DOCSLIB.ORG

Negation in Kata Kolok Grammaticalization Throughout Three Generations of Signers

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Negation in Kata Kolok Grammaticalization Throughout Three Generations of Signers UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM Graduate School for Humanities Negation in Kata Kolok Grammaticalization throughout three generations of signers Master’s Thesis Hannah Lutzenberger Student number: 10852875 Supervised by: Dr. Roland Pfau Dr. Vadim Kimmelman Dr. Connie de Vos Amsterdam 2017 Abstract (250 words) Although all natural languages have ways of expressing negation, the linguistic realization is subject to typological variation (Dahl 2010; Payne 1985). Signed languages combine manual signs and non-manual elements. This leads to an intriguing dichotomy: While non-manual marker(s) alone are sufficient for negating a proposition in some signed languages (non- manual dominant system), the use of a negative manual sign is required in others (manual dominant system) (Zeshan 2004, 2006). Kata Kolok (KK), a young signing variety used in a Balinese village with a high incidence of congenital deafness (de Vos 2012; Winata et al. 1995), had previously been classified as an extreme example of the latter type: the manual sign NEG functions as the main negator and a negative headshake remains largely unused (Marsaja 2008). Adopting a corpus-based approach, the present study reevaluates this claim. The analysis of intergenerational data of six deaf native KK signers from the KK Corpus (de Vos 2016) reveals that the classification of KK negation is not as straightforward as formerly suggested. Although KK signers make extensive use of NEG, a negative headshake is widespread as well. Furthermore, signers from different generations show disparate tendencies in the use of specific markers. Specifically, the involvement of the manual negator slightly increases over time, and the headshake begins to spread within the youngest generation of signers. Thus, it is suggested that KK negation is a case in point for diachronic language change. This study contributes both theoretical and methodological insights to sign language typology and the study of diachronic language change. Keywords sign language negation; village sign language; Kata Kolok; grammaticalization Acknowledgments I am grateful to my wonderful supervisors, who gave me a guiding hand throughout the entire process of exploring KK negation. Their feedback and critical comments were as invaluable as their encouragement to take it yet a step further. In particular, I would like to thank Roland for keeping me on track and supporting me in letting go. Further, I wish to thank Connie for encouraging me to dive into linguistics. I am incredibly grateful that she took the risk to take me to the field in 2015, where my fire for this language and community was light. I am overly excited to continue on this route. This project would not have been possible without the community. I would like to thank Connie for sharing her data, and especially, to all the deaf and hearing community members in the field for sharing their language and for warmly welcoming me. In particular, I wish to thank Ni Made Dadiastini, who became a dear friend and a lifesaver for any community- or language-related question. Thank you! Lastly, I am grateful for everyone who helped me think, develop and articulate my ideas, listened to me, and provided feedback on previous drafts. I am indebted to Elisabet García González for her patience and her sharp mind, Frederik Harder for bike-rides full of negation and statistics, Jelke Bloem and Sara Iacozza for their help with linear mixed effect models, Freya Watkins for her superpower English, and Nick Palfreyman for sharing his expertise on Indonesian signing varieties with me. Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude towards my parents Susanna and Bernhard who never get tired of listening to yet another challenge in the project, and whose comments helped me making the figures to shine! Glossary Abbreviations of sign languages ASL American Sign Language CSL Chinese Sign Language 中国手语 DGS German Sign Language Deutsche Gebärdensprache HKSL Hong Kong Sign Language 香港手語 KK Kata Kolok Libras Brazilian Sign Language Língua Brasileira de Sinais LIS Italian Sign Language Lingua dei Segni Italiana LIU Jordanian Sign Language Lughat il-Ishaarah LSC Catalan Sign Language Llengua de Signes Catalana NGT Sign Language of the Netherlands Nederlands Gebarentaal NZSL New Zealand Sign Language TID Turkish Sign Language Türk İşaret Dili VSL Flemish Sign Language Vlaamse Gebarentaal Abbreviations of non-manuals hs headshake neg negation nfe negative facial expression tp tongue protrusion Transcription Conventions GLOSS a manual form GLOSS-GLOSS a single sign needing more than one word to explain its meaning GLOSS#GLOSS two signs are articulated at the same time (fused) GLOSS^GLOSS clitic GLOSS | GLOSS clause boundary _____ duration of non-manual marking Contents 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 2 Negation: A Typological Overview ........................................................................................ 3 2.1 Spoken Languages ........................................................................................................................ 3 2.2 Sign Languages ............................................................................................................................. 5 2.2.1 Manual and Non-Manual Marking ........................................................................................ 5 2.2.2 A Typological Dichotomy ..................................................................................................... 7 2.3 Negative Concord ......................................................................................................................... 9 3 Kata Kolok (KK) ................................................................................................................... 12 3.1 Linguistic and Demographic Overview ...................................................................................... 12 3.2 Negation in KK ........................................................................................................................... 13 3.3 Present Study ............................................................................................................................... 14 4 Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 16 4.1 Data ............................................................................................................................................. 16 4.2 Coding ......................................................................................................................................... 17 4.3 Procedure .................................................................................................................................... 19 5 Results ................................................................................................................................... 20 5.1 Overview of Results .................................................................................................................... 20 5.2 Manual Marking .......................................................................................................................... 21 5.3 Non-Manual Marking ................................................................................................................. 24 5.3.1 Scope of the Headshake ....................................................................................................... 25 5.3.2 Tongue Protrusion ................................................................................................................ 26 5.3.3 Choice of Non-Manual Marking .......................................................................................... 27 5.4 Statistical Trends ......................................................................................................................... 29 5.5 Additional Observations ............................................................................................................. 31 6 Discussion ............................................................................................................................. 34 6.1 KK in Typological Perspective ................................................................................................... 34 6.2 Aspects of Grammaticalization ................................................................................................... 36 7 Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................................. 40 References ................................................................................................................................ 41 Appendix A .............................................................................................................................. 45 1 Introduction More than 6,000 different languages are used in various communities around the world. Crucially, both spoken and signed forms of communication exist. Contrary to popular misconception, signed languages are not a visuo-gestural equivalent of Esperanto, a constructed international auxiliary language. Instead, signed languages differ across geographical borders and sometimes even across cultural groups. Rural signing varieties represent a special socio-linguistic case. This type of signed language emerges rapidly in mostly isolated, rural enclaves often as a result of a high incidence
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Sign Language Typology Series
    SIGN LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY SERIES The Sign Language Typology Series is dedicated to the comparative study of sign languages around the world. Individual or collective works that systematically explore typological variation across sign languages are the focus of this series, with particular emphasis on undocumented, underdescribed and endangered sign languages. The scope of the series primarily includes cross-linguistic studies of grammatical domains across a larger or smaller sample of sign languages, but also encompasses the study of individual sign languages from a typological perspective and comparison between signed and spoken languages in terms of language modality, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to sign language typology. Interrogative and Negative Constructions in Sign Languages Edited by Ulrike Zeshan Sign Language Typology Series No. 1 / Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages / Ulrike Zeshan (ed.) / Nijmegen: Ishara Press 2006. ISBN-10: 90-8656-001-6 ISBN-13: 978-90-8656-001-1 © Ishara Press Stichting DEF Wundtlaan 1 6525XD Nijmegen The Netherlands Fax: +31-24-3521213 email: [email protected] http://ishara.def-intl.org Cover design: Sibaji Panda Printed in the Netherlands First published 2006 Catalogue copy of this book available at Depot van Nederlandse Publicaties, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag (www.kb.nl/depot) To the deaf pioneers in developing countries who have inspired all my work Contents Preface........................................................................................................10
    [Show full text]
  • Learn to Use Signpuddle 1.0 on The
    Some Dictionaries: ™ SignPuddle Online American Sign Language www.SignBank.org/signpuddle Arabic Sign Languages Brazilian Sign Language British Sign Language Colombian Sign Language Czech Sign Language Danish Sign Language Finnish Sign Language Flemish Sign Language French Sign Language German Sign Language Greek Sign Language International Sign Languages Irish Sign Language Italian Sign Language Japanese Sign Language Maltese Sign Language Come Splash in a Sign Puddle! Netherlands Sign Language 1. FREE on the web! Nicaraguan Sign Language Northern Ireland Sign Language 2. Search Sign Language Dictionaries. Norwegian Sign Language 3. Create your own signs and add them. Polish Sign Language 4. Send email in SignWriting®. Quebec Sign Language 5. Translate words to SignWriting. Spanish Sign Language 6. Create documents with SignWriting. Swiss Sign Languages 7. Have fun sharing signs on the internet! Taiwan Sign Language ...and others... http://www.SignBank.org/signpuddle Search by Words 1. Click on the icon: Search by Words 2. In the Search field: Type a word or a letter. 3. Press the Search button. 4. All the signs that use that word will list for you in SignWriting. 5. You can then copy the sign, or drag and drop it, into other documents. http://www.SignBank.org/signpuddle Search by Signs 1. Click on the icon: Search by Signs 2. In the Search field: Type a word or a letter. 3. Press the Search button. 4. The signs will list in small size. 5. Click on the small sign you want, and a larger version will appear... http://www.SignBank.org/signpuddle Search by Symbols 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Sign Language Endangerment and Linguistic Diversity Ben Braithwaite
    RESEARCH REPORT Sign language endangerment and linguistic diversity Ben Braithwaite University of the West Indies at St. Augustine It has become increasingly clear that current threats to global linguistic diversity are not re - stricted to the loss of spoken languages. Signed languages are vulnerable to familiar patterns of language shift and the global spread of a few influential languages. But the ecologies of signed languages are also affected by genetics, social attitudes toward deafness, educational and public health policies, and a widespread modality chauvinism that views spoken languages as inherently superior or more desirable. This research report reviews what is known about sign language vi - tality and endangerment globally, and considers the responses from communities, governments, and linguists. It is striking how little attention has been paid to sign language vitality, endangerment, and re - vitalization, even as research on signed languages has occupied an increasingly prominent posi - tion in linguistic theory. It is time for linguists from a broader range of backgrounds to consider the causes, consequences, and appropriate responses to current threats to sign language diversity. In doing so, we must articulate more clearly the value of this diversity to the field of linguistics and the responsibilities the field has toward preserving it.* Keywords : language endangerment, language vitality, language documentation, signed languages 1. Introduction. Concerns about sign language endangerment are not new. Almost immediately after the invention of film, the US National Association of the Deaf began producing films to capture American Sign Language (ASL), motivated by a fear within the deaf community that their language was endangered (Schuchman 2004).
    [Show full text]
  • Sign Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory: Contributions of Brazilian and North-American Researches
    REVISTA DA ABRALIN Sign language acquisition and linguistic theory: contributions of Brazilian and North-American researches The conference, given by Prof. Dr. Diane Lillo-Martin (University of Con- necticut), proposed to present the panorama of research on sign language (SL) acquisition, carried out in cooperation between North American and Brazilian researchers. The main objective was to reflect on how investiga- tions in the field of SL acquisition show details concerning linguistic uni- versals, in order to contribute to hypotheses and theories that are tradi- tionally followed in previous studies about oral languages (OL). Topics of interest to the areas of psycholinguistics and studies in language acquisi- tion were ad-dressed, such as structural issues of SL – specifically about American Sign Language (ASL) and Brazilian Sign Language (Libras); effects of visual-spatial modality, the specificity of the process of language acqui- sition by bimodal bilingual deaf children and the implications of linguistic deprivation. A conferência ministrada pela Prof.ª Dr.ª Diane Lillo-Martin (University of Connecticut) propôs-se à apresentação do panorama de pesquisas sobre aquisição de línguas de sinais (doravante LS), realizadas em cooperação entre pesquisadores norte-americanos e brasileiros. Teve como intuito REVISTA DA ABRALIN maior a reflexão de como investigações no domínio da aquisição de LS evi- denciam pormenores atrelados a universais linguísticos, de modo a contri- buir a hipóteses e teorias já difundidas em estudos anteriores com línguas orais (doravante LO). Em vista disso, abordaram-se tópicos de interesse às áreas de psicolinguística e estudos em aquisição de línguas, tais como questões estruturais das LS, especificamente de American Sign Language (ASL) e Língua Brasileira de Sinais (Libras); efeitos de modalidade visuo-es- pacial, especificidade do processo de aquisição de linguagem por crianças surdas bilíngues bimodais e implicaturas de privação linguística.
    [Show full text]
  • Critical Inquiry in Language Studies New Directions in ASL-English
    This article was downloaded by: [Gallaudet University], [Adam Stone] On: 26 August 2014, At: 09:23 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Critical Inquiry in Language Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hcil20 New Directions in ASL-English Bilingual Ebooks Adam Stonea a Gallaudet University Published online: 22 Aug 2014. To cite this article: Adam Stone (2014) New Directions in ASL-English Bilingual Ebooks, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 11:3, 186-206, DOI: 10.1080/15427587.2014.936242 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2014.936242 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
    [Show full text]
  • What Sign Language Creation Teaches Us About Language Diane Brentari1∗ and Marie Coppola2,3
    Focus Article What sign language creation teaches us about language Diane Brentari1∗ and Marie Coppola2,3 How do languages emerge? What are the necessary ingredients and circumstances that permit new languages to form? Various researchers within the disciplines of primatology, anthropology, psychology, and linguistics have offered different answers to this question depending on their perspective. Language acquisition, language evolution, primate communication, and the study of spoken varieties of pidgin and creoles address these issues, but in this article we describe a relatively new and important area that contributes to our understanding of language creation and emergence. Three types of communication systems that use the hands and body to communicate will be the focus of this article: gesture, homesign systems, and sign languages. The focus of this article is to explain why mapping the path from gesture to homesign to sign language has become an important research topic for understanding language emergence, not only for the field of sign languages, but also for language in general. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. How to cite this article: WIREs Cogn Sci 2012. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1212 INTRODUCTION linguistic community, a language model, and a 21st century mind/brain that well-equip the child for this esearchers in a variety of disciplines offer task. When the very first languages were created different, mostly partial, answers to the question, R the social and physiological conditions were very ‘What are the stages of language creation?’ Language different. Spoken language pidgin varieties can also creation can refer to any number of phylogenic and shed some light on the question of language creation.
    [Show full text]
  • Language Choice and Identity: an Investigation Based on the Comparison of Language Attitudes from Two Different Localities
    Available online at www.jlls.org JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTIC STUDIES ISSN: 1305-578X Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 16(2), 1032-1042; 2020 Language choice and identity: An investigation based on the comparison of language attitudes from two different localities Filiz Çetintaş Yıldırıma 1 a Mersin University, Mersin, Turkey APA Citation: Çetintaş Yıldırım, F. (2020). The Language Choice and Identity: An Investigation Based on the Comparison of Language Attitudes from Two Different Localities. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 16(2), 1032-1042.Doi: 10.17263/jlls.759361 Submission Date:14/02/2020 Acceptance Date:18/03/2020 Abstract This current research tries to compare and contrast the language attitudes of Arabic-Turkish bilinguals from Mersin and Hatay cities located in the East Mediterranean Region of Anatolia. The quantitative results of the language attitude surveys conducted in the two cities by two different researchers (Çetintaş Yıldırım, 2019; Kocaoğlu, 2019) are compared, and qualitative conclusions which can be generalized to the population of Arabic-Turkish bilinguals are obtained. Two different but related themes (language choices and the sense of belonging to a social/cultural identity of the two participant groups) consist of the main focus. Four sets of questions for the identity theme and seven sets of questions for the language choice theme were determined from the surveys and the means of each group for every question were compared and interpreted. The comparison reveals that Arabic-Turkish bilinguals from Hatay interiorize Arabic language more than Arabic-Turkish bilinguals from Mersin. The first group is more inclined to use Arabic in their professional career and transfer it to the new generations.
    [Show full text]
  • An Evaluation of Real-Time Requirements for Automatic Sign Language Recognition Using Anns and Hmms - the LIBRAS Use Case
    14 SBC Journal on 3D Interactive Systems, volume 4, number 1, 2013 An evaluation of real-time requirements for automatic sign language recognition using ANNs and HMMs - The LIBRAS use case Mauro dos Santos Anjo, Ednaldo Brigante Pizzolato, Sebastian Feuerstack Computer Science and Engineering Department Universidade Federal de Sao˜ Carlos - UFSCar Sao˜ Carlos - SP (Brazil) Emails: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract—Sign languages are the natural way Deafs use to hands in front of the body with or without movements communicate with other people. They have their own formal and with or without touching other body’s parts. Besides semantic definitions and syntactic rules and are composed by all the hand and face movements, it is also important to a large set of gestures involving hands and head. Automatic recognition of sign languages (ARSL) tries to recognize the notice that face expressions contribute to the meaning signs and translate them into a written language. ARSL is of the communication. They may represent, for instance, a challenging task as it involves background segmentation, an exclamation or interrogation mark. As sign languages hands and head posture modeling, recognition and tracking, are very different from spoken languages and it is hard temporal analysis and syntactic and semantic interpretation. to learn them, it is natural, therefore, to expect computer Moreover, when real-time requirements are considered, this task becomes even more challenging. In this paper, we systems to capture gestures to understand what someone present a study of real time requirements of automatic sign is feeling or trying to communicate with a specific sign language recognition of small sets of static and dynamic language in order to promote social inclusion.
    [Show full text]
  • The Paradox of Sign Language Morphology Author(S): Mark Aronoff, Irit Meir and Wendy Sandler Source: Language, Vol
    Linguistic Society of America The Paradox of Sign Language Morphology Author(s): Mark Aronoff, Irit Meir and Wendy Sandler Source: Language, Vol. 81, No. 2 (Jun., 2005), pp. 301-344 Published by: Linguistic Society of America Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4489895 Accessed: 07-02-2019 20:08 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Linguistic Society of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Language This content downloaded from 129.49.5.35 on Thu, 07 Feb 2019 20:08:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE PARADOX OF SIGN LANGUAGE MORPHOLOGY MARK ARONOFF IRIT MEIR WENDY SANDLER Stony Brook University University of Haifa University of Haifa Sign languages have two strikingly different kinds of morphological structure: sequential and simultaneous. The simultaneous morphology of two unrelated sign languages, American and Israeli Sign Language, is very similar and is largely inflectional, while what little sequential morphology we have found differs significantly and is derivational. We show that at least two pervasive types of inflectional morphology, verb agreement and classifier constructions, are iconi- cally grounded in spatiotemporal cognition, while the sequential patterns can be traced to normal historical development.
    [Show full text]
  • Relative Clause Constructions in Turkish Sign Language Dissertation
    Relative Clause Constructions in Turkish Sign Language Dissertation zur Erlangung des Grades des Doktors der Philosophie Fachbereiche Sprache, Literatur, Medien I & II der Universität Hamburg vorgelegt von OKAN KUBUS aus Ankara Hamburg, Juni 2016 Hauptgutachter: Prof. Dr. Christian Rathmann Zweitgutachterin: Prof. Dr. Annette Hohenberger Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 30.01.2015 Angenommen von der Fakultät für Geisteswissenschaften der Universität Hamburg am 11.03.2015 Veröffentlicht mit Genehmigung der Fakultät für Geisteswissenschaften der Universität Hamburg am 23.05.2016 ii Türk Sağır topluluğuna To the Turkish Deaf community iii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the relative clause constructions (RCCs) in Turkish Sign Language (TİD). TİD, a recognized natural language, has rich, distinctive linguistic properties, as do other sign and spoken languages. For the analysis of various relativization strategies and discourse functions of RCCs in TİD, the collected data is based on TİD monologues in a small corpus (consisting of approximately three film hours), which has been annotated with special attention to RCC types in various discourse modes (narrative, information, report and description), with a high incidence of narrative passages. The distributions of head noun position, the positions of relative and matrix clauses, the accompanying nonmanual elements, and the relative elements indicated three strategies: (i) head noun exhibited within the scope of nonmanual, (ii) distinctive nonmanual scopes of head noun and modifying clause, and (iii) non-overt head nouns (free RCs). The data reveal that restrictive RCCs strongly favor circumnominal-like constructions, which are generally accompanied by squint, whereas nonrestrictive RCCs in TİD use a variety of strategies. Even though the way that relative clauses in TİD are marked also show a great distribution, the two strategies that were observed the most frequently are (i) no overt relative marker and (ii) clause-final IX (nominalizer).
    [Show full text]
  • The French Belgian Sign Language Corpus a User-Friendly Searchable Online Corpus
    The French Belgian Sign Language Corpus A User-Friendly Searchable Online Corpus Laurence Meurant, Aurelie´ Sinte, Eric Bernagou FRS-FNRS, University of Namur Rue de Bruxelles, 61 - 5000 Namur - Belgium [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract This paper presents the first large-scale corpus of French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB) available via an open access website (www.corpus-lsfb.be). Visitors can search within the data and the metadata. Various tools allow the users to find sign language video clips by searching through the annotations and the lexical database, and to filter the data by signer, by region, by task or by keyword. The website includes a lexicon linked to an online LSFB dictionary. Keywords: French Belgian Sign Language, searchable corpus, lexical database. 1. The LSFB corpus Pro HD 3 CCD cameras recorded the participants: one for 1.1. The project an upper body view of each informant (Cam 1 and 2 in Fig- ure 1), and one for a wide-shot of both of them (Cam 3 in In Brussels and Wallonia, i.e. the French-speaking part of Figure 1). Additionally, a Sony DV Handycam was used to Belgium, significant advances have recently been made record the moderator (Cam 4 in Figure 1). The positions of of the development of LSFB. It was officially recognised the participants and the cameras are illustrated in Figure 1. in 2003 by the Parliament of the Communaute´ franc¸aise de Belgique. Since 2000, a bilingual (LSFB-French) education programme has been developed in Namur that includes deaf pupils within ordinary classes (Ghesquiere` et al., 2015; Ghesquiere` et Meurant, 2016).
    [Show full text]
  • A Lexical Comparison of South African Sign Language and Potential Lexifier Languages
    A lexical comparison of South African Sign Language and potential lexifier languages by Andries van Niekerk Thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Masters in General Linguistics at the University of Stellenbosch Supervisors: Dr Kate Huddlestone & Prof Anne Baker Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Department of General Linguistics March, 2020 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za DECLARATION By submitting this thesis electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification. Andries van Niekerk March 2020 Copyright © 2020 University of Stellenbosch All rights reserved 1 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za ABSTRACT South Africa’s history of segregation was a large contributing factor for lexical variation in South African Sign Language (SASL) to come about. Foreign sign languages certainly had a presence in the history of deaf education; however, the degree of influence foreign sign languages has on SASL today is what this study has aimed to determine. There have been very limited studies on the presence of loan signs in SASL and none have included extensive variation. This study investigates signs from 20 different schools for the deaf and compares them with signs from six other sign languages and the Paget Gorman Sign System (PGSS). A list of lemmas was created that included the commonly used list of lemmas from Woodward (2003).
    [Show full text]