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