台灣手語手形頻率的功能探討

A Functional Explanation of Taiwan Sign Language Handshape Frequency

手語的研究雖然已進行了近半個世紀之久，但是手語的結構和使用仍有很多值得進一步探討的地方。雖然頻率效應長期以來在功能語言學派扮演重要的角色，如今主流語言學也積極探討這個領域，但鮮少有手語頻率效應方面的探討，本文的研究為填補這方面的不足踏出一小步。史文漢和丁立芬(1984)列舉了台灣手語56個手形。根據無差異性假設(nullhypothesis)，所有56個手形應具有相同的發生頻率。作者以一個小型語料庫為基礎說明事實並不是如此。事實上有些手形具有更高的發生頻率。為何會如此？任何詳盡的解答都包含競爭的因素作者認為表達器官的容易程度(easeofarticulation)可，用來解釋此現象，並且試圖說明其解釋的極限。在Ann(1993,1996)的文章中將手形依照表達的容易程度區分為容易表達的手形，困難表達的手形和不可能表達的手形三類，並且將所有可能的手形及已發現的台灣手語手形放入這個分類表格中。本文的結論是最頻繁發生的手形傾向於最容易表達的手形，但最少出現的手形並不一定是困難表達的手形，雖然這只是這個研究領域的初步結果但這確實為台灣手語關於頻率效應的未來研究開啟了一扇門。

Linguistic exploration of sign languages has been going on for nearly half a century. Yet, much remains to be learned about sign language structure and use. Although frequency effects have long been known to be important in functional approaches to linguistics, and exploration in this area is now gaining momentum in mainstream linguistics, questions of frequency effects have hardly been explored in sign languages. This work is a small step in the direction of filling that gap. Smith & Ting (1984) identify 56 handshapes in TSL. The null hypothesis predicts that all 56 ought to occur with equal frequency in TSL. I show, using a very small corpus, that this is not the case; in fact, some handshapes have a much greater token frequency than others. Why should this be? Knowing that any thorough answer will encompass competing factors, I appeal to the notion of ease of articulation and see how far it can go. Following Ann 1993 and 1996, I categorize handshapes into three groups: easy to articulate, hard to articulate and impossible to articulate, and show how logically possible handshapes, including attested TSL handshapes, fit into this paradigm. Then I show that the most frequently occurring handshapes tend to be the easiest to articulate, but that the least frequently occurring handshapes are not necessarily those that are hard to articulate. The results presented here are admittedly preliminary, but they serve to open the door to future investigation of frequency effects in TSL.