DOCSLIB.ORG

Typology of Signed Languages: Differentiation Through Kinship Terminology Erin Wilkinson

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of New Mexico University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Linguistics ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 7-1-2009 Typology of Signed Languages: Differentiation through Kinship Terminology Erin Wilkinson Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ling_etds Recommended Citation Wilkinson, Erin. "Typology of Signed Languages: Differentiation through Kinship Terminology." (2009). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ling_etds/40 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Linguistics ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TYPOLOGY OF SIGNED LANGUAGES: DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY BY ERIN LAINE WILKINSON B.A., Language Studies, Wellesley College, 1999 M.A., Linguistics, Gallaudet University, 2001 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Linguistics The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico August, 2009 ©2009, Erin Laine Wilkinson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iii DEDICATION To my mother iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to Barbara Pennacchi for kick starting me on my dissertation by giving me a room at her house, cooking me dinner, and making Italian coffee in Rome during November 2007. Your endless support, patience, and thoughtful discussions are gratefully taken into my heart, and I truly appreciate what you have done for me. I heartily acknowledge Dr. William Croft, my advisor, for continuing to encourage me through the long number of months writing and rewriting these chapters. His expertise in language typology inspired me to explore the new frontier of signed language typology. His guidance and professional style will remain with me as I continue my career. Deepest thanks go to Dr. Elena Pizzuto for her insights into signed languages were invaluable to me and for her unflailing encouragement over these years as we have collaborated on various projects. My gratitude goes to Dr. Sherman Wilcox for my transformation from a student to a colleague by his excellent mentorship and confidence in me. I also thank Dr. Larry Gorbet for his influence in my professional development in preparation for this study through his training and assistance. Gratitude is extended to the National Science Foundation, Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) for the experience to pursue this research. This dissertation study was partially supported by Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) Pre-doctoral Center Fellowship, funding from NSF grant number SBE-0541953. Profound thanks to Jill Morford, my supervisor, professor, and mentor for her conviction in my potential to become a signed language linguist. v This large scale study could not have been accomplished without all international collaborators, colleagues, and friends I have met over the years in and from various parts of the world. For not only simply referring me to dictionaries’ signed-written translations, they also contributed to bettering my understanding and clarity about their respective signed languages by taking the time to explain the history of their signed languages. I thank you all my collaborators for their support, thought-provoking discussions, and friendship. Karen Alkoby, Samuel Atcherson, Parween Azimi, Louise de Beuzeville, Arkady Belozovsky, Alisha Bronk, Petra Eccarius Brylow, Kangsuk Byun, Martina Carlson, Richard Cokart, Christian Cuxac, Paul Dudis, Juan Carlos Duretta, Abdul Ghaffar, Lucyna Dlugolecka, Melissa Draganac-Hawk, Thierry Haesenne, Julia Hochegang, Sung- Eun Hong, Deniz Ilkbasaran, Clifton Langdon-Grigg, Lorraine Leeson, Daniele Le Rose, Luigi Le Rose, Sam Luato, Simon Kollien, Emily Matabane, Nicolas Médin, Janne Boye Nimelä, Peter Nimelä, Berna Marthinussen, Susan Metheny, Nicholaus Mpingwa, Karen Naughton, Barbara O’Dea, Dan Parvaz, Marylin Plummer, Justin Powers, Patricia Raswant, Ido Roll, Kyle Rosenberg, Marie-Anne Sallandre, Jesse Saunders, Adam Schembri, Brenda Schertz, Barbara Shaffer, Joshua Staley, Logan Sutton, Paolo Rossini, Bonnie Rudy, Dan Veit, Agnes Villwock, Silas Wagner, Yumi Watanabe, and Phyllis Wilcox. To my editors, Diana Wilkinson and Jeanne Caldwell, though a small word of thanks is not enough for many months of weekend work, I do thank you from the bottom of my heart. vi My deepest gratitude goes to my family and friends who supported me throughout my graduate studies. It sure was a long ride! vii TYPOLOGY OF SIGNED LANGUAGES: DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY BY ERIN LAINE WILKINSON ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Linguistics The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico August, 2009 TYPOLOGY OF SIGNED LANGUAGES: DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY by Erin Laine Wilkinson B.A., Language Studies, Wellesley College, 1999 M.A., Linguistics, Gallaudet University, 2001 Ph.D., Linguistics, University of New Mexico, 2009 ABSTRACT Nearly all such studies have sought to understand the linguistic constraints of spoken languages, while largely neglecting signed languages. Despite the fact that spoken languages can be classified into types, signed languages are generally assumed to be clustered all together in one type which the current study challenges. Exploring the potential for a varied typology among signed languages requires identifying patterns across a sampling of geographically distinct and historically unrelated signed languages to formulate linguistic generalizations. To that end this study adopts Greenberg’s 1966 analysis of Universals of Kinship Terminology, it examines the linguistic patterns that emerge from a comparison of kinship terminology in 40 signed languages, specifying what patterns can be seen in visual-gestural languages. Findings of this study revealed that form-function mappings of specific semantic domains are constructed by different strategies including: iconicity motivated by universal human and cultural-specific traits, arbitrary elements, and linguistic economy ix (semantic derivation). Patterns reveal that kin terms are motivated yet contain degrees of arbitrariness, suggesting a continuum of interaction of arbitrariness and iconicity. While iconicity is undeniably pervasive in signed languages, salient properties manifested in signed kinship terminology are not universal, but instead reflect the cultural and cognitive perception experienced by deaf people within their linguistic communities. As a result iconic properties framed by language-specific and cultural specific mappings lend to variations in signs, describing the trend that signed forms’ phonological properties are not simply phonemic representations, but instead are phonological properties that inherently signify semantic properties. In turn, iconicity emerges as an undeniable and powerful tool of schematization used to form signs in a visual-spatial modality. Data showed some kin terms were motivated by patterns of specific semantic- phonological interdependency. These patterns identified occurrences of semantic derivation and semantic extension within language-specific sets of kin terms. Signed kin terms are formed by combinations of initialization, fingerspelling/character writing constructions, and iconic and arbitrary descriptions. However, organization of kin terms by linguistic processes may not parallel what Greenberg found in his study of spoken languages. The nature of modality clearly manifests in different ways of organizing signed languages and spoken languages; illustrated by how markedness manifests differently. The extent of linguistic phenomenon seen in the domain of kinship terminology underscores the importance of exploring semantics through studies of phonology, morphology, and grammar in signed languages. Typological analyses of signed languages contribute significantly to understanding what linguistic traits appear consistently through x all languages, both spoken and signed, by revealing more about the effects of the modality-independent and modality-dependent behaviors of languages in defining language universals. xi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................... XVIII LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................... XXV CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................... 1 Background ........................................................................................................... 6 Statement of the Problem ...................................................................................... 9 Purpose of the Study ........................................................................................... 11 Significance of the Problem ................................................................................ 12 Nature of the Study ............................................................................................. 12 Research Questions ............................................................................................. 14 Hypotheses .......................................................................................................... 15 Theoretical Framework ......................................................................................
Recommended publications
  • Technical Report, Vol

    Technical Report, Vol

    CRL Technical Report, Vol. 19 No. 1, March 2007 CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN LANGUAGE March 2007 Vol. 19, No. 1 CRL Technical Reports, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla CA 92093-0526 Tel: (858) 534-2536 • E-mail: [email protected] • WWW: http://crl.ucsd.edu/newsletter/current/TechReports/articles.html TECHNICAL REPORT Arab Sign Languages: A Lexical Comparison Kinda Al-Fityani Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego EDITOR’S NOTE The CRL Technical Report replaces the feature article previously published with every issue of the CRL Newsletter. The Newsletter is now limited to announcements and news concerning the CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN LANGUAGE. CRL is a research center at the University of California, San Diego that unites the efforts of fields such as Cognitive Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Computer Science, Sociology, and Philosophy, all who share an interest in language. The Newsletter can be found at http://crl.ucsd.edu/newsletter/current/TechReports/articles.html. The Technical Reports are also produced and published by CRL and feature papers related to language and cognition (distributed via the World Wide Web). We welcome response from friends and colleagues at UCSD as well as other institutions. Please visit our web site at http://crl.ucsd.edu. SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION If you know of others who would be interested in receiving the Newsletter and the Technical Reports, you may add them to our email subscription list by sending an email to [email protected] with the line "subscribe newsletter <email-address>" in the body of the message (e.g., subscribe newsletter [email protected]).
  • Sign Language Typology Series

    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
  • Kinship Terminology

    Kinship Terminology

    Fox (Mesquakie) Kinship Terminology IVES GODDARD Smithsonian Institution A. Basic Terms (Conventional List) The Fox kinship system has drawn a fair amount of attention in the ethno­ graphic literature (Tax 1937; Michelson 1932, 1938; Callender 1962, 1978; Lounsbury 1964). The terminology that has been discussed consists of the basic terms listed in §A, with a few minor inconsistencies and errors in some cases. Basically these are the terms given by Callender (1962:113-121), who credits the terminology given by Tax (1937:247-254) as phonemicized by CF. Hockett. Callender's terms include, however, silent corrections of Tax from Michelson (1938) or fieldwork, or both. (The abbreviations are those used in Table l.)1 Consanguines Grandparents' Generation (1) nemesoha 'my grandfather' (GrFa) (2) no hkomesa 'my grandmother' (GrMo) Parents' Generation (3) nosa 'my father' (Fa) (4) nekya 'my mother' (Mo [if Ego's female parent]) (5) nesekwisa 'my father's sister' (Pat-Aunt) (6) nes'iseha 'my mother's brother' (Mat-Unc) (7) nekiha 'my mother's sister' (Mo [if not Ego's female parent]) 'Other abbreviations used are: AI = animate intransitive; AI + O = tran- sitivized AI; Ch = child; ex. = example; incl. = inclusive; m = male; obv. = obviative; pi. = plural; prox. = proximate; sg. = singular; TA = transitive ani­ mate; TI-0 = objectless transitive inanimate; voc. = vocative; w = female; Wi = wife. Some citations from unpublished editions of texts by Alfred Kiyana use abbreviations: B = Buffalo; O = Owl (for these, see Goddard 1990a:340). 244 FOX
  • The Bat Boy & His Violin

    The Bat Boy & His Violin

    Set 3 3–5 Guide for The Bat Boy & His Violin: What’s the Story? “Strike three, you’re out!” shouts the umpire. The Dukes are losing The Bat Boy again. They’re known as the worst team in the Negro National League, and the 1948 season is turning out to be their worst & His Violin by Gavin Curtis yet—at least until Reginald comes along. Reginald’s father, the Dukes’ manager, brings his son to the games because he needs a bat boy, but Reginald would much rather play the violin. Reginald’s father does not seem to appreciate or even understand his son’s musical ability. But when Reginald fills the ballpark with the stirring sounds of Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach, the Dukes start winning. Eventually they lose to the famous Monarchs, but win or lose, Reginald’s father develops a renewed pride in his son and his gift for music. ISBN 978-1-57621-249-3 2000 Embarcadero, Suite 305 Oakland, CA 94606-5300 y(7IB5H6*MLMOTN( +;!z!”!z!” 800.666.7270 * 510.533.0213 * fax: 510.464.3670 e-mail: [email protected] * www.devstu.org KL-G319 Illustrations by Todd Graveline Illustrations by Todd AfterSchool elcome to KidzLit® The purpose of this program is simple—to help you build a love of Funding for the Developmental Studies Center has been generously provided by: reading and strong relationships at your site. You don’t have to be a W trained teacher or a literature expert to be a successful AfterSchool The Annenberg Foundation, Inc. The MBK Foundation KidzLit leader.
  • Sign Language Endangerment and Linguistic Diversity Ben Braithwaite

    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).
  • South Africa

    South Africa

    South Africa ~School Classes In South Africa, students generally take six to nine subjects at a time, and each class meets either every day or for extended sessions every other day. In South Africa, stu- dents are evaluated on daily homework, class participation, and periodic written exams. Boys and girls study in the same classes and are not seated apart in class. Th e class sizes vary depending on the school or subject. COUNTRY FACTS: School Relationships School is very formal and students are always expected to address school staff by the Capital: Pretoria surnames with the prefi x Mr. or Mrs. Population: 49,109,107 Extracurricular Activities Area, sq. mi.: 470,693 South African high school students are oft en very involved in school based extracur- ricular activities, and these activities are where most students develop their friendships. Real GDP per capita: 10,300 South Africans have freedom to participate in which ever extracurricular activities that Adult literacy rate: 87% (male); they like. 86% (female) Ethnic make-up: black African School Rules South African high schools have a “zero tolerance” policy regarding cell phone usage 79%, white 9.6%, colored 8.9%, and fi ghting. Th ese activities are not allowed at all in school and the penalties for en- Indian/Asian 2.5% gaging in them are oft en severe and in some cases will include expulsion. Religion: Zion Christian 11.1%, Pentecostal/Charismatic 8.2%, Family Life In South Africa, most households consist of parents, or a parent, and their children. Catholic 7.1%, Methodist 6.8%, Rarely do grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins live in the same house, but extended Dutch Reformed 6.7%, Anglican relatives may come to stay if the fi nancial situation requires it.
  • ISO 639-3 New Code Request

    ISO 639-3 New Code Request

    ISO 639-3 Registration Authority Request for New Language Code Element in ISO 639-3 Date: 2006-3-20 Name of Primary Requester: Justin Power E-mail address: [email protected] Names, affiliations and email addresses of additional supporters of this request: Associated Change request number : 2006-041 (completed by Registration Authority) Tentative assignment of new identifier : afg (completed by Registration Authority) Do not be concerned about your responses causing the form text spacing or pagination to change. Use Shift- Enter to insert a new line in a form field (where allowed) 1. NAMES and IDENTIFICATION a) Preferred name of language for code element denotation: Afghan Sign Language b) Autonym (self-name) for this language: c) Alternate names and spellings of language, and any established abbreviations: Sometimes abbreviated as AFSL in publications, and referred to in sign language as Afghan Sign. d) Reason for preferred name: It seems to be the consensus among users, both hearing and deaf. e) Name of ethnic group or description of people who use this language and approximate population of users, if in use today: The Deaf of Afghanistan, crossing ethnic lines. The main centers are Jalalabad and Kabul right now. In Jalalabad is the only school for the deaf in the country, and the national association for the Deaf has its office in Kabul. Most of the students at the school are ethnic Pushtuns and so would probably consitute the largest number of Deaf Afghans who use AFSL. There would be deaf among all of the ethnic groups of the country, however, and AFSL users among the major ethnic groups, like Pashtuns, Tajiks and possibly Uzbek, Turkmen, Pashai, etc.
  • Alignment Mouth Demonstrations in Sign Languages Donna Jo Napoli

    Alignment Mouth Demonstrations in Sign Languages Donna Jo Napoli

    Mouth corners in sign languages Alignment mouth demonstrations in sign languages Donna Jo Napoli, Swarthmore College, [email protected] Corresponding Author Ronice Quadros, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, [email protected] Christian Rathmann, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, [email protected] 1 Mouth corners in sign languages Alignment mouth demonstrations in sign languages Abstract: Non-manual articulations in sign languages range from being semantically impoverished to semantically rich, and from being independent of manual articulations to coordinated with them. But, while this range has been well noted, certain non-manuals remain understudied. Of particular interest to us are non-manual articulations coordinated with manual articulations, which, when considered in conjunction with those manual articulations, are semantically rich. In which ways can such different articulators coordinate and what is the linguistic effect or purpose of such coordination? Of the non-manual articulators, the mouth is articulatorily the most versatile. We therefore examined mouth articulations in a single narrative told in the sign languages of America, Brazil, and Germany. We observed optional articulations of the corners of the lips that align with manual articulations spatially and temporally in classifier constructions. The lips, thus, enhance the message by giving redundant information, which should be particularly useful in narratives for children. Examination of a single children’s narrative told in these same three sign languages plus six other sign languages yielded examples of one type of these optional alignment articulations, confirming our expectations. Our findings are coherent with linguistic findings regarding phonological enhancement and overspecification. Keywords: sign languages, non-manual articulation, mouth articulation, hand-mouth coordination 2 Mouth corners in sign languages Alignment mouth demonstration articulations in sign languages 1.
  • Sign Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory: Contributions of Brazilian and North-American Researches

    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.
  • An Evaluation of Real-Time Requirements for Automatic Sign Language Recognition Using Anns and Hmms - the LIBRAS Use Case

    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.
  • Sign Language Ideologies: Practices and Politics

    Sign Language Ideologies: Practices and Politics

    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Heriot Watt Pure Annelies Kusters, Mara Green, Erin Moriarty and Kristin Snoddon Sign language ideologies: Practices and politics While much research has taken place on language attitudes and ideologies regarding spoken languages, research that investigates sign language ideol- ogies and names them as such is only just emerging. Actually, earlier work in Deaf Studies and sign language research uncovered the existence and power of language ideologies without explicitly using this term. However, it is only quite recently that scholars have begun to explicitly focus on sign language ideologies, conceptualized as such, as a field of study. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first edited volume to do so. Influenced by our backgrounds in anthropology and applied linguistics, in this volume we bring together research that addresses sign language ideologies in practice. In other words, this book highlights the importance of examining language ideologies as they unfold on the ground, undergirded by the premise that what we think that language can do (ideology) is related to what we do with language (practice).¹ All the chapters address the tangled confluence of sign lan- guage ideologies as they influence, manifest in, and are challenged by commu- nicative practices. Contextual analysis shows that language ideologies are often situation-dependent and indeed often seemingly contradictory, varying across space and moments in time. Therefore, rather than only identifying language ideologies as they appear in metalinguistic discourses, the authors in this book analyse how everyday language practices implicitly or explicitly involve ideas about those practices and the other way around.
  • A Lexical Comparison of South African Sign Language and Potential Lexifier Languages

    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).