Event representations constrain the structure of language: Sign language as a window into universally accessible linguistic biases

TLDR

Sign languages provide a visual perspective that helps determine whether language features are universally accessible. The study shows that fine‑grained verb meanings and telicity mappings appear consistently across unrelated sign languages, and even nonsigners can infer these meanings from unfamiliar signs, indicating universal linguistic biases.

Abstract

Significance One key issue in the study of human language is understanding what, if any, features of individual languages may be universally accessible. Sign languages offer a privileged perspective on this issue because the visual modality can help implement and detect certain properties that may be present but unmarked in spoken languages. The current work finds that fine-grained aspects of verb meanings visibly emerge across unrelated sign languages using identical mappings between meaning and visual form. Moreover, nonsigners lacking prior exposure to sign languages can intuit these meanings from entirely unfamiliar signs. This is highly suggestive that signers and nonsigners share universally accessible notions of telicity as well as universally accessible “mapping biases” between telicity and visual form.