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Mouthings in highly multilingual contexts: typological implications from Hawai‘i Sign Language & Sinasina Sign Language
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
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While some aspects of mouthings have been previously investigated, many topics in the use of this cross-modal contact phenomenon in sign languages remain un(der)studied, and not much is known about mouthings in Russian Sign Language (RSL), in particular. This article examines various aspects of mouthings as these are used by native RSL signers and aims to contribute new insights into the use and origin of mouthings in this sign language. Based on novel data from the online RSL Corpus alongside additional elicited data, we describe the distribution, forms, functions and spreading patterns of mouthings. Our findings furthermore show that sign languages exhibit more extensive variation in the use of mouthings than has previously been thought. Moreover, we – thus far uniquely – describe mouthings also as a written-language-based contact phenomenon. This study has the potential to provide a better understanding of the nature of such contact-induced features as mouthings in sign languages in general and reveals a complex interplay of the modalities of signed, spoken and written languages.
When referring to non-present entities, speakers and signers can select from a range of different strategies to create expressions that range from extremely concise to highly elaborate. This design of referring expressions is based partly on the availability of contextual information that can aid addressee understanding. In the small signing community of Providence Island, signers’ heavy reliance on extra-linguistic information has led to their language being labelled as context-dependent (Washabaugh, de Santis & Woodward 1978). This study investigates the semiotic strategies that deaf signers in Providence Island use to introduce non-present third person referents, and examines how signers optimise specificity and minimise ambiguity by drawing on shared context. We examined first introductions to non-present people in spontaneous dyadic conversations between deaf signers and analysed the semiotic strategies used. We found that signers built referring expressions using the same strategies found in other sign languages, yet designed expressions that made use of contextual knowledge shared through community membership, such as geography, local spoken languages and traits of fellow islanders. Our signers also used strategies described as unusual or unattested in other sign languages, such as unframed constructed action sequences and stand-alone mouthings. This study deepens our understanding of context dependence by providing examples of how context is drawn upon by communities with high degrees of shared knowledge. Our results call into question the classification of sign languages as context-dependent or context-independent and highlights the differences in data collection across communities and the resulting limitations of cross-linguistic comparisons.
Although Sign Languages are gestural languages, the fact remains that some linguistic information can also be conveyed by spoken components as mouthing. Mouthing usually tend to reproduce the more relevant phonetic part of the equivalent spoken word matching with the manual sign. Therefore, one crucial issue in sign language is to understand whether mouthing is part of the signs themselves or not, and to which extent it contributes to the construction of signs meaning. Another question is to know whether mouthing patterns constitute a phonological or a semantic cue in the lexical sign entry. This study aimed to investigate the role of mouthing on the processing of lexical signs in French Sign Language (LSF), according the type of bilingualism (intramodal vs. bimodal). For this purpose, a behavioral sign-picture lexical decision experiment was designed. Intramodal signers (native deaf adults) and Bimodal signers (fluent hearing adults) have to decide as fast as possible whether a picture matched with the sign seen just before. Five experimental conditions in which the pair sign-mouthing were congruent or incongruent were created. Our results showed a strong interference effect when the sign-mouthing matching was incongruent, reflected by higher error rates and lengthened reaction times compared with the congruent condition. This finding suggests that both groups of signers use the available lexical information contained in mouthing during accessing the sign meaning. In addition, deaf intramodal signers were strongly interfered than hearing bimodal signers. Taken together, our data indicate that mouthing is a determining factor in LSF lexical access, specifically in deaf signers.
This chapter looks into the functions of mouthing in Chinese Sign Language (CSL), which is one type of mouth action in sign languages. In particular, we base our discussion on the mouthing that appears in interrogative constructions in naturalistic data. Our findings include that mouthing varies in both morphology and syntactic distribution. Some can be part of sign words and some can function as question markers. In conclusion, we argue that mouthing basically belongs to CSL grammar, rather than that it is a code-mixing phenomenon. 4.
This paper presents a critical examination of key concepts in the study of (signed and spoken) language and multimodality. It shows how shifts in conceptual understandings of language use, moving from bilingualism to multilingualism and (trans)languaging, have resulted in the revitalisation of the concept of language repertoires. We discuss key assumptions and analytical developments that have shaped the sociolinguistic study of signed and spoken language multilingualism as separate from different strands of multimodality studies. In most multimodality studies, researchers focus on participants using one named spoken language within broader embodied human action. Thus while attending to multimodal communication, they do not attend to multilingual communication. In translanguaging studies the opposite has happened: scholars have attended to multilingual communication without really paying attention to multimodality and simultaneity, and hierarchies within the simultaneous combination of resources. The (socio)linguistics of sign language has paid attention to multimodality but only very recently have started to focus on multilingual contexts where multiple sign and/or multiple spoken languages are used. There is currently little transaction between these areas of research. We argue that the lens of semiotic repertoires enables synergies to be identified and provides a holistic focus on action that is both multilingual and multimodal.
In many communities around the world, Deafness is directly tied to wellness. In this presentation, we address the unique linguistic barriers faced by many Deaf individuals as an issue of both health (Yoshinaga 1998) and identity (Padden 1989; 1996). We discuss (1) the impact of how the perceived “unwellness” of Deaf people is projected onto their languages, which in turn leads to language endangerment and difficulties for researchers, and (2) how linguistic barriers can disempower Deaf people and make them a highly vulnerable population. While these are global issues for Deaf people, we provide examples from our work in various Deaf communities in Nigeria and the highlands of Papua New Guinea. We argue that as linguists, our work with language documentation and conservation can (1) help break down stigma against sign languages and their Deaf users by acknowledging that sign languages are full languages, and (2) create materials which empower signers and allow them to become better educated and involved in their health and wellness decisions.
In the communities with which we work, linguistic barriers are closely tied to both stigma against deafness and vulnerability. Firstly, a medical model of deafness, which assumes that deafness is something that makes a person unwell and can be fixed, is common (Padden 1996). In less developed nations, such as Papua New Guinea, signers are often ostracized to an extent, and hearing individuals often deny the existence of deaf relatives. As a researcher, this can make it difficult to find Deaf people and learn about their sign languages. In Nigeria deaf children and youths are marginalized and underdeveloped, and their language is highly endangered. There is a variety of basic wellness issues in this population, including the fact that 75% of hearing loss in children is not genetic but accidental and avoidable. Most girls living in the dorm in the Schools for the Deaf have a sexually transmitted disease or have been sexually abused. Because of linguistic barriers, confiding in an adult is especially difficult, and these girls often have little or no information about these and other health issues. Similar types of stigma and wellness issues are common in deaf and signing communities around the world.
Through language documentation and conservation efforts, we can address some of the wellness issues that deaf people in such communities face. Firstly, we can create informational materials to better inform signers about health issues in their own languages. We can also work to decrease stigma against both deafness and sign languages by drawing attention to their presence and the fact that these language are more than just “gestures”. Finally, in order to find small sign languages, it is essential to take one’s time in documentation, as it can take years before more vulnerable members of the community are willing to work with outsiders, but it is still vital that these small and highly endangered languages are documented and conserved.
References:
Padden, Carol. 1989. “The deaf community and the culture of deaf people.” In Wilcox, Sherman (ed.), American Deaf Culture: an Anthology. Burtosville, MD: Linstok Press, Inc.
Padden, Carol. 1996. “From the cultural to the bicultural: The modern Deaf community”. In Parasnis, Ila (Ed.), Cultural and Language Diversity: Reflections on the Deaf Experience (pp. 79-98). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Yoshinago-Itano, Christine, Allison L. Sedey, Diane K. Coulter, and Albert L. Mehl. 1998. “Language of early-and later-identified children with hearing loss”. In Pediatrics. 102: 1161-1171.
Hawaiian belongs to the Eastern Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family and is indigenous to the islands of Hawaiʻi (see Pawley 1966, Marck 2000, Wilson 2012). Hawaiian is also an endangered language. Not only was the native population decimated after contact with foreigners and foreign diseases but the language itself came under attack after the occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 (for more on Hawaiian history, see Coffman 2009, Sai 2011). Children were thereafter banned from speaking Hawaiian at school and indeed ‘physical punishment for using it could be harsh’ (Native Hawaiian Study Commission 1983: 196). In the decades that followed, Hawaiian was gradually replaced by an English-based creole (HCE or Hawaiʻi Creole English) for practically all Hawaiʻi-born children (Bikerton & Wilson 1987, also Sakoda & Siegel 2003). By the end of the 1970s, most surviving Hawaiian speakers were over 70 years old and fewer than 50 speakers were under the age of 18 (Kawaiʻaeʻa, Housman & Alencastre 2007).
The Sign Language Documentation Training Center (SLDTC) offers workshops and linguistic training to users of threatened sign languages: currently American Sign Language (ASL) and Hawai'i Sign Language (HSL). This project originated as a spin-off of the Language Documentation Training Center (LDTC), launched in 2004 by graduate students in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. In its third iteration, SLDTC has aimed to train users of threatened signed languages to document their own languages in ways that make the information useful for those interested in these languages. The SLDTC also aims to increase awareness of language endangerment and encourage signers to think critically about language revitalization, especially as it pertains to their own languages. The work has been rewarding, but not without its challenges, including technological and orthographic constraints, as well as the challenges of readapting spoken language materials for sign languages.
The level of integration of mouthing into the sign language system was investigated using a novel experimental procedure. We constructed a word/sign matching task in which the signer has to indicate whether a LIS (Italian Sign Language) sign matches the written Italian word that follows the video presentation of the sign. In the congruent condition, the word matches the sign, while in the incongruent condition the word matches a sign which forms a minimal pair with the sign that has been presented in the video. To form minimal pairs, all four traditional formational parameters for signs plus mouthing were considered. Lip movements were present only in mouthing minimal pairs. In the incongruent condition we compared mouthing minimal pairs separately to handshape minimal pairs, location minimal pairs, movement minimal pairs, and palm orientation minimal pairs. Accuracy was markedly lower for minimal pairs distinguished by mouthing than for minimal pairs distinguished by one of the four parameters. In the congruent condition we compared mouthing minimal pairs to all the other minimal pairs, in which lips movements were absent. Reaction times were shorter in the presence of mouthing as a consequence of the strong mapping between orthography and mouthing, confirming that mouthing is highly connected to the Italian lexicon. Participants seem to consider mouthing external to the sign to be matched with the word. We propose that cases of disambiguation by mouthing should be interpreted as cases of simultaneous code mixing. Therefore, our experimental results suggest that mouthing is not a core component of sign languages.
in sign languages consist of simultaneously articulated manual signs and spoken language words. These “mouthings” (typically silent articulations) have been observed for many different sign languages. The present study aims to investigate the extent of such bimodal code-mixing in sign languages by investigating the frequency of mouthings produced by deaf users of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT), their co-occurrence with pointing signs, and whether any differences can be explained by sociolinguistic variables such as regional origin and age of the signer. We investigated over 10,000 mouth actions from 70 signers, and found that the mouth and the hands are equally active during signing. Moreover, around 80 % of all mouth actions are mouthings, while the remaining 20 % are unrelated to Dutch. We found frequency differences between individual signers and a small effect for level of education, but not for other sociolinguistic variables. Our results provide genuine evidence that mouthings form an inextricable component of signed interaction. Rather than displaying effects of competition between languages or spoken language suppression, NGT signers demonstrate the potential of the visual modality to conjoin parallel information streams.
This study investigates the conventionalization of mouth actions in Australian Sign Language. Signed languages were once thought of as simply manual languages because the hands produce the signs which individually and in groups are the symbolic units most easily equated with the words, phrases and clauses of spoken languages. However, it has long been acknowledged that non-manual activity, such as movements of the body, head and the face play a very important role. In this context, mouth actions that occur while communicating in signed languages have posed a number of questions for linguists: are the silent mouthings of spoken language words simply borrowings from the respective majority community spoken language(s)? Are those mouth actions that are not silent mouthings of spoken words conventionalized linguistic units proper to each signed language, culturally linked semi-conventional gestural units shared by signers with members of the majority speaking community, or even gestures and expressions common to all humans? We use a corpus-based approach to gather evidence of the extent of the use of mouth actions in naturalistic Australian Sign Language-making comparisons with other signed languages where data is available-and the form/meaning pairings that these mouth actions instantiate.
Mouthings and mouth gestures are omnipresent in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). Mouthings in NGT are mouth actions that have their origin in spoken Dutch, and are usually time aligned with the signs they co-occur with. Frequently, however, they spread over one or more adjacent signs, so that one mouthing co-occurs with multiple manual signs. We conducted a corpus study to explore how frequently this occurs in NGT and whether there is any sociolinguistic variation in the use of spreading. Further, we looked at the circumstances under which spreading occurs. Answers to these questions may give us insight into the prosodic structure of sign languages. We investigated a sample of the Corpus NGT containing 5929 mouthings by 46 participants. We found that spreading over an adjacent sign is independent of social factors. Further, mouthings that spread are longer than non-spreading mouthings, whether measured in syllables or in milliseconds. By using a relatively large amount of natural data, we succeeded in gaining more insight into the way mouth actions are utilised in sign languages.
This paper presents findings from a corpus-based study of grammatical expressions of completion in the urban sign language varieties of Solo and Makassar. In both varieties, the completive aspect can be marked by at least four particles, which may cliticise, and also by silent imitation of the lip pattern of a spoken language word (mouthings). These forms have several different functions, at the sentence level, the discourse level and the interaction level, and are typified by form-function asymmetry. Attention is drawn to interesting similarities both with varieties of spoken Indonesian, and with other sign languages. However, the presence of so many forms of the completive marker is not widely attested across sign languages, and some thoughts are shared as to the possible grammaticalisation sources of these forms.
Although the sign languages in use today are full human languages, certain of the features they share with gestures have been suggested to provide information about possible origins of human language. These features include sharing common articulators with gestures, and exhibiting substantial iconicity in comparison to spoken languages. If human proto-language was gestural, the question remains of how a highly iconic manual communication system might have been transformed into a primarily vocal communication system in which the links between symbol and referent are for the most part arbitrary. The hypothesis presented here focuses on a class of signs which exhibit: “echo phonology,” a repertoire of mouth actions which are characterized by “echoing” on the mouth certain of the articulatory actions of the hands. The basic features of echo phonology are introduced, and discussed in relation to various types of data. Echo phonology provides naturalistic examples of a possible mechanism accounting for part of the evolution of language, with evidence both of the transfer of manual actions to oral ones and the conversion of units of an iconic manual communication system into a largely arbitrary vocal communication system.
The article analyses cross-modal language contact between signed and spoken languages with special reference to the Irish Deaf community. This is exemplified by an examination of the phenomenon of mouthings in Irish Sign Language including its origins, dynamics, forms and functions. Initially, the setup of language contact with respect to Deaf communities and the sociolinguistics of the Irish Deaf community are discussed, and in the main part the article analyses elicited data in the form of personal stories by twelve native signers from the Republic of Ireland. The major aim of the investigation is to determine whether mouthings are yet fully integrated into ISL and if so, whether this integration has ultimately caused language change. Finally, it is asked whether traditional sociolinguistic frameworks of language contact can actually tackle issues of cross-modal language contact occurring between signed and spoken languages.
Ample research has explored language attitudes and speaker evaluations, yet it has not attended to direct incidences of language criticism. This article presents evidence demonstrating that a majority of those surveyed in Hawai'i have experienced language criticism. Coded data suggest that criticism takes place during employment, educational, familial, social and community interactions. People manage such episodes through a variety of communicative responses, ranging from avoidant to aggressive. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for future research on language criticism in other multilingual settings.
This work concerns structural outcomes of contact between Mexican Sign Language (LSM) and American Sign Language (ASL). A brief description of the social environment that leads to contact between LSM and ASL along the U.S.–Mexico border is provided, and two claims are advanced: (i) Contact between sign languages can exhibit characteristics of contact between spoken languages (e.g., interference), but there are also unique features of signed-language contact due to the ability to produce elements from a signed and spoken language simultaneously; and (ii) examples of interference from one sign language in the production of the other are sometimes systematic and predictable based on the signer's linguistic background, but cases of lack of interference also provide evidence that some signers are able to employ subtle articulatory differences, either consciously or not, when producing signs from the sign language that was learned after they acquired their first sign language. a
Mouthings and mouth gestures are omnipresent in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). Mouthings in NGT commonly have their origin in spoken Dutch. We conducted a corpus study to explore how frequent mouthings in fact are in NGT, whether there is variation within and between signs in mouthings, and how frequent temporal reduction occurs in mouthings. Answers to these questions can help us classify mouthings as being specified in the sign lexicon or as being instances of code-blending. We investigated a sample of 20 frequently occurring signs. We found that each sign in the sample co-occurs frequently with a mouthing, usually that of a specific Dutch lexical item. On the other hand, signs show variation in the way they co-occur with mouthings and mouth gestures.
By using a relatively large amount of natural data, we succeeded in gaining more insight into the way mouth actions are utilized in sign languages.
In contrast to the single-articulatory system of spoken languages, sign languages employ multiple articulators, including the hands and the mouth. We asked whether manual components and mouthing patterns of lexical signs share a semantic representation, and whether their relationship is affected by the differing language experience of deaf and hearing native signers. We used picture-naming tasks and word-translation tasks to assess whether the same semantic effects occur in manual production and mouthing production. Semantic errors on the hands were more common in the English-translation task than in the picture-naming task, but errors in mouthing patterns showed a different trend. We conclude that mouthing is represented and accessed through a largely separable channel, rather than being bundled with manual components in the sign lexicon. Results were comparable for deaf and hearing signers; differences in language experience did not play a role. These results provide novel insight into coordinating different modalities in language production.
Inclusion in Linguistics, the companion volume to Decolonizing Linguistics, aims to reinvent linguistics as a space of belonging across race, gender, class, disability, geographic region, and more. The volume’s introduction theorizes inclusion as fundamental to social justice and describes the extensive dialogic and collaborative process through which the volume was developed. The twenty chapters are organized around four themes. Contributors first discuss intersectional forms of exclusion in linguistics: researchers’ anti-autistic ableism, the exclusion of Deaf Global South researchers of color, the marginalization of Filipinx American students and scholars, disciplinary transphobia, and the need for a big tent linguistics. The second section addresses institutional steps toward inclusion: supporting first-generation college students and scholars, navigating student pronouns in the classroom, the role of HBCUs in fostering Black linguists, exclusionary linguistic theory in India, and harmful practices in language technology. The third section focuses on educational justice: teaching linguistics inclusively to high school and community college students, creating a Cabo Verdean Creole bilingual public school curriculum, engaging students of color in introductory linguistics through online language, training settler TESOL teachers in Indigenous epistemologies, giving K-12 teachers linguistic tools for teaching social justice issues, inclusive pedagogies in formal linguistics, and departmental social justice initiatives. The fourth section describes collaborations to create an inclusive public-facing linguistics: developing an online linguistics series, and educating the public about linguistic diversity. The volume’s conclusion outlines actions that linguists can take through research, teaching, and institutional structures to advance inclusion in linguistics and move the field toward social justice.
Sign languages, like creoles, have been minoritised in linguistics. This makes perspectives on creoles the potential to illuminate the study of sign languages. A common way that sign languages are divided is into deaf and rural groups, based on social criteria. This distinction makes relationships between social and linguistic properties relevant. This paper investigates one such causal relationship, specifically whether extent of contact with spoken language(s) via institutionalised education translates into higher prevalence of the silent articulation of spoken words, mouthing. Across 37 sign languages (26 deaf; 11 rural) mouthing is prevalent regardless of language type, having been reported in 35 languages (25 deaf; 10 rural). This suggests that differences in language emergence do not produce a structural difference in terms of mouthing. Language documentation should include description of contact phenomena and ideologies, and comparison can avoid stereotyping of language groups based on tokenised cases (de facto prototypes).
To find a suitable framework for the description of a previously undocumented language is all the more challenging in the case of a signed language. In this book, for the first time, an indigenous Asian sign language used in deaf communities in India and Pakistan is described on all linguistically relevant levels. This grammatical sketch aims at providing a concise yet comprehensive picture of the language. It covers a substantial part of Indopakistani Sign Language grammar. Topics discussed range from properties of individual signs to principles of discourse organization. Important aspects of morphological structure and syntactic regularities are summarized. Finally, sign language specific grammatical mechanisms such as spatially realized syntax and the use of facial expressions also figure prominently in this book. A 300-word dictionary with graphic representations of signs and a transcribed sample text complement the grammatical description. The cross-linguistic study of signed languages is only just beginning. Descriptive materials such as the ones presented in this book provide the necessary starting point for further empirical and theoretical research in this direction.
This book presents in revised form and as a single monograph three papers on a sign language from the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea. Originally published in 1980, for more than twenty years these papers remained the only report of a sign language from that part of the world. The detailed descriptive analyses that the author provided are still fresh today, and in some respects they anticipate insights into the nature of sign languages that were not further explored until much more recently. The monograph is accompanied by two essays: Sherman Wilcox comments on value and relevance of the author’s work in the light of much more recent work on the linguistics of sign languages. An essay by Lauren Reed and Alan Rumsey provides an up to date survey of what is now known about sign languages in Papua New Guinea. Information about sign languages in the Solomon Island is also included.
In this paper, we present a comparative study of mouth actions in three European sign languages: British Sign Language (BSL), Nederlandse Gebarentaal (Sign Language of the Netherlands, NGT), and Swedish Sign Language (SSL). We propose a typology for, and report the frequency distribution of, the different types of mouth actions observed. In accordance with previous studies, we find the three languages remarkably similar - both in the types of mouth actions they use, and in how these mouth actions are distributed. We then describe how mouth actions can extend over more than one manual sign. This spreading of mouth actions is the primary focus of this paper. Based on an analysis of comparable narrative material in the three languages, we demonstrate that the direction as well as the source and goal of spreading maybe language-specific.
Until now there has been no robust (socio)linguistic documentation of urban sign language varieties in Indonesia, and given the size of the Indonesian archipelago, it might be expected that these varieties are very different from each other. In this kind of situation, sign linguists have often applied lexicostatistical methods, but two such studies in Indonesia have recently produced contradictory results.
Instead, this investigation uses conceptual and methodological approaches from linguistic typology and Variationist Sociolinguistics, contextualised by a sociohistorical account of the Indonesian sign community. The grammatical domains of completion and negation are analysed using a corpus of spontaneous data from two urban centres, Solo and Makassar.
Four completive particles occur in both varieties, alongside clitics and the expression of completion through mouthings alone. The realisations of two variables, one lexical and one grammatical, are predicted by factors including the syntactic and functional properties of the variant, and younger Solonese signers are found to favour completive clitics. The reasons for intra-individual persistence and variation are also discussed.
Negation is expressed through particles, clitics, suppletives, and the simultaneous mouthing of predicates with negative particles. These paradigmatic variants occur in both varieties, with small differences in the sets of particles and suppletives for each variety. The realisations of four variables are found to be conditioned by factors including predicate type, sub-function, and the use of constructed dialogue. The gender of the signer is found to correlate with the syntactic order of negative and predicate; younger Solonese signers are also found to favour negative clitics and suppletives.
The similarities revealed between the Solo and Makassar varieties are discussed with reference to the history of contact between sign sub-communities across the archipelago. The investigation concludes with a discussion of factors that favour and disfavour the convergence of urban sign language varieties.
News accounts of the recent discovery of Hawai’i Sign Language tell of the identification of a new language—one nearing extinction—and, ultimately, the happy ending of language preservation. By applying postcolonial and disability studies scholarship to the news coverage, we reframe marginalized languages through an alternative logic. We examine the narratives of extinction, genealogy, and institutionalization that underlie both colonial and ableist discourses in the articles. We argue that popular conceptions of endangered language and language purity obscure how normative values are applied to language communities and institutionalization, often at the expense of those very communities.
Multilingualism, the use of two or more languages by an individual or a community is described as a ‘powerful fact of life around the world’ (Edwards 1994). If we consider that there are an estimated 195 countries in the world today against the 7,106 living languages listed in the Ethnologue, we might assume that for most of the world's population, multilingualism is a common occurrence (Lewis, Simons, and Fennig 2013). But what do we mean by multilingualism? Research in this field is interested in how languages coexist alongside other languages and the factors that contribute to the various multilingual environments throughout the world. For example, people who know more than one language may or may not be equally proficient in each of their languages; they may only be as proficient as is necessary and their use of different languages may be confined to specific social settings or groups. The extent to which these language communities interact with one another may also vary. Additionally, some languages may not have any official recognition within the nation states in which they are found, and this may affect how these languages are perceived by others. When we consider sign languages, we find many examples of multilingualism that parallel those described for spoken languages. In this chapter, we describe how multilingualism is a fact of life for nearly (if not all) signing individuals. We begin with a brief description of sign language as languages in their own right followed by a description of the different environments in which sign languages can thrive and the patterns of transmission that define them so that one can appreciate where, why, and how sign languages exist today. We also describe the types of multilingual environments that characterize the lives of deaf individuals and the factors that contribute to or against multilingualism.
Sign languages are of great interest to linguists, because while they are the product of the same brain, their physical transmission differs greatly from that of spoken languages. In this 2006 study, Wendy Sandler and Diane Lillo-Martin compare sign languages with spoken languages, in order to seek the universal properties they share. Drawing on general linguistic theory, they describe and analyze sign language structure, showing linguistic universals in the phonology, morphology, and syntax of sign language, while also revealing non-universal aspects of its structure that must be attributed to its physical transmission system. No prior background in sign language linguistics is assumed, and numerous pictures are provided to make descriptions of signs and facial expressions accessible to readers. Engaging and informative, Sign Language and Linguistic Universals will be invaluable to linguists, psychologists, and all those interested in sign languages, linguistic theory and the universal properties of human languages.
Hawaiian, a unique Polynesian language that is the sole indigenous language of Hawai'i, is severely endangered. Its traditional speakers have been reduced to the elderly and one tiny isolated community. Revitalization activities over the past 20 years have resulted in well-developed college and high school courses and a rapidly growing language-immersion effort. There is widespread support for the language among all segments of society, a legacy of Hawai'i's nineteenth-century history as a multiracial nation state in which Hawaiian was the national language.
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