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American Sign Language Handshapes Reflect Pressures for Communicative Efficiency

Kayo Yin, Terry Regier, Dan Klein

TL;DR

The paper demonstrates that ASL handshapes reflect communicative-efficiency pressures, with native ASL signs showing lower articulatory effort for frequent handshapes, while English-derived signs do not exhibit the same optimization. By combining ASL-LEX usage data, rare-English word sampling, and a fingerspelling corpus, the authors quantify handshape frequency, joint-angle-based effort, and perceptual discriminability via handshape distance. The findings support efficiency pressures in the native ASL lexicon and suggest that such pressures are less influential for signs borrowed from English, highlighting modality-specific optimization and the role of phonological constraints in shaping signed languages. These results advance understanding of sign-language phonology and the interplay between usage and form in the visual-gestural modality, with implications for language evolution and cross-linguistic comparisons.

Abstract

Communicative efficiency is a key topic in linguistics and cognitive psychology, with many studies demonstrating how the pressure to communicate with minimal effort guides the form of natural language. However, this phenomenon is rarely explored in signed languages. This paper shows how handshapes in American Sign Language (ASL) reflect these efficiency pressures and provides new evidence of communicative efficiency in the visual-gestural modality. We focus on hand configurations in native ASL signs and signs borrowed from English to compare efficiency pressures from both ASL and English usage. First, we develop new methodologies to quantify the articulatory effort needed to produce handshapes and the perceptual effort required to recognize them. Then, we analyze correlations between communicative effort and usage statistics in ASL or English. Our findings reveal that frequent ASL handshapes are easier to produce and that pressures for communicative efficiency mostly come from ASL usage, rather than from English lexical borrowing.

American Sign Language Handshapes Reflect Pressures for Communicative Efficiency

TL;DR

The paper demonstrates that ASL handshapes reflect communicative-efficiency pressures, with native ASL signs showing lower articulatory effort for frequent handshapes, while English-derived signs do not exhibit the same optimization. By combining ASL-LEX usage data, rare-English word sampling, and a fingerspelling corpus, the authors quantify handshape frequency, joint-angle-based effort, and perceptual discriminability via handshape distance. The findings support efficiency pressures in the native ASL lexicon and suggest that such pressures are less influential for signs borrowed from English, highlighting modality-specific optimization and the role of phonological constraints in shaping signed languages. These results advance understanding of sign-language phonology and the interplay between usage and form in the visual-gestural modality, with implications for language evolution and cross-linguistic comparisons.

Abstract

Communicative efficiency is a key topic in linguistics and cognitive psychology, with many studies demonstrating how the pressure to communicate with minimal effort guides the form of natural language. However, this phenomenon is rarely explored in signed languages. This paper shows how handshapes in American Sign Language (ASL) reflect these efficiency pressures and provides new evidence of communicative efficiency in the visual-gestural modality. We focus on hand configurations in native ASL signs and signs borrowed from English to compare efficiency pressures from both ASL and English usage. First, we develop new methodologies to quantify the articulatory effort needed to produce handshapes and the perceptual effort required to recognize them. Then, we analyze correlations between communicative effort and usage statistics in ASL or English. Our findings reveal that frequent ASL handshapes are easier to produce and that pressures for communicative efficiency mostly come from ASL usage, rather than from English lexical borrowing.
Paper Structure (18 sections, 4 equations, 5 figures, 1 table)

This paper contains 18 sections, 4 equations, 5 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Structure of ASL
  4. Fingerspelling
  5. Data
  6. ASL-LEX
  7. English
  8. ASL Fingerspelling
  9. Methodology
  10. Usage Metrics
  11. Measures of Effort
  12. Analysis
  13. Articulatory effort
  14. Perceptual effort
  15. Discussion
  16. ...and 3 more sections

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: Examples of handshapes in ASL components. The ASL lexicon can be divided into a native component (e.g. signs native to ASL; left) and a foreign component (e.g. fingerspelling, loan signs; right). 19 out of 22 handshapes in ASL fingerspelling also appear in the native lexicon.
  • Figure 2: ASL fingerspelling letters from keane2014towards. For certain letters, the palm is oriented differently than in practice to better illustrate the handshape.
  • Figure 3: List of hand landmarks in MediaPipe zhang2020mediapipe.
  • Figure 4: Hands in low effort positions.
  • Figure 5: Correlations between usage statistics in ASL and English and articulatory/perceptual effort. FS handshape frequency in native ASL signs is inversely correlated with finger independence. However, there is no significant correlation between communicative effort and usage statistics from English.