| Non-manual feature(e.g.facial expressions and mouth movements etc.)indicate important grammatical functions in both semantic and syntactic levels in sign language system.The extant studies have demonstrated that non-manual features are the supersegmental phonemes of sign language,and furthermore,some special non-manual features can be used to signal different types of clauses and manifest the syntactic features of sign language.In addition,non-manual features also have rhythmic and pragmatic functions in sign language.At present,many television news programs offer sign interpretation in their broadcasting,which is one of the main tools to build the information accessibility system in our nation.However,previous studies did not touch upon the usage of non-manual features of sign language interpreter in the television news programs.Through the analysis of the non-manual features in these programs,this paper finds that hearing interpreter communicates the information mainly through signs with very few non-manual features,while deaf interpreter conveys information through sign language with rich and vivid non-manual features.In view of the functions of non-manual features in sign language,this paper,taking the "negative" expressions as the entry point,examines the usages of negative non-manual features by hearing interpreter and deaf interpreter in television news programs,and probes their differences and the corresponding causes.Specifically,firstly,this paper demonstrates that there is a great difference of using non-manual features by hearing interpreter and deaf interpreter in expressing the negative meanings.Secondly,the application of negative non-manual features by hearing interpreter does not conform to the normal grammatical characteristics of sign language.In the present situation,some problems exist in the hearing interpretation,such as,the hearing interpretation lacks of non-manual features,the interpreter translates the information according to the Chinese word order,the interpreter positions his or her role as the news host,and the interpreter only has a vague sense towards the audience.Lastly,this paper holds the view that the usage of negative non-manual features by deaf interpreter is influenced by the context of television news program.By contrastive research,we find that the usage of negative non-manual features by deaf interpreter basically conforms to the habits of deaf people in using sign language.However,compared to the daily communication of the deaf people,the usage of negative non-manual features of deaf interpreter are influenced by Chinese language and have different formal and syntactic features,which are caused by many factors including characteristics,recording methods and audience of news programs,as well as the interpretation time and site.Based on the previous studies,this paper gives a preliminary analysis of grammatical characteristics in using the negative non-manual features.We find that the negativity of facial expressions does better than nodding in term of word-building,with the combination of negative facial expression "frown/drawn brows + squinting/eye closing + mouth movement" constituting the basic negative words.In the negative words with particular negative affixes,"head turning" has its own specific phonemes.In the syntactic level,through the analysis of negative facial expressions,we find that the negative distribution develops in a regular way and this distribution can be used to mark the syntactic features of negative expressions.The fact that nodding is preferred at the end of a clause manifests the particular "SOV"(subject-object-verb)word order of sign language.Besides,the independent nodding after a sentence can be used as a negative marker to negate the whole sentence or topic. |
PDF Full Text Request