Sign Language & Linguistics - Volume 26, Issue 1, 2023

Abstract

This study investigates differences in language production of native, early-learner, and late-learner Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili – TİD) signers in the domain of classifiers. For this study, we conducted a picture-signing task to elicit clauses with classifier constructions from adult Deaf signers of these three groups. The results indicate that there is no significant difference among these three groups with respect to the morphological encoding of thematic roles on verbal roots in classifier constructions. Nonetheless, a difference surfaces in the argument expression patterns among these groups. The data show that the age of exposure to a first linguistic input impacts the argument expression rates as well as which arguments are expressed or left unexpressed. Native signers drop the agent argument more frequently than early-learner and late-learner signers. Early-learner signers, in turn, drop the agent argument more frequently than late-learners. The data further indicate that perspective taking interacts with argument expression and age of acquisition. Overall, signers drop the agent more frequently under a character perspective than an observer perspective, with native and early-learner signers employing this strategy more than late-learner signers.

Abstract

This study explores word order patterns produced by deaf students who use Israeli Sign Language (ISL) and Arabic. Nineteen students participated in a sentence elicitation task in which they retold events portrayed in 24 short videos in three language conditions: signed ISL, spoken Palestinian Arabic and written Modern Standard Arabic. A control group of 19 hearing students was tested in the two Arabic conditions. Results showed that SVO word order was the most frequent in both groups, and in all three languages. SOV word order, which is common in ISL but ungrammatical in Arabic, was produced only by the deaf group. Finally, unique word orders, specific to the signed modality were produced only in the ISL condition. The findings suggest that deaf students are sensitive to the syntactic structures of each language they use and show natural cross-linguistic interaction in their language use.

Abstract

The present research combines three fields of inquiry in sign language linguistics: verbal agreement, person features, and syntactic complexity. These topics have previously been addressed in isolation, but little is known about their interaction. This study attempts to fill this gap by investigating subject agreement in complement clauses in Russian Sign Language. By means of corpus investigation and grammaticality judgments, I found that subject agreement in clausal complements of the control predicates try, love, want, begin, and modal can may be deficient – in particular, it can be reduced to the forms identical to first-person marking even in the case of a third-person subject controller. Deficient subject agreement in complement clauses is thus reminiscent of non-finite verbal forms in spoken languages. I further argue that the choice of first-person forms in deficient agreement reveals a default status of first person in sign languages, which is consistent with proposals regarding the modality-specific properties of first-person reference in these languages.

Abstract

Anaphoric pronoun resolution in spoken language has been shown to be influenced by the first mention bias. While this bias has been well investigated in spoken languages, less is known about a similar bias in sign languages. In sign languages, pronominal pointing signs (index) are directed towards referential locations in the signing space typically associated with discourse referents. In German Sign Language (DGS), signers follow an ipsi-contralateral default pattern while tracking referents, i.e., the first referent is associated with the ipsilateral and the second referent with the contralateral area of the signing space. Hence, directing a pronoun to either the ipsi- or the contralateral side of the signing space refers to either the first or the second discourse referent. The present event-related potential study reanalyzes the data from Wienholz et al. (2018) and examines the first mention effect during pronoun resolution in ambiguous contexts in DGS. The original study presented participants with sentence sets containing two referents without overt localization in the first and a sentence-initial pronominal index sign in the second sentence directed to either the ipsilateral or contralateral side of the signing space. Based on the direction of the index sign, our analysis reveals an N400 for contralateral index signs suggesting increased processing costs triggered by a violation of the first mention effect. Thus, the current study provides first experimental evidence for a first mention effect in DGS and highlights the modality-independent nature of this effect.

This article reviews Our lives – our stories: Life experiences of elderly Deaf people978-3-11-070180-7€ 102.95USD 119.00

This article reviews Legal interpreting: Teaching, research, and practice978-1-9448-3898-0€ 82.00 / USD 75.00