11 research outputs found
The social structure of signing communities and lexical variation:A cross-linguistic comparison of three unrelated sign languages
Claims have been made about the relationship between the degree of lexical variation and the social structure of a sign language community (e.g., population size), but to date there exist no large-scale cross-linguistic comparisons to address these claims. In this study, we present a cross-linguistic analysis of lexical variation in three signing communities: Kata Kolok, Israeli Sign Language (ISL) and British Sign Language (BSL). Contrary to the prediction that BSL would have the lowest degree of lexical variation because it has the largest population size, we found that BSL has the highest degree of lexical variation across the entire community (i.e., at the global level). We find, however, that BSL has the lowest degree of lexical variation at the local level, i.e., within clusters of participants who group most similarly lexically. Kata Kolok and ISL, on the other hand, exhibit less of a distinction between variation at the global and local levels, suggesting that lexical variation does not pattern as strongly within subsets of these two communities as does BSL. The results of this study require us to reassess claims made about lexical variation and community structure; we need to move towards an approach of studying (lexical) variation which treats communities equally on a theoretical level and which respects the unique social-demographic profile of each community when designing the analysis by using a community-centered approach.</p
Sign Languages of Western Highlands, Papua New Guinea, and their Challenges for Sign Language Typology
The diverse sign languages (SLs) between established deaf
community SLs and homesign have been called the “grey area”
of SL linguistics, by virtue of their resistance to
classification and the fact that they are understudied (Nyst,
2010, p. 416). This thesis investigates the languages of 12 deaf
people living in the Nebilyer/Kaugel region of the rural Papua
New Guinea highlands, with the view to situating them within the
extant sociodemographic typology of SLs. I do this by considering
sociodemographic data of deaf individuals, comparison of sign
bases to determine lexical consistency, and emic perspectives of
users. As a result of these analyses, I find that the diverse but
interrelated languages of these 12 deaf people are not well
classified within the existing sociodemographic taxonomy of SLs.
In order to expand that taxonomy, I first present the concept of
a sign network, which is a network of strong and weak sign ties,
with strength defined as the presence of fluent, regular signed
communication between individuals, irrespective of deaf/hearing
status. I offer the new category of a nucleated network SL, the
sign network of which is characterised by a central deaf
individual with multiple strong sign ties to other individuals,
who prototypically are all hearing. This is differentiated, I
argue, from a canonical homesign language such as David’s
(Goldin-Meadow, 2003), which is characterised by only weak sign
ties to other individuals, either deaf or hearing. As such, I
advocate for the extension of Horton’s (in press) typological
category of “individual homesign” to account for regular
contact not only with deaf signers, but hearing ones as well.
In determining the degree of lexical consistency between SLs, I
present the metric of sign base comparison, predicated on the
idea that even in iconic signs, there is a measure of
arbitrariness underlying which aspect of a referent is selected
(cf. Planer & Kalkman, 2019). This is a useful tool for work with
SLs whose users exhibit a high degree of intra-signer variation
in form, and thus cannot be well compared using the standard
model of sublexical parameter comparison (cf. McKee & Kennedy,
2000; Guerra Currie, Meier, & Walters, 2002). I account for the
high level of lexical consistency between Nebilyer/Kaugel SLs
with the notion of a regional sign network, which is a sign
network characterised by an abundance of weak sign ties between
individuals in a larger region. I propose that signs diffuse
along these weak sign ties, which accounts for lexical
consistency between the languages of largely unconnected deaf
people and their networks. The regional sign network model
provides an explanation for similarly reported degrees of lexical
consistency in other rural SL situations, where this cannot be
explained wholly in terms of independent invention or recruitment
of majority community gesture (e.g. Osugi, Supalla, & Webb,
1999). This research enriches the sociodemographic typology of
SLs, filling in missing links in the “grey area”, and
offering tools to continue to do so (Nyst, 2010, p. 416). More
broadly, it also contributes to our understanding of how patterns
of human sociality condition language shape
Modeling the emergence of lexicons in homesign systems
Abstract It is largely acknowledged that natural languages emerge not just from human brains but also from rich communities of interacting human brain
Modeling the Emergence of Lexicons in Homesign Systems
Abstract It is largely acknowledged that natural languages emerge not just from human brains but also from rich communities of interacting human brain