms only
gradually.
The first handshapes acquired by young Deaf children are unmarked ones (Boyes-Braem, 1990;
McIntire, 1977; Siedlecki & Bonvillian, 1997). Marked handshapes are acquired later, with some still
developing in children after 5 years of age (Boyes-Braem, 1990; McIntire, 1977; Siedlecki &
Bonvillian, 1997). During acquisition Deaf children have been documented to substitute unmarked
handshapes for complex ones. For example, the sign COW produced with a marked ‘Y’ hand in the
adult input might be repeated by the child with an unmarked ‘5’ hand. This observation has been
compared with phoneme substitution in hearing children (Meier, 2005; Morgan; 2006; Morgan,
Barrett-Jones, & Stoneham, 2007).

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Underlying the reported phonological simplification data from sign acquisition studies are the
effects of phonetic complexity – both motoric and visual – driving that simplification process.
Unmarked handshapes are easier to articulate and to distinguish from other handshapes, while marked
handshapes are harder to produce and to perceive (Conlin, Mirus, Mauk, & Meier, 2000; Siedlecki &
Bonvillian, 1993). Young children often misarticulate signs and replace marked handshapes with
unmarked ones, but in doing so retain some of the visual similarity between the target and the child
handshape (Marentette & Mayberry, 2000; Morgan et al, 2007). Handshapes, because of their fine
phonetic detail, also require most attention in perceiving phonological contrasts. Children find
handshape perception the most demanding part of sign comprehension (Hamilton, 1986).
Consequently, children aged 1-3 years tend to make fewer errors with regard to the movement
component of the sign than with handshapes.
However, gross and fine motor development influences the types of movements the child
produces (Meier, 2005). The most demanding aspect of a sign’s movement in this latter respect is the
correct articulation of internal movements e.g. finger flicks, wiggles, pinches and repeated finger
bends. Furthermore, children will sometimes simplify complex clusters of movements. For example,
they may delete one of the movements, producing FIRE either without the hand internal movement or
with a wiggle of the fingers but without the up and down path movements (Morgan et al, 2007). This
process has been likened to consonant cluster reduction in spoken language (Morgan, 2006).
The third phonological parameter concerns the location at which a sign is produced. Location
represents by far the simplest part of the sign for Deaf children to acquire and several studies report
early mastery of this component with very few errors after 3 years of age (Cheek, Cormier, Repp, &
Meier, 2001; Meier, 2005; Morgan, 2006). For this reason we do not focus on the location component
in the present study. In contrast, the handshape, movement and hand-internal components of the sign
continue to develop beyond 3 years of age, but it is not clear at what age they are mastered and whether
they cause difficulties with phonological processing.

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Until now, our understanding of the first steps in sign language acquisition has come from
single case studies or studies of small numbers of Deaf children. There have been few descriptions of
sign phonology development of older children. The creation of a nonsense sign repetition test, where
Deaf children repeat novel signs, allows us to experimentally manipulate the phonetic complexity of
phonological representations and collect data from a large number of Deaf children over a wide age
range (3-11 years). It allows us to look at the interaction between complexity of handshape and
complexity of movement in a way that is very difficult to accomplish using spontaneous data. It also
allows us to confirm whether results from previous small-scale studies, showing that path movement is
mastered earlier than handshape and internal movement, generalise to a larger group of children, and to
investigate whether handshape and internal movement continue to cause difficulties during the
processing of phonological material. By comparing non-word repetition abilities with scores on a test
of BSL comprehension we can compare Deaf children’s developing phonological abilities with their
general language skills. Finally, because the task can be carried out as a gesture-copying task by
hearing children with no phonological knowledge of BSL (or indeed any other sign language), we can
investigate how phonetic complexity contributes to accuracy in handshape and movement repetition.
Our experimental design allows us to determine whether the effects of sign language phonetics
are universal, and to what extent sign language processing is affected by (lack of) language experience
and by language-specific phonological knowledge. Hence we can examine the relationship between
phonetics and phonology in a way that would not be possible in spoken language – hearing children
could be tested on non-word repetition in another spoken language, but they would presumably bring
the phonology of their first language to bear on the task, whereas when tested in a different modality
they are unable to do so.
Non-word repetition as a tool for investigating phonological processing
Our method is based on non-word repetition tasks that are widely used in studies of spoken
language acquisition (Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998; Gallon, Harris, & van der Lely, 2007; Gathercole

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& Baddeley, 1990; Kirk & Demuth, 2006; Roy & Chiat, 2004). The participant is required to listen to a
set of non-words and repeat each one immediately after hearing it. This task recruits perceptual and
production skills, as well as the ability to encode a phonological representation for storage in
phonological working memory and to retrieve it from there (Gathercole, 2006). Because the child has
never encountered these forms before, the task taps into the child’s productive phonology,
unconfounded by stored lexical knowledge5. Although the task might appear abstract, it is ecologically
valid. Non-word repetition abilities are linked to word-learning abilities (Gathercole, 2006) and to
language development more generally. For instance, children with Specific Language Impairment
(SLI) and dyslexia are poor at repeating non-words (Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998; Gallon, Harris, &
van der Lely, 2007; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990).
In spoken language research, two manipulations of non-word items have been carried out: the
quantity of phonological material, achieved by manipulating the number of syllables (Gathercole &
Baddeley, 1990; Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998), and the nature of that phonological material, achieved
by manipulating the segmental content, syllabic complexity and/or metrical structure of that material
(de Bree, 2007; Gallon, Harris, & van der Lely, 2007; Kirk & Demuth, 2006; Marshall & van der Lely,
2009; Roy & Chiat, 2004). There is evidence that both the quantity of phonological material and the
nature of the phonological representation to be encoded impact on accuracy in this task – participants
are less accurate as length and complexity increase, and this is the case for children with typical and
atypical language development. Furthermore, the methodology allows the investigation of how
different aspects of the phonological representation might interact when stimulus length is controlled,
for example how word position and stress interact to affect consonant cluster accuracy (Marshall & van
der Lely, 2009).

5 The degree to which this statement is true depends on how word-like the stimuli are. Although non-words are by definition
not stored in the lexicon phonotactic probability is an important predictor of how accurately children will repeat them (see
Coady & Evans, 2008, for a review).

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In the present study we have adapted the non-word repetition methodology for BSL. While it is
not possible to manipulate the length of a sign, as most signs are only one syllable long (Brentari,
1998), nonsense signs can be manipulated with regards to their phonetic complexity along two
phonological parameters – handshape and movement – in ways which we have described earlier. Using
this methodology, we can investigate the perception, short term retention and articulation of novel
phonological forms, in both Deaf and hearing children. This enables us to compare performance on the
nonsense sign repetition task across age ranges and levels of phonetic complexity.
Hypotheses and predictions
Our hypotheses and predictions are as follows:
Hypothesis 1: Phonetic complexity has an impact on nonsense sign repetition accuracy.
Prediction: Deaf participants will repeat phonetically simple nonsense signs more accurately than
complex nonsense signs, and show most difficulties with nonsense signs that contain complex
handshapes and movement clusters. Handshape complexity will affect the accuracy of handshape
repetition, and that deletion of a movement from a movement cluster will be more likely if one of the
handshapes is complex.
Hypothesis 2: Handshape and internal movement are mastered later than path movement, and therefore
Deaf children will make more errors on handshape and internal movement than on path movement.
Prediction: Although the number of errors made on all phonological parameters will decrease with age,
difficulties with repeating handshape and internal movement will persist longer than difficulties with
path movement.
Hypothesis 3: Phonological abilities develop in concert with other linguistic abilities. Consequently,
repetition accuracy taps into other linguistic components of BSL ability (as has been found for spoken
language, see Gathercole, 2006, for a review).
Prediction: Accuracy on the repetition task will correlate with Deaf children’s BSL comprehension
ability, even when age is accounted for.

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Hypothesis 4: Phonological abilities develop in concert with the development of fine motor skills, i.e.
children’s ability to master the articulatory phonetics of signs. Children with more advanced fine motor
skills have better phonetic skills and therefore better phonology.
Prediction: Accuracy on the repetition task will correlate with Deaf children’s fine motor skills, even
when age is accounted for.
Hypothesis 5: Hearing, non-signing children approach the task as a gesture-copying task, without the
advantage of having any phonological knowledge of signs, but are still affected by the same phonetic
aspects of nonsense signs as Deaf children. In other words, they are able to approximate the nonsense
signs they see despite having never experienced sign language before, and therefore having no
phonological system in that modality: their repetitions represent the phonetic element of the task.
Prediction: Hearing children will perform overall significantly below their Deaf peers but will make the
same relative proportions of phonetically-driven complexity errors across conditions.
For ease of exposition, we divide the study into three parts. Part I presents the nonsense sign
repetition test and the data for the 91 Deaf participants. Part II investigates the relationship between the
Deaf children’s nonsense sign repetition accuracy and their wider BSL skills and fine motor skills. Part
III presents the data for the 46 hearing participants with no experience of BSL who undertook the
nonsense sign repetition test, and compares their data with those of the Deaf children.
Part I. Nonsense sign repetition test: Deaf children
Methods
Sample
A total of 91 congenitally Deaf children (60 boys/31 girls) participated in the experiment, and
were divided into three age groups labelled according to mean age: Group 4: 3-5 years old (N = 26,
mean = 4;11, range = 3;4-5;11), Group 7: 6-8 years old (N = 26 mean = 7;4, range = 6;0-8;10) and
Group 10: 9-11 years old (N = 38 mean = 10;3, range = 9;0-11;9). They were recruited through schools
for the Deaf in the UK. The children were either born into BSL-using Deaf families (N=14) or had very

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early exposure to BSL at nursery school, and subsequent typical language development as measured
using the BSL Receptive Skills test (Herman et al, 1999).6 Furthermore, we selected children with no
diagnosed special educational need additional to deafness and normal non verbal cognitive
development, as reported by the school educational psychologist and/or speech and language therapist.
All parents received letters asking permission to have their child participate in the project and to be
recorded by a video camera while completing the tasks. Only children who agreed to participate and
whose parents gave consent were included.
Nonsense sign stimuli
Test items consisted of nonsense signs that were phonotactically possible but meaningless in
BSL. To make sure that none of the items existed in BSL, three native signers (two Deaf and one
hearing) rated possible similarity to existing signs in BSL. Any flagged items were deleted and
replaced with an alternative. All the stimuli were produced by a Deaf fluent signer, sitting against a
blue screen facing a digital camera. The signer practiced each item several times in order to produce it
with normal fluency. All items were presented to participants as 10 x 14 inch images on a laptop
computer with a 15 inch screen.
Design
We manipulated the phonetic complexity of two phonological parameters: handshape and
movement. Using a 2 x 2 design, different phonetic complexity levels were generated for each
parameter, as shown in Table 1:
//Insert Table 1 about here//

6 This test assesses the comprehension of selected aspects of BSL morphology and syntax (negation, plurals, verb
morphology and the distinction between nouns and verbs) in a picture-pointing paradigm. There is an initial vocabulary
check for the signs that are used in the test, to avoid the possibility of the child making errors because of unfamiliarity with
individual lexical items.