Title: Abstract and Object-Anchored Deixis: Pointing and Spatial Layout in Adult Homesign Systems in Nicaragua
Abstract: and Object-Anchored Deixis: Pointing and Spatial Layout in Adult Homesign Systems in Nicaragua Marie Coppola and Wing Chee So* University of Chicago Pointing is universal and ubiquitous. Kita (2003) notes “Pointing is a foundational building block of human communication.” He refers to language in all modalities, but his statement applies even more strongly to the manual modality, which exploits pointing for myriad grammatical functions (e.g., pronouns and anaphora, verb agreement (Wilbur, 1987)). This paper begins to address how points become transformed from everyday accompaniments to speech into indispensable spatial grammatical units in sign languages. The roots of sign language structure lie in homesign systems, which themselves exploit the spatial properties of the gestures accompanying speech (Newport & Supalla 2001). Nicaragua, a country with a new sign language and a rich gesture culture, provides an excellent opportunity to investigate language creation at the individual and community levels. While researchers are currently observing the changes and development of Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) (Senghas 1995a,b; Senghas & Coppola 2001; Senghas 2003), its very early stages remain a mystery. What seeds did the first creators of NSL contribute to its birth? The four homesigners in the current study vary in age and are similar in experience to the deaf people who first came together in Managua to form the deaf community and create NSL. In this paper we examine the uses of space and pointing of adult homesigners in Nicaragua, who have used an idiosyncratic gestural communication system with their families all their lives, and who have not acquired any other language, either spoken or signed. Our questions are directed towards understanding language creation at the community and individual levels: (1) What were the raw materials available to the initial creators of NSL; and (2) What kinds of spatial and deictic devices can be invented without the benefit of conventional language input or a signing community? *This research was supported by a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to Marie Coppola, National Institutes of Health grant DC00167 to Elissa L. Newport and Ted Supalla, and National Institutes of Health Training Grants T32 DC00035 and T32 MH19942 to the University of Rochester. We acknowledge the contributions of Ann Senghas, Elissa L. Newport, and Ted Supalla to designing the task reported here, and thank Wanette Reynolds and Ricardo Midence for assisting with data collection. 1. The language and community likely emerged in the late 1970s; documentation began in 1986 (Kegl & Iwata 1989). 1. Homesign systems as the seeds of language Before the late 1970s, deaf Nicaraguans had extremely limited opportunities for contact. Marriage laws prohibited deaf people from marrying each other, so there were no deaf families, and deaf individuals’ social lives revolved around their hearing families and neighbors. At that time, no deaf community or sign language existed. Deaf children (in Nicaragua and elsewhere) who cannot acquire spoken language due to their deafness, and who are not exposed to a sign language, will nonetheless gesture with their family and friends, creating idiosyncratic gestural communication systems called “homesign” (GoldinMeadow 2003b; Coppola 2002; for a review see Morford, 1996). In the late 1970s the deaf population at two schools for special education in Managua increased dramatically. By 1981, these schools served 200 deaf students (Polich 1998), and they served as a catalyst for the formation of the deaf community and the creation of the sign language. The teachers at the schools did not know any sign language, and they taught in spoken Spanish. Nevertheless, the First Cohort of children (who entered school in or before 1983) began gesturing with each other on the school grounds and on the buses. They soon began to converge on a common system, which served as the input to students who entered the school after them. Second Cohort signers (who entered the school after 1983) learned the new sign language from their older peers by watching them and interacting with them. Over time, Nicaraguan Sign Language has been learned and passed down through successive cohorts of children, who have systematized and enriched its structure (Senghas & Coppola 2001; Senghas 2003; Senghas et al. 2004). In terms of their communicative experiences and lack of exposure to a conventional sign language, the four homesigners participating in this study are very similar to the deaf individuals of the First Cohort at the time of their arrival at the school. Thus, these homesigners represent the first creators of NSL, and examining the devices and structure present in their homesign systems will shed light on the raw materials available in the language’s very early stages. Using a specially designed elicitation task, we first ask whether homesigners use a consistent spatial layout in describing events; we then explore the other devices homesigners produced in their responses. 2. Using space for language Sign languages universally use space for grammatical functions, but the specifics vary from language to language (Padden 1983; Supalla 1982). For example, across sign languages (as well as spoken languages), verbs with the same meaning may fall into different classes regarding whether subject and 2. First and Second Cohort are arbitrary classifications of signers depending on their year of entry into the signing community; 1983 reflects the median year of entry for subjects in Senghas & Coppola 2001. object agreement are obligatory, optional, or prohibited (Supalla 1995). Agreement morphology is expressed using spatial modulations, which are movements to or from meaningful spatial locations. For example, in American Sign Language (ASL), the sentence “He gave it to her” can be expressed as a movement from one spatial location (associated with the giver) to another spatial location (associated with the receiver). The actual physical locations of these meaningful spaces are unimportant; what is important for the grammatical device marking subject and object is that the verb always move from the subject and towards the object. In addition to subject and object agreement, spatial modulations can mark person, number, deictic, locative, and temporal information (Fischer 1973; Klima & Bellugi 1979; Padden 1988). Using space linguistically requires a consistent pairing of spatial form and meaning. As in the ASL example above, we are not interested in the absolute direction of the verb’s movement, but rather in the degree of consistency within a subject, as well as across groups of subjects, in the linking of direction and grammatical role. Unlike the ASL example, the spatial modulations discussed the first analysis are not movements to and from arbitrary locations, but movements from the signer’s body towards the right or towards the left. Thus, in the present case, we can ask whether a signer uses a consistent spatial layout to link arguments and roles. In our first analysis, we ask whether the direction of a verb’s movement reliably indicates its arguments. Note that in a young sign language like Nicaraguan Sign Language, that may not already have a rich spatial agreement system and word order regularities redundantly marking grammatical roles, the systematic use of spatial modulations may be especially important. When other spatial and discourse devices are not available or not robust, spatial modulation must carry the full burden of indicating grammatical roles. Signers of older sign languages (such as ASL) have a range of devices at their disposal; they are therefore free to vary and adapt their use of spatial layouts depending on factors such as discourse situation and the position of their interlocutor (Emmorey 2003). The homesigners in the current study are similar to the signers of the First Cohort before they began to interact with each other. Thus, in terms of spatial layout, we predict that homesigners will resemble First Cohort signers. Because the homesigners have not met each other and are not part of a signing community, we might expect that: (1) they will look less similar to each other than do the members of the First and Second Cohorts, who are part of a signing community; and (2) the homesigners may be more likely to produce idiosyncratic devices that are typically not found in sign languages. 3. Method 3.1. Subjects The subjects were four Nicaraguan homesigners tested at 14, 18, 23, and 26 years of age. The youngest three are male and the oldest is female. They do not know each other. They are all congenitally and profoundly deaf and have not acquired either a spoken language (due to their deafness) or a conventional community sign language (due to their lack of contact with one). Their production and comprehension of Spanish is extremely limited. They rarely vocalize, and only produce a few words (e.g., mama, papa). They do not comprehend common words (e.g., tortilla) and cannot read. They have had little or no formal education and have not received hearing aids or oral instruction. None knows NSL, the language of the Deaf community centered in Managua, the capital. Each homesigner communicates using a gesture system developed within his or her family. Their hearing family members gesture with them with varying degrees of proficiency. Each homesigner has at least one person (a sibling, friend, or parent) who is fairly fluent in his or her system. They have each been using their homesign systems as their primary means of communication for their entire lives.
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 8
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