Research Areas
I am specialized in phonology (of spoken and signed languages). My work thus focuses on the perceptual side of language, i.e., the sound structure of spoken languages, traditionally called phonology, and the visual structure of sign languages, which is now also covered by that same term.
Specific research areas: Segmental structure in terms of features and feature groupings, syllable structure, word accent, tone, sign language, language change, the evolution of language, language acquisition, morphology, language typology, form-meaning relations in different modalities (in spoken language, sign language and in (sequential) drawing).
Additional interests regard the question as to whether humans are born with innate linguistic knowledge, the acquisition (ontogeny) and the evolution of language (phylogeny), and the broader semiotic study of all communication systems, both human and non-human.
I also take a strong interest in the history of my own field, phonology, and of linguistics at large.
In my work on spoken and signed languages, I pay special attention to the nature of these smallest elements, called features or elements, the structure that they enter into to form segments (called ‘phonemes’ in the study of spoken languages) and the organization of such segments into larger structures, like syllables and beyond.
For spoken languages, I have studied supra-segmental properties of words such as vowel harmony, and rules for the location of word accent in the broader context of word prosodic systems, that include, next to stress-accent, pitch-accent and tone.
I’m interested in phonological, often called prosodic structure, at the sentence level and with that, the relationship between morphosyntactic structure and phonological/prosodic structure.
The properties of words and sentences thus discovered are presumed to reflect the knowledge that humans have internalized in their minds of the perceptual side of language.
I pursue the hypothesis that at some level of abstraction phonology is a-modal, i.e., not tied to the specific articulatory or acoustic channel. In fact, I have argued that all semiotic systems have some kind of ‘phonology’ and I have suggested that a general, neutral term for the study of the perceptible side of all semiotic systems could be ‘formology’. The overall goal of my work is thus to analyze the perceptible appearance of all semiotic signs (simplex and complex) into their smallest elements and the larger structures that they enter into before meaning comes into play. This endeavor involves understand and formalizing how iconicity contributes to the perceptible form of signs.
While the perceptual side of words and sentences is understood to be independent of their meaning (which is referred to as the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign and the notion if ‘duality of patterning), my research thus also addresses the occurrence of non-arbitrary relationships between the perceptible form and meaning of words, and larger expressions (which is referred to as iconicity).
I have devoted considerable attention to the place of phonology in the overall (mental) grammar and, along with that, to the debate also whether phonology and syntax are fundamentally ‘different’. It has been my view that there are significant structural analogies between phonology and syntax and that both modules make up the mental grammar, accounting for the formal side of language. I have opposed the idea that syntax is a central component and instead favored the view that syntax accommodates/expresses semantic-conceptual structure (which includes what has been called Logical Form) which is in that sense the most fundamental aspect of human language.
See ‘Central Theoretical proposals in my work’ for the theories and ideas that I have proposed in the domain of features, word accent, sign language phonology, as well as the organization of the mental grammar at large and other, related topics I have worked on.
Databases
I have contributed to the development in 5 phonological databases:
Childphon: See: https://talkbank.org/phon/access/Dutch/CLPF.html
Incorporated in the Childes Database: https://talkbank.org/childes/access/
Developed by Clara Levelt and Paula Fikkert
Supervision: Aditi Lahiri and Harry van der Hulst
See:
Fikkert, Paula (1994). On the Acquisition of Prosodic Structure. Leiden: HIL Dissertations in Linguistics 6. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.
Levelt, Clara (1994). On the Acquisition of Place. Leiden: HIL Dissertations in Linguistics 8. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.
SignPhon:
Developed by Onno Crasborn, Els van der Kooij and Harry van der Hulst
SignPhon (no longer accessible) was designed to store information about the phonetic and phonological structure of 3000 (isolated) signs from Sign Language of the Netherlands. For a description, see: https://harry-van-der-hulst.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1733/2016/05/100-Signphon.pdf
See:
Crasborn, Onno. 2001. Phonetic implementation of phonological categories in sign language of the Netherlands. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands.
Kooij, Els van der 2002. Phonological Categories in Sign Language of the Netherlands. The Role of Phonetic Implementation and Iconicity, PhD Thesis, Universiteit Leiden, Leiden.
Signtyp: https://signtyp.uconn.edu/
Developed by Rachel Channon and Harry van der Hulst
SignTyp is an on-going project to collect, transcribe and analyze videos of signs across globally dispersed sign languages. It started with the creation of 1000 pictorial prompts. These prompts were primarily photographs of concrete objects – animals, natural objects, clothing, food, tools, buildings, recreational activities, sports, geography, object shapes, and some more abstract concepts including family relationships, roles, numbers, colors, and time concepts. Because the prompts are photographs, the responses tend to be noun-like. Thirty signers from 25 countries were recruited to record sign responses to the prompts, for a total of over 20,000 clipped videos. So far, transcribers have made initial transcriptions of 9,500 of 15 selected signers’ responses, with 1400 systematically edited.
StressTyp: http://st2.ullet.net/
StressTyp2 is a typological database containing information on stress and accent patterns in over 750 of the world’s languages with nearly every language family represented.
Developed by Harry van der Hulst, Rob Goedemans and Jeff Heinz
SylTyp:
Developed by Harry van der Hulst and Rob Goedemans
No documentation. This project halted, but may continue at a later date.
Data for a small number of languages was added based on an extensive questionnaire.