An analysis of the pauses (holds) in a passage in American Sign Language reveals that sequences of signs are interspersed with holds of different lengths. Long holds appear to indicate the ends of sentences; shorter holds, the break between two conjoined sentences; and the shortest holds, breaks between internal constituents. (Author/MV)

The theory that reduction transformations provide speakers with the option of deleting redundant information when communicating to a topic-cognizant audience is supported. In the experiment, college physiology students were provided with deep structure proximal sentences (base propositions), and asked to communicate them to different audiences,…