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Taiwan Sign Language and Beyond

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Taiwan Sign Language and Beyond Taiwan Sign Language and Beyond Edited by James H-Y. Tai and Jane Tsay 國立中正大學臺灣人文研究中心 The Taiwan Institute for the Humanities National Chung Cheng University Contents Preface i Articles 1 Sign Language Field Methods: Approaches, Techniques, and Concerns Susan Fischer University of California, San Diego 21 Acquiring FINISH in Hong Kong Sign Language Gladys Tang Chinese University of Hong Kong 49 Modality Effects Revisited: Iconicity in Chinese Sign Language Marjorie K. M. Chan and Wang Xu The Ohio State University 83 The Morphology and Phonology of Taiwan Sign Language Jane Tsay and James Myers National Chung Cheng University 131 Lexical Variation and Change in Taiwan Sign Language Yijun Chen and James H-Y. Tai National Chung Cheng University 149 Lexical Comparison of Signs from Taiwan, Chinese, Japanese, and American Sign Languages: Taking Iconicity into Account Shioufen Su and James H-Y. Tai National Chung Cheng University 177 漢語對於台灣手語地名造詞的影響 張榮興、柯綉玲 National Chung Cheng University Preface This edited volume is intended to be a sequel to the edited volume by James Myers and James H-Y. Tai (2005) on Taiwan Sign Language.1 Our original goal was to have a volume on a comparative study of East Asian Sign Languages based on the papers presented at the First International Conference of Comparative Study of East Asian Sign Languages, which was held at National Chung Cheng University on September 16-17, 2006. However, no papers on either Japanese Sign Language or Korean Sign Language were presented. Moreover, Qunhu Gong (Fudan University, China) has not been able to contribute his paper “Lexical Variation in Chinese Sign Language” for inclusion in this volume. In consultation with Susan Fischer, we have decided to entitle this edited volume Taiwan Sign Language and Beyond, to more accurately reflect its scope and contents, and to postpone until a future date the compilation of a volume comparing East Asian Sign Languages. The topics covered in this edited volume are wide-ranging, from issues concerning field methods, through sign language acquisition, analyses of different levels of linguistic structure, and explorations of language variation and change, and other challenges in sign language research. Field methods are fundamental for the collection of data on sign languages because most sign linguists are neither deaf nor native in the sign language that they attempt to analyze. Susan Fischer’s paper discusses ethical concerns, technical issues, and elicitation techniques in doing fieldwork on sign languages based on her over 35 years of extensive fieldwork experience on several different sign languages. Some of the concerns, issues, and techniques apply to any type of fieldwork; others apply especially, though not exclusively, to the study of stigmatized or marginalized languages; and some apply almost exclusively to issues in the study of signed languages.2 Research on sign language acquisition is even more challenging than research on spoken language acquisition. Little has been done on how deaf children acquire aspect in 1 Myers and Tai (2005) is a special issue of Language and Linguistics (6.2). 2 The keynote speech given by Susan Fischer at the Conference was “Asian and Western Sign Languages: Commonalities and Differences.” i sign language. Gladys Tang’s paper reports on how a deaf child acquired the sign FINISH as a Perfective Marker in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL). In the child data, FINISH first emerged as a lexical verb. Subsequently, the sign also occurred as a perfective aspect marker that consistently followed a verb in clause-final position, in line with the adult data. FINISH as a main verb was inherently telic and marked the end of an atelic predicate (i.e. an activity). As an aspect marker, it occurred initially in accomplishments before other situation types. As for temporal reference, FINISH as a main verb was used mostly for present reference, but was initially used for past or future reference if it was an aspect marker. These results suggest that the deaf child in this study largely observed the grammatical constraints in the acquisition of FINISH in HKSL. The paper by Marjorie K.M. Chan and Wang Xu compares Taiwan Sign Language (TSL) with Chinese Sign Language (CSL) with respect to iconic devices employed in lexical items. They use 100 words from the Swadesh list that was modified by Woodward (1993) for sign language comparison. The lexicon in the CSL database is part of Qunhu Gong’s Swadesh list of 200 words in different varieties of CSL, collected through video-recording in different parts of China. The CSL corpus for the current study is a subset of that Swadesh list. The TSL database for this study is a corresponding set of 100 words that are in the modified Swadesh list. This preliminary comparison between the two historically unrelated Asian Sign Languages points out the importance of taking iconic devices into consideration in comparing lexical items for historical relatedness, variation and change, as well as for typological similarities not due to historical relatedness and language contact. The paper by Jane Tsay and James Myers describe in detail the morphology and phonology of TSL. Inflectional morphology includes noun and verb inflection, while derivational morphology covers affixation, serial compounding, and parallel compounding. Agreement is analyzed with respect to grammatical relation and classifier predicates, as well as gender and number agreement. Aspect markings for perfective, progressive, and protractive aspects are also attested. As for TSL phonology, phonemic inventory, allophonic variation, feature co-occurrence restrictions, alternations, and word-internal prosodic structure are illustrated and discussed. This paper provides a set of ii well-document data with analysis for future cross-linguistic comparison of sign languages. Language variation and change in spoken languages have been the focus of historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. However, there has been very limited research on variation and change in sign languages. Yijun Chen and James H-Y. Tai review the research on American Sign Language—the most thoroughly studied sign language that has a much longer history than TSL—and give a preliminary analysis of variation and change in TSL lexical items that have taken place over the past ten years. As in ASL, phonologically different variants are more productive than phonologically related variants in TSL. This may be due to the fact that lexical items referring to the same object or concept in sign language can be formed with totally different iconic motivations. With respect to phonological parameters, patterns of variation in TSL are similar to those in ASL, yet patterns of change in TSL are quite different from those in ASL. Comparative lexicostatistics has been used by Woodward (1993) and others to posit hypotheses on possible historical relationships between sign languages. Shioufen Su and James H-Y. Tai examine the earlier studies and find that it is necessary to take iconic motivations into consideration in using comparative lexicostatistics to establish historical relationship between sign languages. Excluding lexical items with similar iconic motivations from Woodward’s modified Swadesh list, their study shows that Taiwan Sign Language (TSL) and Japanese Sign Language (JSL) can be considered languages of the same family, while TSL and Chinese Sign Language (CSL) can not. TSL and American Sign Language (ASL) are least similar among the four languages under comparison. The similarity between TSL and CSL is also due to language contact, thus higher than that between TSL and ASL. Nonetheless, signs with iconic motivations are prevalent in sign languages. For typological studies of lexical formation, lexical comparison of sign languages can also be conducted with respect to various types of iconic devices, even for historically unrelated languages such as TSL and ASL. The last paper by Jung-hsing Chang and Xiu-ling Ke discusses the formation of place-name signs in Taiwan Sign Language (TSL). In finding that a great number of TSL iii place names are borrowed from Chinese names, they propose that the place names are based on five different ways of rendition: (a) exact loan translations of the Chinese place names, (b) partial loan translations of the Chinese place names, (c) exact copying of Chinese written word, (d) partial copying of Chinese written word, and (e) mixture of the loan translation and the written word. The different sign-formation processes discussed in this research have shown how Chinese language and its writing system are blended into TSL, at the same time providing an account for some of the important ways by which TSL expands its lexicon. In putting together this volume, the editors would like to thank all the contributors and the Taiwan Institute for the Humanities at National Chung Cheng University for their support of the Conference and the publication of this volume. We would also like to thank our TSL consultant, Ku Yu-shan, and other TSL signers for providing us with illustrations. It is our hope that this volume adds to our understanding of TSL and sign language in general and that a volume on the comparative study of East Asian Sign Languages can come into being in the near future. James H-Y. Tai and Jane Tsay July 31, 2009 iv Taiwan Sign Language and Beyond. 2009. Edited by James H-Y. Tai and Jane Tsay. Chia-Yi, Taiwan: The Taiwan Institute for the Humanities, National Chung Cheng University. Pages 1-19. Sign Language Field Methods: 1 Approaches, Techniques, and Concerns Susan Fischer Center for Research on Language, UCSD Abstract. Doing sign language fieldwork has a lot in common with doing fieldwork on other languages, particularly stigmatized languages, but there are also issues unique to sign languages. Ethical considerations are paramount: obtaining truly informed consent is key, as is the issue of maintaining confidentiality when using video data. Also important is the establishment and maintenance of rapport with consultants.
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