Language is shaped by the body (original) (raw)
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Dedicated gestures and the emergence of sign language
Gesture, 2012
Sign languages make use of the two hands, facial features, the head, and the body to produce multifaceted gestures that are dedicated for linguistic functions. In a newly emerging sign language — Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language — the appearance of dedicated gestures in signers of four age groups or strata reveals that recruitment of gesture for language is a gradual process. Starting with only the hands in Stratum I, each additional articulator is recruited to perform grammatical functions as the language matures, resulting in ever increasing grammatical complexity. The emergence of dedicated gesture in a new language provides a novel context for addressing questions about the relationship between the physical transmission system and grammar and about the emergence of linguistic complexity in human language generally.
Jordanian Sign Language: Aspects of Grammar from a Cross-linguistic Perspective
Jordanian Sign Language (Lughat al-Ishaara al-Urdunia, LIU) is the sign language used in Jordan. The language has several dialects. LIU appears to be related to other sign languages in the Middle East, but none of these have been researched extensively. No accurate figures on the number of deaf and hard-of-hearing people in Jordan are available, but a percentage of between 0.25% and 0.3% seems realistic. This would mean that Jordan counts between 15,000 and 20,000 people with a severe to profound hearing loss. More than half of these people have a hereditary, genetic hearing impairment, caused by the high incidence of consanguineous marriages in the Arab World. Most deaf people in Jordan are involved in manual labour, as interpreter services in higher education have only recently become available. Currently, around 50% of deaf children receive primary education, but only 0.2% finishes secondary education. Still, Jordan is the leading nation in the Middle East in terms of education for the Deaf. The lack of education of Deaf people in the past has had an influence on the way LIU has developed. Extensive use of fingerspelling, for example, is absent. There are no initialized signs or sign names in LIU. Mouthing is used by different Deaf people to different degrees, but when it is used it is derived from the vernacular and never from the written form of Arabic taught in the schools. There appears to be some influence from Arabic on the word order of LIU, but this is found mostly among more educated signers. On the other hand, common cultural gestures, of which there are many in the Arab world, have readily been integrated into LIU. This dissertation describes selected aspects of the grammar of LIU and puts them in a wider cross-linguistic context. Its aim is to contribute to our general knowledge of sign languages in the Middle East as well as to add to our understanding about the way different grammatical structures can be expressed in different sign languages. Because of the scarcity of research into Arab sign languages, Chapter 2 is devoted to placing LIU in its wider regional perspective, by presenting the results of a lexical comparison between different varieties of sign languages used in the Middle East. The results show that different sign language varieties are related to each other to different degrees. Chapter 3 presents a brief sketch of the grammar of LIU, in order to provide a background for the description of specific aspects of grammar in later chapters. This overview includes elements from the phonology, morphology and syntax of LIU. In several areas comparisons with the structure of Arabic are made. In general, the influence of Arabic on LIU seems to be limited to word order and mouthings. Chapter 4 deals with negation in LIU. LIU can be classified as a manual-dominant language. This implies that it has a number of manual negative signs, which are the obligatory markers of negation, whereas non-manual negative markers are optional. This pattern is uncommon cross-linguistically. Chapter 5 describes possessive constructions in LIU. In general, there are striking similarities between possessive constructions across different sign languages and LIU fits well into the patterns described for many other sign languages. Chapter 6 analyzes manual simultaneity in LIU, a phenomenon which is especially common in younger LIU signers. A phonological rule restricting the movement of the two hands in simultaneous constructions is proposed. According to this rule manual simultaneity can only take place when at least one of the hands makes no lexically specified movement, or when the movement of the two hands is symmetrical. It is suggested that this rule may turn out to be universal for sign languages. Although all the examples presented from LIU adhere to this phonological rule, LIU appears to allow for a wider range of simultaneous constructions than other sign languages previously described. In general, simultaneity in LIU has many characteristics in common with other sign languages, both in form and function, but also has a few complex structures that appear unique to this language. Chapter 7 deals with the use of signing perspective in narrative discourse. Different sign languages appear to differ in the relative predominance of either character or narrator perspective. In LIU the more skilled story-tellers predominantly use character perspective. These signers identify with different characters in the story, frequently switching from one character to another. These switches are not normally marked by means of body-shift, as is common in many Western sign languages, but by lexically introducing the character whose perspective is taken. In addition, non-manuals play an important role in this process. The introduction of character perspective by means of lexical signs has also been described for a few other non-Western sign languages. Spatial lay-outs, which indicate where a character in a story is localized, do not appear to be as important or consistent in LIU as in most Western sign languages. Signers can also express multiple perspectives simultaneously. In the LIU narratives some extremely complex constructions have been found, in which signers express up to three different perspectives simultaneously. Such complex constructions are usually considered a hallmark of older sign languages, whereas the predominant use of character perspective has been associated with younger sign languages. In the area of perspective, then, LIU appears to have characteristics of both an older and a younger sign language. Chapter 8 puts the results from the previous chapters in a broader perspective. In particular, it compares the characteristics of LIU with those of other sign languages, focusing on the use of space, non-manuals and the use of simultaneity. An important question that is addressed in this context is in how far the age of a sign language can be deduced from grammatical properties of the language. It appears that some of the similarities between the grammars of different, unrelated sign languages may be due to the fact that sign languages in general are relatively young languages. It is less obvious, however, whether grammatical differences between sign languages are also related to age differences, as has been suggested by some researchers. Young sign languages are expected to show less structural complexity, more iconicity, and more use of character perspective than older sign languages. Some aspects of LIU grammar, however, suggest that the idea of a continuum in the development of grammatical structures may need to be revised. On the one hand, the fact that LIU signers use a great deal of character perspective, and are not always consistent in spatial set-ups, may support the idea that LIU is a young sign language. On the other hand, signers also use complex simultaneous constructions and multiple-perspective constructions, that is, grammatical features which are expected to occur in older sign languages. Research into village sign languages similarly shows that the relationship between language age and grammatical properties is not as clear-cut as sometimes assumed. Rather, it seems that different languages follow different developmental paths. More research into non-Western sign languages, both urban and village sign languages, is needed, however, to be able to make typologically relevant claims about sign language grammar and the way it develops.
RE-THINKING SIGN LANGUAGE VERB CLASSES: THE BODY AS SUBJECT
This paper offers a new look at the traditional analysis of verb classes in sign languages. According to this analysis , verbs in many sign languages fall into one of three classes: plain verbs, spatial verbs and agreement verbs. These classes differ from each other with respect to the properties of the arguments which they encode. Agreement verbs, verbs denoting transfer, encode the syntactic role of the arguments, as well as their person and number features, by the direction of the movement of the hands and the facing of the palms. In spatial verbs, the class of verbs denoting motion and location in space, the direction of movement encodes the locations of locative arguments, the source and the goal.
Languages and Modalities, 2021
Most of the research on Sign Languages (SLs) and gesture is characterized by a focus on hands, considered the sole body parts responsible for the creation of meaning. The corporal part of signs and gestures is then blurred by hand dominance. This particularly impacts the linguistic analysis of movement, which is described as unstable, even idiosyncratic. Boutet’s Kinesiological Approach (KinApp) repositions the speaker’s body at the core of meaning emergence: how this approach considers and conceptualizes movement is the subject of this article. First, the reasons that led SLs researchers to neglect the analysis of the sign signifying form, focusing on the hand, are exposed. The following part introduces KinApp which, through a radical change of point of view, allows revealing the simplicity and stability of movement: understanding the cognitive and motor reasons for this stability is the subject of research whose methodology is described. Setting the body at the center of analysis ...
Beyond Orality: The Case of Sign Languages
Rethinking Orality I: Codification, Transcodification and Transmission of 'Cultural Messages', 2022
The present paper reviews the main approaches developed for the linguistic analysis of sign languages, discussingt he different theoretical assumptions and methodological implications applied along with the history of sign languages tudies. Sign languager esearch demanded ar evolution in some core beliefs of language, namely the linearity of speech, discreteness, and arbitrariness, providing an ew wayt ol ook at the nature of language.
What sign language creation teaches us about language
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 2012
How do languages emerge? What are the necessary ingredients and circumstances that permit new languages to form? Various researchers within the disciplines of primatology, anthropology, psychology, and linguistics have offered different answers to this question depending on their perspective. Language acquisition, language evolution, primate communication, and the study of spoken varieties of pidgin and creoles address these issues, but in this article we describe a relatively new and important area that contributes to our understanding of language creation and emergence. Three types of communication systems that use the hands and body to communicate will be the focus of this article: gesture, homesign systems, and sign languages. The focus of this article is to explain why mapping the path from gesture to homesign to sign language has become an important research topic for understanding language emergence, not only for the field of sign languages, but also for language in general.
The production of this book has been generously sponsored by the Stichting Bibliographie Linguistique, Leiden. This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the prevailing CC-BY-NC-ND License at the time of publication, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Cover illustration: the name of the Constitutional Court building (Johannesburg) written in eleven official languages of South Africa.