Audience effects in American Sign Language interpretation

There is a system of English mouthing during interpretation that appears to be the result of language contact between spoken language and signed language. English mouthing is a voiceless visual representation of words on a signer's lips produced concurrently with manual signs. It is a type of borrowing prevalent among English-dominant bilingual-bimodal sign language interpreters who use American Sign Language (ASL) and spoken English when interpreting for deaf consumers (Davis, 1989; Weisenberg, 2003). It is distinct from other systems of grammatical mouthing observed in native deaf signers. Bilingual-bimodal interpreters have the advantage of simultaneity : the two channels of expression are distinctly different: one, a visual-gestural channel, the other, oral-aural. When sign language interpreters organize abstract oral English discourse into a concrete visual-spatial form, they borrow from their dominant language, English. This study tested audience effects during interpretation from spoken English to ASL. Interpreters shifted their style to accommodate their addressees. A style shift was measured by the rate of English mouthing. Based on an analysis of variance (ANOVA) F(1,3) = 6.25, p = .08, the study demonstrates that the perceived cultural identity of the audience has more of an effect on English mouthing than topic, F(1, 3) = .046, p = .84. A pattern of mouthing reduction was also discovered. At least two experimental contexts contained technical terminology that was repeated. When there were no manual equivalents in ASL, interpreters interpreted these terms by overlapping mouthing with a manual sign of approximate meaning. Once they had expressed the combination, the mouthing was reduced or removed completely. This study confirms what is a commonly held notion in audience design, that speakers adjust their language in reaction to their addressees, and also opens up an inquiry to the use of the sign language interpreting context as a means of examining neologisms and language variability

Accurate mass–time tag library for LC/MS-based metabolite profiling of medicinal plants

We report the development and testing of an accurate mass – time (AMT) tag approach for the LC/MS-based identification of plant natural products (PNPs) in complex extracts. An AMT tag library was developed for approximately 500 PNPs with diverse chemical structures, detected in electrospray and atmospheric pressure chemical ionization modes (both positive and negative polarities). In addition, to enable peak annotations with high confidence, MS/MS spectra were acquired with three different fragmentation energies. The LC/MS and MS/MS data sets were integrated into online spectral search tools and repositories (Spektraris and MassBank), thus allowing users to interrogate their own data sets for the potential presence of PNPs. The utility of the AMT tag library approach is demonstrated by the detection and annotation of active principles in 27 different medicinal plant species with diverse chemical constituents