SIGN LANGUAGE IN INDO-PAKISTAN SIGN LANGUAGE IN INDO-PAKISTAN A DESCRIPTION OF A SIGNED LANGUAGE ULRIKE ZESHAN La Trobe University JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY PHILADELPHIA/AMSTERDAM TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of Ameri- 8 can National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zeshan, Ulrike. Sign language in Indo-Pakistan : a description of a signed language / Ulrike Zeshan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Indopakistan Sign Language. 2. Deaf--India. 3. Deaf--Pakistan. I. Title. HV2469.I53 Z47 2000 419--dc21 00-029783 ISBN 90 272 2563 X (Eur.) / 1 55619 857 4 (US) (Hb; alk. paper) CIP © 2000 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA To the deaf communities in India and Pakistan Table of Contents Preface ............................................... xi C 1 Introduction .......................................... 1 1.1 Indopakistan Sign Language (IPSL) ....................... 1 1.2 Data ............................................. 8 1.3 Transcription Conventions .............................. 12 C 2 The Signs ............................................ 17 2.1 Handshapes ........................................ 17 2.1.1 Basic Handshapes ............................... 18 2.1.2 Central Handshapes ............................. 21 2.1.3 Marginal Handshapes ............................ 23 2.1.4 Problematic Cases ............................... 24 2.1.5 Meaningful Handshapes .......................... 26 2.2 Sign Families ....................................... 28 2.2.1 Opposites .................................... 28 2.2.2 Signs Related by Common Handshape ................ 29 2.2.3 Signs Related by Common Place of Articulation ......... 30 2.2.4 Componential Signs ............................. 33 2.3 Extraneous Influences on IPSL .......................... 35 2.3.1 IPSL and Hindi/Urdu ............................ 35 2.3.2 IPSL and English ............................... 36 2.3.3 IPSL and Gestures .............................. 38 2.3.4 IPSL and Other Sign Languages ..................... 40 2.4 Nonmanual Components of Signs ........................ 42 2.4.1 Mouth Pattern, Mouth Gesture and Facial Expression ..... 42 2.4.2 Body Posture, Head Position and Eye Gaze ............ 44 2.4.3 A Nonmanual Parameter? ......................... 45 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS 2.5 Iconicity .......................................... 50 2.5.1 The Role of Iconicity in Sign Languages ............... 50 2.5.2 Iconic signs ................................... 51 2.5.3 Pantomimic Modification .......................... 53 C 3 Morphology .......................................... 55 3.1 Word Classes ....................................... 55 3.2 Directionality ....................................... 57 3.3 Aspects ........................................... 62 3.3.1 Completive Aspect .............................. 62 3.3.2 Aspectual Modulation ............................ 65 3.4 Complex Signs ...................................... 72 3.4.1 Numeral Incorporation ........................... 73 3.4.2 LENA: ‘take’ and DENA: ‘give’ ....................... 75 3.4.3 Fusion ....................................... 79 3.4.4 Compounds ................................... 82 C 4 Syntax ............................................... 87 4.1 Word Order ........................................ 88 4.1.1 Predicates and Participants ......................... 88 4.1.2 Temporal Expressions ............................ 91 4.1.3 Function Signs ................................. 92 4.1.4 Modifying Constructions .......................... 97 4.2 Localization ........................................ 99 4.2.1 Loci ......................................... 99 4.2.2 Directionality .................................. 102 4.2.3 Positioning .................................... 103 4.2.4 Index ........................................ 105 4.2.5 Eye Gaze ..................................... 107 4.2.6 Role Play ..................................... 108 4.2.7 Inconsistencies ................................. 109 4.3 Nonmanual Syntax ................................... 110 4.3.1 Affirmation and Negation ......................... 111 4.3.2 Interrogatives .................................. 115 4.3.3 Conditional Clauses .............................. 117 TABLE OF CONTENTS ix C 5 Discourse Strategies .................................... 121 5.1 Contrasts .......................................... 121 5.2 Use of the Left Hand ................................. 123 5.3 Perspective ......................................... 126 Bibliography .......................................... 131 Appendix A ........................................... 137 Appendix B ........................................... 147 Index ............................................... 175 Preface This book could not have been completed without the help of many dedicated persons to whom I wish to express my gratitude here. My thanks go to the teachers of the ABSA-School, the members of the Karachi Deaf Welfare Association and their president Mansoor Ahmed Bilal, and all the others who have voluntarily served as informants. Their frank and helpful attitude has made it possible for me to gather a rich corpus of data that shows many facets of the language. Considering that the conditions of research work in Karachi have been difficult at times, their cooperation is especially appreciated. The same applies to my deaf informants in New Delhi and the various institutions for the deaf that cooperated with me: the All India Federation of the Deaf, the Delhi Association of the Deaf, the Delhi Federation of Deaf Women, the Delhi Deaf Friendship Club and, above all, the Multipurpose Training Centre for the Deaf. Most of all I would like to thank my bilingual informant Ms. Tayyabah Mansoor, who put a lot of time and effort into helping me to produce the first transcriptions of the sign language texts. These later became the basis for further analysis. Her unexpectedly deep understanding of linguistic matters greatly facilitated the initial stages of work on the text corpus. Further thanks are due to the director of the ABSA-School in Karachi Mrs. Rukhsana Ahsan for providing me with the publications of the ABSA research group, to Ms. Qamar-un-Nisa Khan of the National Institute of Special Education (NISE) in Islamabad for a copy of the NISE’s 1991 dictio- nary and for information about the NISE’s activities, and to the director of the Department of Special Education at the University of Karachi Dr. Ismail Saad for the help and encouragement that the University provided during my research. Among those who have supported my research in India I would like to mention especially Dr. Onkar Sharma, Mr. Arun Rao and Mr. Arun Kanchan from Delhi, Mr. Samir Ray from Calcutta and Dr. Dilip Deshmukh from Ichalkaranji. Finally I would like to thank all those who led a helping hand to the practical realization of this research project such as video recordings, photo- graphs etc. I am especially grateful to my husband Hamid Mahmood Zeshan, who has been an able organizer and coordinator throughout the entire research xii PREFACE project both in Karachi and in New Delhi, and who has always supported me in every possible way. I hope that the results of my research will soon serve the interests of the deaf community all over Pakistan and India, and will become a step towards elevating the status of sign language in this region, so that government officials, schools for the deaf and the hearing population will recognize the real linguistic and social importance of the language. Many thanks in advance to all those who will help me with the realization of this project. This thesis was presented to the University of Cologne in 1996 and has been revised in the light of my latest research results, with a few errors corrected and a few additions made. More specifically, recent research that I have conducted in New Delhi indicates that what used to be called ‘Indian Sign Language’ is in fact the same language as ‘Pakistan Sign Language’, at least in the Delhi area and parts of Northern India. Therefore, the original title of the thesis has been changed from ‘Pakistan Sign Language’ to ‘Sign Language in Indopakistan’. Where applicable, I have noted differences between the data from Karachi and the data from Delhi. However, evaluation of the new data from Delhi is not complete yet, so that most of the examples of signed utterances are based on data from Karachi. Parts of this book have been published in its original German version (Zeshan 1997) and in an earlier English translation (Zeshan 1996). Presently, my research continues with a Ph.D. dissertation titled ‘Sign Languages of the Indian Subcontinent’ which is supervised by Prof. Hans-Jürgen Sasse from the Depart- ment of Linguistics of the University of Cologne, to whom I am indebted for his guidance and support. I also gratefully acknowledge research fellowships from the provincial government of Bavaria for completion of this thesis and the provincial government of Northrhine-Westphalia for the Ph.D. project. C 1 Introduction 1.1 Indopakistan Sign