Showing papers in "Sign Language Studies in 1989"

American Sign Language: The Phonological Base

Abstract: This paper has the ambitious goal of outlining the phonological structures and proc- esses we have analyzed in American Sign Language (ASL). In order to do this we have divided the paper into five parts. In section 1 we detail the types of sequential phenomena found in the production of individual signs, allowing us to argue that ASL signs are composed of sequences of phonological segments, just as are words in spoken languages. Section 2 provides the details of a segmental phonetic tran- scription system. Using the descriptions made available by the transcription system, Section 3 briefly discusses both paradigmatic and syntagmatic contrast in ASL signs. Section 4 deals with the various types of phonological processes at work in the language, processes remarkable in their similarity to phonological processes found in spoken languages. We conclude the paper with an overview of the major typed of phonological effects of ASL's rich system of morphological processes. We realize that the majority of readers will come to this paper with neither sign language proficiency nor a knowledge of sign language structure. As a result, many will encounter reference to ASL signs without knowing their form. Although we have been unable to illustrate all the examples, we hope we have provided sufficient illustra- tions to make the paper more accessible.

The Role of Fingerspelling in Simultaneous Communication

Abstract: This paper is intended to raise researchers’ and teachers’ awareness of fingerspelling as an important part of signed communication. Five trained teachers of deaf children were videotaped, and their fingerspelled utterances were transcribed and analyzed for form, content, and use. The data showed that these teachers did not fingerspell often, but when they did they sought to express a specific English word. The clarity of the fingerspelled utterances varied greatly, ranging from whole word gestalts to words wherein individual letters could be discerned. Implications of these findings are drawn and several hypotheses suggestions are made about the use of fingerspelling in total communication programs.

The Reception of Signs in Peripheral Vision by Deaf Persons

Abstract: To test whether deaf persons can read signs in peripheral vision, 12 profoundly deaf students, aged 15 to 18, in a residential school for the deaf, were seated between two signers, who presented common signs in random turns. Subjects responded by signing back to a video-camera, on which they were to fix their gaze. The tape recorded their responses as well as their eye movements, if any. Twenty-four signs were presented in each of two conditions: with the stimulus signs between 45° and 61° in the periphery, and with the signs between 61° and 77°. Mean performances, respectively, were 79.7% and 68%. The results support the supposition that peripheral vision may be linguistically and communicatively useful for deaf people, particularly as signs in isolation may be more difficult to read than signs in discourse.

How Deaf Children in a Chinese School Get their Name Signs

Abstract: The minimal age for enrollment in a school for the deaf in China is eight, but often deaf children do not attend until they are nine or older. They arrive with only a written name that they can neither write nor pronounce. At the school in Guangzhou (Canton), we found that the monitors in the dormitory assigned sign names to all but one of the incoming children during their first week. We trace the development of the name signs of each of the twentyone new resident pupils within the first month of their arrival at school, identify the initiators, discuss the nature of these name signs, and analyze their linguistic structure.

Basic Color Term Lexicalization across Sign Languages

Abstract: Examination of the lexicalization of basic color terms in 10 different sign languages from 7 different sign language groups suggests that for naming colors sign languages follow universal patterns not dependent upon the channel of language expression and reception.

A Signing Deaf Child's Use of Speech

Abstract: Speech and its function were studied (1;6 to 7;5) in a deaf child with deaf signing and speaking parents. At first, before age 3, imitation of facial speech behavior, speech-readable speech, and vocal speech were attempted but little: switching modes (sign to speech; speech to sign) was used early for clarification and emphasis; English functors were spoken before they were signed. Speech behavior assumed considerable importance after age 5; new words entered the child’s lexicon through speechreading, and she learned to adjust mode to language code and to listener needs for flexible communication.

Deaf Culture, Tacit Culture & Ethnic Relations

Abstract: When invited to address The Deaf Way Conference,' I was more than happy to oblige. While I am not, and could not in any way be considered, knowledgeable in the subtleties and innuendos of Deaf Culture, I have long familiarity with being different and struggling to make myself understood in a low-context word world. However, I accepted for other reasons. They were: (a) because my specialty for over forty years has been in the field of nonverbal communication, and (b) because Deaf culture is a classic case of the strength of nonverbal culture. Viewed from the perspective of those who are not Deaf, everything except the elimination of the auditory channel seems quite the same. Supposedly only the language is different. Yet the culture, as Carol Padden and Tom Humphries 2 so elegantly state, is significantly different. When examined by a specialist in nonverbal culture, these differences become blatant. Our topic will shed new light on the problems faced by other minorities as they interact with each other on the world stage. With each passing year the need for the ethnic groups and minorities of the world to evolve effective means of communication without tearing each other to bits becomes more pressing. There is much to be thankful for in this world, including the insights of such individuals as the great and perceptive ethologist Conrad Lorenz3 and his many contributions to the understanding of

Language Acquisition in Two Modalities: The Role of Nonlinguistic Cues in Linguistic Mastery.

Abstract: Acquisition of both American Sign Language (ASL) and spoken English by a hearing child of deaf parents was studied to determine whether two unique properties of the signed language would facilitate acquisition of grammar. Neither the transparency of reference in person deictics (signed personal pronouns) nor the isomorphism of signs with communicative gesture found in the nonmanual ASL marker “neg” facilitated acquisition, suggesting that children’s acquisition of grammar is relatively unaffected by the kinds of nonlinguistic cues studied here.

Beyond Grammar: Developing Stylistic Variation When the Input is Diverse

Abstract: Using Andersen’s “nativization hypothesis” and the dictum that full competence demands mastery of stylistic variation as well as grammar, the author examines two features of ASL, productive verbs and (spatial) agreement, in the signing of two deaf children of hearing parents at two ages and with differing communicative partners. Compared with each other and with deaf pears who had Deaf parents in an earlier study, the subjects were markedly different in their developmental trends. At the time of the second assessment, their grammatical development converged, but they displayed differences in ability to suit their sign language to the kind of person (peer/adult; deaf/hearing) addressed. Family attitudes and signing practices are considered as causative.

Artificial versus Natural Sign Development: A Response to Rasmus & Allen

Abstract: Rasmus and Allen, in the Fall 1988 issue of Sign Language Studies, discuss the use of artificially developed signs for teaching biology. Their efforts to document the benefits of using sign communication to assist in the learning process of students is important as we proceed from an increased awareness and understanding of signing as language to the effective use of signing as an instructional tool. Unfortunately, in reporting their work Rasmus and Allen (RA) give inaccurate information about the Technical Signs Project (TSP, Caccamise et al. 1982). For example, the following contradictory information about the TSP is included in a section entitled \"Previous sign invention:\" The National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) initiated a project to develop new signs. . . . Their goal was to promote effective communication through the establishment of a national system for sharing signs used by skilled signers. . . (RA 1988: 316) Because the TSP process \"emphasizes the collection of (existing) signs rather than 'artificial development' or invention\" (Caccamise et al. 1982: 8), natural sign development precedes the TSP five-step process of sign collection, evaluation, selection, recording, and sharing. As Figure 1 shows, sign development and standardization precede the TSP process. Therefore, rather than being prescriptive in nature, the TSP process is descriptive of signs (and fingerspelled terms) in current usage, and it respects the natural process through which skilled sign communicators coin new signs to help meet their communication needs.

Language: From Hard-Wiring or Culture?

Abstract: Writers about language, spoken languages, signed languages, and child language often disagree on fundamental issues. The disagreement lies in ontology, the branch of philosophy that deals with being. Willard Van Orman Quine has put the ontological problem quite simply as a brief question and a terse answer: \"What is there? \"Everything.\" The problem of language, pre-language, and sign language, also an ontological problem, requires at least a short series of questions: 1. Is there language? 2. If so, then, is there pre-language? 3a. If so, does pre-language change into language? 3b. Or is pre-language not language? And 4. What about sign language?

Duality of Patterning in Signed & Spoken Language: A Psychological Perspective

Abstract: Duality of patterning is a linguistic principle used as a primary criterion for determining if a system is a language. It notes that the smallest meaning-carrying units are made up of meaningless smaller units. Considered psycholinguistically and neurologically, duality may be found in the processes that facilitate language acquisition, which requires at the same time a language environment accessible to the acquirer’s senses with dual feedback: kinesthetic, from the performing muscles, and auditory or visual, from the language-receiving sense.

The Deaf Way to New Dictionaries of Sign Languages: Recent Evidence of Monumental Research

Abstract: The Deaf Way held in July brought more than five thousand signers to Washington, D.C. and Gallaudet University, and brought us five new dictionaries. Thorough reviews will occupy scholars for some time -together these new books weigh almost thirty-six pounds! Here there is room only for brief notes. The sign languages described are found in Australia, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, and Thailand. The 4-volume 22-pound description of New Zealand SL constitutes a doctoral thesis and will be deposited in Victoria University of Wellington. The others will be donated to the special collection in the Gallaudet University Library.

Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf by Oliver Sacks (review)

Abstract: In his new book, Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks, the noted neurologist, explores the realms of deaf culture much as an excited traveler describing his first journey into a foreign and intriguing land. For Sacks the language, culture, and connections of the deaf community offer a panoply of new ideas and concepts to which he can apply his considerable knowledge of psychiatry and linguistics. As he steeps himself in the visual language, the thought process, and the cultural norms of the deaf community, he follows in the best tradition of explorers who, upon finding a land hitherto unknown to them, seek to understand rather than destroy, appreciate rather than denigrate, and attempt to integrate the differences they find into a context that is familiar and appropriate. Like many explorers whose records and journals have contributed so much to the knowledge of the society they left, Sacks in this short work allows readers new to the world of the deaf an understanding and appreciation they would not otherwise have. Seeing Voices is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the culture of deafness, and its publication emphasizes the genuine interest in and growing awareness of deaf culture, much of which was sparked by the events at Gallaudet University in March 1988. The three sections of the book, written at different times for different purposes, have quite distinct focal points. The first, based in large part on Sacks's review of Harlan Lane's monumental study of deafness, When the Mind Hears, and the essay subsequently developed from that, chronicles the origins of deaf education in France and its introduction into the United States early in the nineteenth century.

A Different Way of Thinking

Abstract: This slim volume is obligatory for all who have anything to do with the Deaf and for those concerned with culture as communication. Both authors are Deaf: Carol, the daughter of Deaf parents, was born deaf; while Tom became deaf as a child and did not meet other Deaf people until he was in a college for the Deaf. The capitalization of the term deaf is a code suggested by James Woodward' and used by the authors to distinguish between the physiological condition of deafness and those Deaf people who share a language and a culture. The central issue raised by the authors revolves around the various considerations growing out of the unique culture of the deaf, pivoting as it does on the axis of their system of communication and the failure of the rest of us to recognize that culture and grant it a charter. We even learn (p. 58f) -a fact that had escaped my notice -that the gifted and insightful Edward Sapir as well as his student Leonard Bloomfield made the common mistake of classifying \"signed languages\" as derivatives of spoken languages. We know this is a mistake because signed languages are learned as first languages and are the primary mode of interaction for those who use them. Part of the ignorance of the hearing concerning the Deaf can be traced to widespread ignorance as to how communication systems -including language -work in conjunction with culture. One of the characteristics of any language is that once learned its speakers and

Evidence From Exceptions: Sign Language & Bioprograms

Abstract: Peter Bakker, Autonomous Languages. 1987. Publications of the Institute for General Linguistics, No. 53. University of Amsterdam (Spuisstraat 210) 012VT Amsterdam. xx & 97pp. 21 x 29.5cm. Paper. $8.75. William C. Stokoe A groundbreaking book Peter Bakker's book is one of those that prompts asking, Why didn't someone do this before? To test the hypothesis that language comes from an innate human \"bioprogram,\" he has investigated all available accounts of autonomous languages. His definition of his subject: An autonomous language is a language created by one or more children as their first language, used to communicate with siblings or some other family members, but unintelligible to outsiders. (p. 4) The definition allows him to include examples (in sources from 1896 to 1977) of speech languages created by children in what appear to be ordinary circumstances, and by hearing children in deaf families. He also examines sign languages created by deaf children in hearing, nonsigning families. In all examples the language of the child differs, to the point of unintelligibility, from that of the adults in the family; thus it might be explained by the currently fashionable theory that a bioprogram uniquely equips humans for language. The difference between an autonomous language and what might be called the child's target language, the one adults around it use, is so great in each case that some linguists tend to think that the language the child creates cannot have come from that target. Linguistic theory has therefore presupposed some device, biologically innate in every human brain, that allows a child to understand and to produce language. Bakker chooses the particular language bioprogram hypothesis (LBH) elaborated by Derek Bickerton to test the theory of language innateness, because, as he points out (p. 73), Bickerton presents it in the proper form for a scientific theory. If what the LBH predicts occurs, it