Postdoctoral Fellowship: SPRF: The Emergence of Phonological Structure in a Family Homesign System

German, Austin A, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) and the Linguistics programs. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Diane Brentari at the University of Chicago, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the structure of a sign language, or “family homesign system”, created by three deaf siblings and four of their hearing family members. To observe the process of language creation directly, scientists must look to sign languages, which continue to be created in the present day wherever a community of deaf individuals forms. First, we compare the family homesigners to each other in order to understand how their unique experiences have influenced their linguistic capabilities. Second, we draw comparisons with other sign languages created by smaller or larger populations of deaf individuals in order to reveal how the characteristics of the community in which a language is used impact the structure of the language itself. This project will improve scientific understanding of the factors that impact deaf individuals’ language development and raise awareness of the need to provide deaf children with access to sign language from a young age. Research on the communicative systems of deaf individuals who have no access to spoken or signed language has provided unique insights into the factors that contribute to the creation of languages from scratch. This project will add to work in this area by investigating the emergence of phonological structure in a family homesign system. Crucially, the signers of the family homesign system had access to different amounts and kinds of communicative input in early childhood. Thus, this family homesign system is distinct from both prototypical homesign systems (in that it is used by multiple deaf individuals) and larger emerging sign languages (in that it is used only by members of a single family). The investigators approach the family homesign system from two perspectives: (1) linguistic variation among the family homesigners related to differences in the input to which each individual was exposed in childhood, and (2) linguistic differences between the family homesign system and other homesign systems or sign languages related to the differing composition of signing communities (e.g., population size, time-depth, domains of use of sign language). The investigators will address the first objective by collecting novel data from every family homesigner, and the second objective by comparing the family homesign data with existing datasets at the University of Chicago. Studies 1 & 2 address phonological means of encoding the noun-verb distinction. Study 3 addresses the interface of prosody and syntax. This project will fill crucial gaps in our knowledge about how characteristics of the signing community can shape the grammatical structure of an emergent language This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.