Sign Language Typology [SLT]

This grammar of Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) phonology adds to a sparse literature on the units of categorical form in the world’s sign languages. At the same time, it brings descriptive and theoretical research on sign language phonology into better alignment by systematically evaluating current models of sign language phonology for each of the main parameters – handshape, location, and movement – against the KSL data. This grammar also makes a methodological contribution by using a unique dataset of KSL minimal pairs in the analysis, demonstrating that minimal pairs are not as infrequent in sign languages as previously thought.
The main content of the book is found in five chapters on handshape, location, core articulatory movement, manner of movement, and other distinctive features (e.g., orientation, mouth actions). The book also contains two large appendices that document the phonological evidence for each of the 44 handshapes and 37 locations.
This book will be a key reference for descriptive and typological studies of sign phonology, as well as a helpful resource for linguists interested in understanding the similarities and differences between current models of sign phonology and identifying promising avenues for future research.

This book is one of the first references of linguistic research of sign languages in East Asia (including China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong). The book includes the basic descriptions of aspects of Chinese (Shanghai, Tianjin) sign language, Hong Kong Sign Language, Japanese Sign Language, Korean Sign Language, Taiwanese Sign Language, and Tibetan Sign Language.

　

Table of contents

Introduction

Kazumi Matsuoka, Onno Crasborn and Marie Coppola

　

Part 1: Manuals: Numerals, classifiers, modal verbs

Historical relationships between numeral signs in Japanese Sign Language, South Korean Sign Language and Taiwan Sign Language

Keiko Sagara

Phonological processes in complex word formation in Shanghai Sign Language

Shengyun Gu

Classifiers and gender in Korean Sign Language

Ki-Hyun Nam and Kang-Suk Byu

Causative alternation in Tianjin Sign Language

Jia He and Gladys Tan

Epistemic modal verbs and negation in Japanese Sign Language

Kazumi Matsuoka, Uiko Yano and Kazumi Maegawa

　

Part 2: Non-manuals and space

The Korean Sign Language (KSL) corpus and its first application on a study about mouth actions

Sung-Eun Hong, Seong Ok Won, Hyunhwa Lee, Kang-Suk Byun and Eun-Young Lee

Negative polar questions in Hong Kong Sign Language

Felix Sze and Helen Le

Analyzing head nod expressions by L2 learners of Japanese Sign Language: A comparison with native Japanese Sign Language signers

Natsuko Shimotani

Composite utterances in Taiwan Sign Language

Shiou-fen Su

Time and timelines in Tibetan Sign Language (TSL) interactions in Lhasa

Theresia Hofer

This volume is the first to bring together researchers studying a range of different types of emerging sign languages in the Americas, and their relationship to the gestures produced in the surrounding communities of hearing individuals.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Olivier Le Guen, Marie Coppola and Josefina Safar
Introduction: How Emerging Sign Languages in the Americas contributes to the study of linguistics and (emerging) sign languages

Part I: Emerging sign languages of the Americas. Descriptions and analysis

John Haviland
Signs, interaction, coordination, and gaze: interactive foundations of “Z”—an emerging (sign) language from Chiapas, Mexico

Laura Horton
Representational strategies in shared homesign systems from Nebaj, Guatemala

Josefina Safar and Rodrigo Petatillo Chan
Strategies of noun-verb distinction in Yucatec Maya Sign Languages

Emmanuella Martinod, Brigitte Garcia and Ivani Fusellier
A typological perspective on the meaningful handshapes in the emerging sign languages on Marajó Island (Brazil)

Ben Braithwaite
Emerging sign languages in the Caribbean

Olivier Le Guen, Rebeca Petatillo and Rita (Rossy) Kinil Canché
Yucatec Maya multimodal interaction as the basis for Yucatec Maya Sign Language

Marie Coppola
Gestures, homesign, sign language: Cultural and social factors driving lexical conventionalization

Part II: Sociolinguistic sketches

John B. Haviland
Zinacantec family homesign (or “Z”)

Laura Horton
A sociolinguistic sketch of deaf individuals and families from Nebaj, Guatemala

Josefina Safar and Olivier Le Guen
Yucatec Maya Sign Language(s): A sociolinguistic overview

Emmanuella Martinod, Brigitte Garcia and Ivani Fusellier
Sign Languages on Marajó Island (Brazil)

Ben Braithwaite
Sociolinguistic sketch of Providence Island Sign Language

Kristian Ali and Ben Braithwaite
Bay Islands Sign Language: A Sociolinguistic Sketch

Marie Coppola
Sociolinguistic sketch: Nicaraguan Sign Language and Homesign Systems in Nicaragua

This pioneering work on Indonesian Sign Language (BISINDO) explores the linguistic and social factors that lie behind variation in the grammatical domains of negation and completion. Using a corpus of spontaneous data from signers in the cities of Solo and Makassar, Palfreyman applies an innovative blend of methods from sign language typology and Variationist Sociolinguistics, with findings that have important implications for our understanding of grammaticalisation in sign languages. The book will be of interest to linguists and sociolinguists, including those without prior experience of sign language research, and to all who are curious about the history of Indonesia’s urban sign community.

Nick Palfreyman is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the International Institute for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies (iSLanDS), University of Central Lancashire.

This volume has arisen from a three-part, five-year study on language contact among multilingual sign language users, which has three strands: cross-signing, sign-switching, and sign-speaking. These phenomena are only sparsely documented so far, and thus the volume is highly innovative and presents data and analyses not previously available.

Typological studies require a broad range of linguistic data from a variety of countries, especially developing nations whose languages are under-researched. This is especially challenging for investigations of sign languages, because there are no existing corpora for most of them, and some are completely undocumented. To examine three cross-linguistically fruitful semantic fields in sign languages from a typological perspective for the first time, a detailed questionnaire was generated and distributed worldwide through emails, mailing lists, websites and the newsletter of the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD). This resulted in robust data on kinship, colour and number in 32 sign languages across the globe, 10 of which are revealed in depth within this volume. These comprise languages from Europe, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region, including Indonesian sign language varieties, which are rarely studied. Like other volumes in this series, this book will be illuminative for typologists, students of linguistics and deaf studies, lecturers, researchers, interpreters, and sign language users who travel internationally.

In this book, an Australian Aboriginal sign language used by Indigenous people in the North East Arnhem Land (Northern Territory) is described on the level of spatial grammar. Topics discussed range from properties of individual signs to structure of interrogative and negative sentences. The main interest is the manifestation of signing space - the articulatory space surrounding the signers - for grammatical purposes in Yolngu Sign Language.

The book is a unique collection of research on sign languages that have emerged in rural communities with a high incidence of, often hereditary, deafness. These sign languages represent the latest addition to the comparative investigation of languages in the gestural modality, and the book is the first compilation of a substantial number of different "village sign languages". Written by leading experts in the field, the volume uniquely combines anthropological and linguistic insights, looking at both the social dynamics and the linguistic structures in these village communities. The book includes primary data from eleven different signing communities across the world, including results from Jamaica, India, Turkey, Thailand, and Bali.
All known village sign languages are endangered, usually because of pressure from larger urban sign languages, and some have died out already. Ironically, it is often the success of the larger sign language communities in urban centres, their recognition and subsequent spread, which leads to the endangerment of these small minority sign languages. The book addresses this specific type of language endangerment, documentation strategies, and other ethical issues pertaining to these sign languages on the basis of first-hand experiences by Deaf fieldworkers.

Sign languages and spoken languages have an equal capacity to communicate our thoughts. Beyond this, however, while there are many similarities, there are also fascinating differences, caused primarily by the reaction of the human mind to different modalities, but also by some important social differences. The articulators are more visible and use larger muscles with consequent greater effort. It is difficult to visually attend to both a sign and an object at the same time. Iconicity is more systematic and more available in signs. The body, especially the face, plays a much larger role in sign. Sign languages are more frequently born anew as small groups of deaf people come together in villages or schools. Sign languages often borrow from the written form of the surrounding spoken language, producing fingerspelling alphabets, character signs, and related signs. This book examines the effects of these and other differences using observation, experimentation and theory. The languages examined include Asian, Middle Eastern, European and American sign languages, and language situations include home signers and small village signers, children, gesturers, adult signers, and non-native signers.