IGBO SIGN LANGUAGE PHONOLOGY: ARTICULATORY ELEMENTS

Abstract

Primarily, phonology is the study of the sound system of a language. The term phonology as a general scientific concept is used in sign language studies to refer to the study of those physical elements of signs whose contrast lead to meaningful differences among signs,Okombo, et al (2006). This paper examines the major distinguishing physical elements in Igbo sign language phonology which include: hand shapes (articulators), movement (manner of articulation), location (place of articulation), palm orientation (manner of articulation) and non-manual signals which have to combine with the manual signs to make meaning. The researchers adopted a descriptive method and collected the data through video coverage/ snapshots of the basic lexical signs from selected Igbo home signers. The Phonological Model that outlines the parameters for sign description, which builds on the fundamental works done by Stokoe (1960), Klima and Bellugi, et al (1975) forms the framework used in the analysis of the data. The work discovers that most hand shapes in the Igbo Sign Language (ISL) are the same as those found in the American Sign Language (ASL), and that there are evidences of some phonological realizations and processes like minimal pairs, free variation, assimilation, deletion etc, in the signing patterns of Igbo home signers. It then concludes that the study of phonology is concerned with the distinctive units of language whether they are based on an audio languagewhose smallest contrastive units are sounds or visual language whose smallest distinctive units are its articulatory elements. It therefore establishes that these articulatory elements of sign language phonology can equally be applied to the study of Igbo sign language phonology, and suggests further linguistics research on the Igbo sign language structure to see how other phonological realizations/processes apply to the language.