Mãos e juntas em ação: Um estudo sobre economia articulatória a partir de dados de produção espontânea da Língua Brasileira de Sinais

Abstract

The present study analyzes how the principle of Articulatory Economy can be attested in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), based on spontaneous production data. We assume, therefore, that it is possible to associate articulatory effort with the notion of biomechanical effort and that, in this way, Force can be considered a measure of effort, as suggested elsewhere. Articulatory economy is obtained through operations and processes aimed at reducing this biomechanical effort. Starting from the analysis of movement and number of hands, we aim at identifying possible changes in the articulation of verbs in Libras, in the context of connected signing. To do so, we analyze the production of a signing deaf individual, extracted from the Libras Corpus. Our data indicate that more than 40% of the produced verbs differ from their citation form, which has implications for our understanding of connected signing and raises discussions in both linguistic research and the teaching of Libras. Furthermore, we clearly identify a tendency for changes that, in our analysis, imply a reduction in biomechanical effort, such as: movement reduction; movement suppression; increase in the number of hands; and distalization of movement.