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Variation in Mouthing Occurrence in Greek Sign Language (GSL); the Case of Register and Grammatical Class

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Variation in Mouthing Occurrence in Greek Sign Language (GSL); the Case of Register and Grammatical Class Variation in mouthing occurrence in Greek Sign Language (GSL); the case of register and grammatical class By Ioanna Tsourma A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of MASTER OF RESEARCH Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics School of English Drama and American and Canadian Studies University of Birmingham 2018 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract This thesis explores the mouthing occurrence rates across different registers (informative and narrative) and grammatical classes in Greek Sign Language (GSL). A general consensus has been reached dividing mouth activity into at least two subcategories of mouth actions: ‗mouth gestures‘ and ‗mouthings‘ (see edited volume by Boyes Braem & Sutton-Spence, 2001). Data consist of 45‘ of video recordings from six native and near-native1 signers, transcribed using a software tool for annotating multimedia video recordings (ELAN). In an effort to gain some control over the influence of individual variation, all six signers have an example of SL production in both registers. A combination of semantic, syntactic and morphological criteria (Schwager & Zeshan, 2008) has been utilized in order to classify all manual signs for their grammatical class, in an effort to study the potential impact of grammatical class on mouthing occurrence. Statistical analysis using a multivariate logistic regression model (Rbrul) showed both factors of register and grammatical class to be significant predictors of mouthing occurrence (p<0.001), results that comply with similar findings from most SLs studied to date (e.g. Sutton- Spence & Day, 2001; Nadolske & Rosenstock, 2007; Johnston et al., 2015). During the course of this study, I succeeded in identifying specific patterns of mouthing occurrence, thus gaining a better understanding of the way mouthings behave during sign language production. Keywords: [mouthings; variation; register; grammatical class; GSL]. 1 Signers with deaf parents are classified as ‗native‘, i.e. those who acquired GSL before the age of three, the pre-lingual learners (Bank et al., 2016), while the ‗near-native‘ term is used to describe a signer born in a hearing family, raised from the age of three in a boarding-school for deaf and Hard-of- Hearing children (HoH). Acknowledgments Sincere thanks to o my supervisor, Dr. Adam Schembri for his help and his guidance. His suggestions, his support and most of all his encouragement throughout these years made the completion of this study possible. o my sign language tutors, Miss R. Zika and Mr. N. Spanos for their help with my many questions on individual manual signs, throughout the challenging task of data transcription. o Dr. Daniel Ezra Johnson for his help and his suggestions during the statistical analysis process using Rbrul o all of my friends from the Modern Greek Studies department who helped me with their support and their detailed comments on an unfamiliar subject o most of all my family, my mother, my father and my brother, who supported me in every possible way. Without them, the whole experience of moving, studying and working abroad would not have been possible. Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................... Acknowledgments....................................................................................................... List of Tables .............................................................................................................. List of Figures ............................................................................................................. Abbreviations .............................................................................................................. Conventions ................................................................................................................ 1. GREEK SIGN LANGUAGE (GSL) ........................................................................... 1 1.1. Sign Language Research in Greece ................................................................ 4 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ...................................................................... 7 2.1. Mouth actions in SLs ..................................................................................... 7 2.1.1 Defining mouth gestures ........................................................................... 8 2.1.2 Defining Mouthings .................................................................................. 9 2.1.3 Categorising mouth activity.................................................................... 11 2.2 Mouthings...................................................................................................... 17 2.2.1 Occurrence of mouthings........................................................................ 17 2.2.2 Functions of mouthings .......................................................................... 24 2.2.3 The linguistic status of mouthings .......................................................... 28 2.2.4 Practical implications ............................................................................. 37 2.3 Research Questions.................................................................................... 38 3 VARIATION IN MOUTHING OCCURRENCE ............................................... 40 3.1 Factors affecting mouthing occurrence rates ................................................ 41 3.1.1 Register ................................................................................................... 41 4 GRAMMATICAL CLASS .................................................................................... 54 4.1 Grammatical class in the spoken and signed modality ................................. 54 4.1.1 Mouthings and grammatical class .......................................................... 57 4.2 Clausal Boundaries ........................................................................................ 58 4.3 Criteria for grammatical class classification ................................................. 61 4.3.1 Semantic criteria ..................................................................................... 61 4.3.2 Syntactic criteria .................................................................................. 64 4.3.3 Morphological criteria ........................................................................ 67 4.4 Other cues for grammatical class identification ............................................ 73 4.4.1 Co-occurrence with function words ....................................................... 73 4.4.2 Negative particles ............................................................................... 74 4.4.3 Co-occurrence with other content signs .................................................. 74 4.4.4 Co-occurrence with non-manual features ............................................... 75 4.4.5 Prosody ................................................................................................... 76 4.5 Issues that arise during the assignment of grammatical classes .................... 77 4.6 Grammatical classes- Lexical and Function signs ......................................... 78 4.6.1 Lexical Signs .......................................................................................... 79 4.6.2 Function Signs ........................................................................................ 91 4.7 Hypotheses ..................................................................................................... 97 5 METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................ 100 5.1 Data sources ................................................................................................ 100 5.2 Participants .................................................................................................. 103 5.3 Processing the data ...................................................................................... 105 5.3.1 ELAN annotation software ................................................................... 109 5.3.2 Statistical analysis................................................................................. 112 6 RESULTS ....................................................................................................... 114 6.1 Descriptive analysis ..................................................................................... 114 6.1.1 Distribution by register ......................................................................... 115 6.1.2 Distribution by grammatical class ........................................................ 117 6.1.3 Grammatical classes across registers .................................................... 120 6.2 Variation in mouthing rates by signer ......................................................... 122 7 DISCUSSION ..................................................................................................
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