Language Variation and Historical Change in Sign Languages

Georgetown University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

A central question in the study of signed and spoken languages is where languages display universal properties, and where the modalities of production and perception alter the structure and processing of language. Signed languages arise wherever there are profoundly deaf individuals who communicate using vision and gesture. It has been thought that, due to their modality, signed languages display much simultaneous structure (compared with the predominantly sequential structure of spoken languages). However, the present research shows striking similarities between signed and spoken languages in their earliest forms and also in their processes of historical change. In the U.S., the sign language used throughout the Deaf community is American Sign Language (ASL), a natural language that began in 1817 when the first school for the deaf was formed and brought deaf adults and children together. Prior NSF funding supported transcribing films of Early ASL from 1910 to 1921 (some of the earliest films of ASL in existence); making these linguistic materials publicly available as a Historical Sign Language Database (HSLDB); and analyzing the structure and change in Early ASL from these films through modern ASL in 3 generations of contemporary signers. Historical materials from Old French Sign Language (LSF), the antecedent of many ASL forms, have also been collected. This research has shown that Early ASL and Old LSF were highly sequential, with separate words in phrases as the antecedents of many modern simultaneous word forms. These findings suggest that the principles of historical change in spoken languages, including the common shift from separate words to complex morphology, apply to signed languages as well. In the upcoming funding period, the researchers will continue collecting and analyzing historical and modern linguistic data in American and French native signers, and will expand their work to include Japanese Sign Language, an unrelated sign language, to examine the universality of these linguistic processes. The research team is headed by a principal investigator who is a Deaf native signer of ASL and who will train Deaf native users of American, French, and Japanese Sign Language to conduct linguistic research, contributing to the diversity and span of research in cognitive science and linguistics. This research is the first major historical linguistic work on lexicon, syntax, and morphology in ASL and French Sign Language during the full course of their 250-year history, and also comparing them to Japanese Sign Language (JSL) historical lexicon and grammar, a language unrelated to ASL and LSF. The specific aims are to expand data on modern ASL, by adding forms and phonological notation and by collecting data on variation and change in three generations of modern ASL users; to expand data on early and contemporary LSF; and to begin historical and contemporary work on JSL, a mature language with 150 years of history. This project will provide data and infrastructure for comparative work on sign language structure, variation and historical change, and typology. All materials, including linguistic transcription and coding, will be available in a digital format so that they are preserved and available to other researchers.