Author:

Keywords:

cross linguistic research on signed languages, Flemish Sign Language, South African Sign Language

Abstract:

Although research on Flemish Sign Language (VGT) and South African Sign Language (SASL) started relatively early: in the 1980s / 1990s for VGT (e.g. Loncke, 1990; Van Herreweghe, 1995; Vermeerbergen, 1996) and also 1980’s and 1990’s for SASL (eg Penn, Lewis & Greenstein ,1984; Penn, 1992a; Penn & Reagan, 1994, Aarons 1995, Aarons & Akach, 1998, Akach 1997), the results of this work are not well-known within the international sign language research community. As a result, up till now, Flemish Sign Language and South African Sign Language have not often been taken into account in a cross-linguistic comparison. This is one of the reasons why we decided to set up a project involving both South African Sign Language and Flemish Sign Language as well as the two Deaf communities using these languages. There are a number of indications for a high degree of similarity between grammars of different sign languages studied so far. These observations are almost exclusively based on the analysis of American, Western European and Australian sign languages. However, more recent research into Asian sign languages (cf. Zeshan, 2000) and African (village) sign languages (cf. Nyst, 2004; Nyst & Perniss, 2004; Schmaling, 2000) seems to challenge this assumption. It is therefore very interesting to conduct cross-linguistic research of a Western European sign language such as Flemish Sign Language and an African sign language such as South African Sign Language. The project consists of two parts: 1. a survey of the sociolinguistic situation of South African Sign Language and its community/communities. Van Herreweghe & Vermeerbergen (1998) contains a linguistic and socio-cultural survey of Flemish Sign Language and the Flemish Deaf community. The information in the book was assembled in close contact with the Flemish Deaf Association (Fevlado) and through interviews with Deaf individuals. As we feel that this type of information is a first step in the exploration of any (Deaf) community and its (sign) language, in the first stage of the project we are collecting linguistic and socio-cultural data of the South African Deaf community/communities. 2. a cross-linguistic study of morpho-syntactic features of both sign languages. The general focus here is reference tracking since this process triggers several morpho-syntactic mechanisms and structures including the use of ‘classifiers’ and ‘classifier constructions’, ‘roletaking’, use of spatial loci, verb agreement etc. It is this second part of the project which will be dealt with in our presentation. A first meeting of this new project is scheduled for September 2005. During the first week of this meeting, all researchers, both Flemish and South African, will travel to the national office of the South African Deaf association (DEAFSA) in Johannesburg to make the necessary contacts and to prepare and activate the collection of a South African Sign Language corpus consisting of (semi-)spontaneous monologues and dialogues. This corpus will later be used for comparison with a Flemish Sign Language corpus (which already exists, but which will be expanded). During the second week, the Flemish researchers will join the South African partners in their home university at Bloemfontein to start working on data transcription and analysis of the South African Sign Language corpus. In January 2006 the South African partner will go to Flanders to continue with the analysis and comparison. Experience has taught us that actual face-to-face contact and cooperation in the transcription and analysis are absolutely indispensable for cross-linguistic comparison (Vermeerbergen, Leeson, Schembri & Johnston, to appear). On the basis of both corpora a cross-linguistic study of morpho-syntactic features of both sign languages will be conducted (see further). In our presentation we will first briefly introduce the project as a whole and present a general progress report. The focus will however be on the cross-linguistic comparison of morpho-syntactic features of both languages. We will extensively discuss methodological issues such as elicitation materials, data collection, involvement of Deaf informants and transcription procedures and we will also present some preliminary results. ‘Reference tracking’, our general focus for the cross-linguistic study, is still fairly broad and we have therefore chosen to first focus on word order issues, and more specifically the indication of syntactic relations between the verb and its arguments by means of constituent order and other morpho-syntactic mechanisms as mentioned above. References Aarons, D. & P Akach 1998. South African Sign Language—One language or many? A sociolinguistic question. Stellenbosch Papes in Linguistics 31: 1-28 Aarons, D. 1995. Hands full of meaning. BUA, 10(1). Salt River, Cape Town: National Language Project Emmorey, Karen, 2003. Perspectives on classifier constructions in sign languages, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Johnston, Trevor, Vermeerbergen, Myriam, Leeson, Lorraine & Schembri, Adam (to appear). “‘Real data are messy’: considering cross-linguistic analyses of constituent odering in Australian Sign Language (Auslan), Vlaamse Gebarentaal (VGT) and Irish Sign Language (ISL)”, in: Perniss, Pamela, Pfau, Ronald & Steinbach, Markus (eds.), Sign Languages: A cross-linguistic perspective (working title), Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 30 p. Loncke, Filip, 1990. Modaliteitsinvloed op taalstructuur en taalverwerving in gebarencommunicatie, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussel. Nyst, Victoria, 2004. “Verb series of non-agentive motion in Adamorobe Sign Language (Ghana)”, Poster presented at TISLR 8, Barcelona, September 30 - October 2, 2004 Nyst, Victoria & Perniss, Pamela 2004. “Classifiers or verb series: motion in German Sign Language and Adamorobe Sign Language (Ghana)”, Paper presented at ESF workshop “Modality Effects on The Theory of Grammar: A Crosslinguistic View from Sign Languages of Europe”, Barcelona, November 2004. Penn, C., Lewis, R., & Greeenstein, A. 1984. Sign language in South Africa: Some research and clinical issues. South African Journal of Communication Disorders 31: 6-11 Penn, C. 1992. Dictionary of Southern African signs, volumes 1-5. Pretoria: Human Science Research council and the South African National Council for the Deaf. Penn, C. & Reagan T. 1994. The properties of South African Sign Language: Lexical; diversity and syntactic unity. Sign Language Studies 85: 319-327. Schmaling, Constanze, 2000. Maganar hannu: language of the hands: a descriptive analysis of Hausa Sign Language, Hamburg: Signum. Van Herreweghe, Mieke, 1995. De Vlaams-Belgische Gebarentaal: Een eerste verkenning, Gent: Academia Press. Van Herreweghe, Mieke & Vermeerbergen, Myriam, 1998. Thuishoren in een wereld van gebaren, Gent: Academia Press. Vermeerbergen, Myriam, 1996. ROOD KOOL TIEN PERSOON IN. Morfosyntactische aspecten van gebarentaal, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussel. Zeshan, Ulrike, 2000. Sign Language in Indo-Pakistan: a description of a signed language, Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins Zeshan, Ulrike, 2004. “Sign language typology: Possessive constructions in sign languages”, Poster presentation at TISLR 8, Barcelona, September 30 - October 2.