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Getting the Upper Hand on Sign Language Families: Historical Analysis and Annotation Methods

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Getting the Upper Hand on Sign Language Families: Historical Analysis and Annotation Methods Getting the Upper Hand on Sign Language Families: Historical Analysis and Annotation Methods Natasha Abner (University of Michigan) [email protected] Carlo Geraci (CNRS, ENS, EHESS, Institut Jean Nicod, Departement d’études cognitives, PSL) [email protected] Shi Yu (École Normale Supérieure) [email protected] Jessica Lettieri (Università degli studi di Torino) [email protected] Justine Mertz (Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle, CNRS, University of Paris & CNRS, ENS, EHESS, Institut Jean Nicod, Departement d’études cognitives, PSL) [email protected] Anah Salgat (University of Michigan) [email protected] Abstract Sign languages are conventionalized linguistic systems that vary across communities of users and change as they are transmitted across generations or come into contact with other languages, signed or spoken. That is, the social and linguistic phenomena that are familiar from the study of spoken language families and historical linguistic analysis of spoken languages are also active in sign languages. The study of sign language families and histories, however, is not as developed as in spoken languages. Here, we discuss the methodological and circumstantial factors contributing to this disparity. We also report on the preliminary stages of a long-term, large-scale study of sign language fami- lies. We summarize the family structures suggested by a historical records analysis of 24 sign languages. Given the limitations of this approach for sign languages, however, we also propose a lexicostatistic analysis using contemporary quantitative methods and de- scribe annotation tools and strategies that can facilitate this approach. This research is aimed at improving our understanding of the historical pressures that are shared across language modalities as well as the quantitative and qualitative differences that may exist in the diachrony of sign versus speech. Keywords: historical linguistics, phylogenesis, language families, lexicostatistics, anno- tation tools Abner, Natasha, Carlo Geraci, Shi Yu, Jessica Lettieri, Justine Mertz, Anah Salgat (2020). Getting the Upper Hand on Sign Language Families. FEAST 3: 17-29. https://doi.org/10.31009/FEAST.i3.02 http://www.raco.cat/index.php/FEAST License: CC BY-NC 3.0 Abner et al. Sign Language Families 1 Introduction Despite stark differences in how they are produced and perceived, sign languages and spo- ken languages share many properties. These include properties of linguistic architecture, such as duality of patterning (Hockett 1963) or the imposing of phonological structure on phonetic features, as well as properties related to the functions of language and its social context, such as conventionalization and the sharing of language across a community of users. These properties undergird familiar taxonomies of language. Phylogenetic analysis, for example, may taxonomically classify and group languages based on sociohistoric evi- dence as well as form- and meaning-based reasoning about language data. These methods are relatively well-developed for spoken languages, some of which are associated with rich proposals regarding lineages and relationships. As in other areas of linguistic study, however, disparities exist in how well we phylogenetically understand different language groups, and these disparities are especially acute across modalities. Here, we present the preliminary stages of a long-term, large-scale study of sign language families aimed at addressing this. We begin in Section 2 by discussing the methodological and circumstantial factors con- tributing to our impoverished understanding of sign language phylogenetics. We then iden- tify 24 geographically diverse sign languages that are included in this long-term study (Sec- tion 3) and summarize the family structures suggested by the historical records of these lan- guages (Section 4). In Section 5, we describe the annotation methods we are using to com- plement this historic investigation with a lexicostatistic analysis. We close by discussing the future of this research and its potential to inform our understanding of sign language phy- logeny and historical linguistics in general, as there may be both quantitative and qualitative differences in the diachrony of sign versus speech. 2 Phylogenetic analysis and sign languages In 1960, the groundbreaking work of William Stokoe (Stokoe 1960) showed that American Sign Language (ASL) exhibits linguistic structure and warrants linguistic analysis. In subse- quent decades, researchers extended this claim to other sign languages and made significant contributions showing that the system of rules underlying signed and spoken languages is essentially the same (see Sandler and Lillo-Martin 2006 and Pfau, Steinbach, and Woll 2012 for overviews). Until recently, however, similarities across sign languages have often been over-emphasized, contributing to the broader misunderstanding that sign languages do not and cannot exhibit the range of variation attested in spoken languages. Moreover, scant re- search exists on historical change and historical relations among sign languages.1 Indeed, up to now there has been no large-scale, systematic study of sign language families. Two limiting factors help explain the impoverishment in this area of research. One, infor- mation on the history of sign languages and Deaf communities is scarce and hard to reach and, two, the data necessary to conduct such a study has been unavailable or difficult to document. Where researchers have been able to confront and overcome these challenges, the scope of study has been small and largely focused on only the more well-studied sign languages such as ASL and French Sign Language (Langue des signes française, LSF); Wood- ward (2000), which we return to below, is an exception in terms of the sign languages studied 1Some of the limited research available includes Frishberg (1975), Woodward (1978), and Klima and Bellugi (1979), which provide early discussions of historical analysis in sign languages; Shaw and Delaporte (2011), who present a careful historical comparison of ASL and French Sign Language; and Power, Grimm, and List (2019), which demonstrates computational investigation of relatedness across sign language manual alphabets. FEAST vol. 3, 2020 18 Abner et al. Sign Language Families (seven sign languages in Thailand and Vietnam) but still relatively limited in scope. While historical documentation remains an obstacle, recent technological advances can make the acquisition and analysis of empirical data less of an obstacle. Advances in collecting and storing video data have facilitated the development of sign language dictionaries and the entries in these dictionaries may be used for lexical comparison across sign languages and the inferential analysis of historical relations. Lexical comparison and lexicostatistics are methods of linguistic investigation that aim at establishing relationships across languages by comparing phonological forms and assess- ing degree of cognacy across the lexicons of multiple languages. To feasibly begin such a study, one can use a pre-determined list of concepts and gather, for each of the languages investigated, the lexical item that expresses each concept. An early list used for this purpose — and the starting point of the list used in the present research — was developed by Mor- ris Swadesh (see, for example Swadesh 1955; see Hoijer 1956; Sankoff 1970; Lohr 2000 for further assessment of the validity of this list). Motivated by critiques of previous lists used for this purpose, Swadesh took care to design the list to include only culturally independent concepts that were likely to be universally identifiable and expressed by simple lexical items. The list excludes concepts that depend on cultural artifacts (like “gun”, “car” etc.) and those that are recent innovations (like “computer”, “telephone”, etc.); it includes concepts for com- mon animals (“bird”, “dog”, etc.), grammatical markers like interrogatives (“what”, “where”, etc.), frequent activities (“eat”, “work”, etc.), and other basic cross-cultural concepts. The list has been adapted for use with sign language by James Woodward (Woodward 2000) by elim- inating personal pronouns and body parts, as both are likely to involve pointing gestures that are highly similar across sign languages regardless of historical relationship. The items included in Woodward’s list are provided in Table 2. Referenced earlier, Woodward’s study — in addition to putting forward an adapted list for sign languages — examined relationships across seven previously un(der)documented sign languages used in areas of Thailand and Vietnam.2 Woodward compared lexical items for the concepts in Table 2 and concluded that the seven languages represented three distinct language families. One family includes only Ban Khor Sign Language, a village sign language used in Thailand. The remaining two families include languages from both countries: the first comprises Original Chiangmai Sign Language (Thailand), Original Bangkok Sign Lan- guage (Thailand), and Hai Phong Sign Language (Vietnam) and the second comprises Mod- ern Thai Sign Language (Thailand), Ha Noi Sign Language (Vietnam), Ho Chi Minh City Sign Language (Vietnam), and Hai Phong Sign Language (Vietnam). Unlike the present study, which uses dictionary data, Woodward’s data were collected by eliciting concept terms from members of the signing communities. Lexical items were compared and similarity was es- tablished based on subjective analysis of the
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