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Sign Language
Plus – a FILM!!
What are sign languages?
• Sign languages are a visual spatial system of communication used as the primary means of communication by communities of deaf people around the world
• ASL, as used in Anglophone North America, is completely different from BSL
• Indeed, there are 114 sign languages in the world
Knowledge of Sign Languages
• Although sign languages have existed from at least 2 millenia, it is only in the past 30 years that they have been studied
• Early studied focussed on overcoming oralist biases
• Showed that sign languages have complex morphology, phonology, etc.
• And that equally complex ideas can be communicated
Debates
• For > 100 years, debates about optimal education
• Until 20 years ago, still strong oralist traditions
• Still in some places, but now the pendulum has swung so far that there is a movement for signing only communities
• And, resistance to interventions
Like any other language…
• Requires a community to be used – need a critical mass of users
• Until about 30 years ago, no critical mass in Nicaragua
• Then, children brought together into a school• Developed a home sign, which then turned into a
pidgin, and then a creole• Now a complex languages
What is a home sign?
• Gestural communicative systems
• That share many structural properties with sign languages
What are the structural properties of sign language?
• Signs have an abrupt onset, movement, and closure• Made up of a discrete number of units that are
combined and recombined • These can yield an infinite number of sentences• It can be used to talk about the here and now, as
well as abstract topics & events displaced in time• Signs can be classified in terms of hand
configuration, place of articulation and manner of movement
• Similar to place, manner, and voicing in speech
• Signs can also be assigned to grammatical class, like spoken words
• Individual signs have meanings, which can be changed by adding morphemes, as in spoken languages
• There are syntactic – word order – rules for combining signs
Preference for sign over gesture
• Ursula Hildebrandt and David Corrina• Recorded 2 native signers either signing or
gesturing• Showed the recordings to hearing infants of 6 and
12 months• Infants of 6 months showed a preference for sign
over gesture• Infants of 12 months did not• Consider this like the language specific tuning seen
in speech perception
Petitto & Marentette3 hearing, 2 deaf infants
• Regularity of onset of babbling• Regularity of onset of first word (10-14 mos)
– Petitto disputes the claims that the onset of sign is earlier. She argues babbling is being confused with semanticity.
• Initial signs simplified just as is speech • Regularity of onset of two-sign and two-word
productions (16-22 months)• Initially, little morphological modification but
evident by 30-36 months
Differences in children
Petitto, 2001• New study• 6 hearing infants 6-12 months• 3 exposed to only sign, 3 to only speech• Speech exposed infants showed only one type of
gestural babbling• Sign exposed infants showed two• Same characteristics as in original study• To see characteristics of babbling in sign, go to: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~lpetitto/nature.html
Evidence for a critical period in sign• Newport, et. al., 1990 studies three groups in
terms of age of first language acquisition– Native signers– Early signers acquiring at 4-6 years– Later signers, acquiring after 12 years
• She also divided them into years of signing experience (<30 & >50 years)
• Age of first acquisition most important– Vocabulary size not that different– Word order not that different– But only the native signers were highly consistent in
their use of morphology. Early signers intermediate. Late signers very inconsistent.
Home Sign• Deaf children raised without sign spontaneously
produce signs• They use these to communicate about the here
and now and things displaced in time and space• These signs are similar in form and shape to those
produced in sign languages around the world• Specific signs are used as elements in sign
sequences• The sequences have a grammatical form that is
ergative - - different from those of the speech heard
• In “ergative” languages….
1. The object is placed before the verb – The mouse ate the cheese “cheese eat”
2. In intransitive sentences the agent is placed before the verb
– The mouse is going “mouse go”
3. Actors from transitive sentences are usually omitted (as in 1 above). If included, the actor is in final position
– The mouse ate the cheese “eat mouse”
• The appearance of spontaneous sign
• The elements that make it language like
• And the emergence of a word order that is unlike that in the modelled language
• All support the “resiliencey” of language as long as there is an interlocuter
• Some liken home sign to a pidgin language
Motherese in Sign
Motherese in sign
Masataka article shows that ID Sign has:
repetition
longer duration
more exaggerated movements
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