2018 Sat Poster 6725

Saturday, November 3, 2018 | Poster Session II, Metcalf Small | 3:15pm

Grammaticalization of the body and space in Nicaraguan Sign Language
K. Montemurro, M. Flaherty, M. Coppola, S. Goldin-Meadow, D. Brentari

We look at the role of spatial modulation in the development of person distinctions in Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), a language that emerged in the late 1970s in Managua. Building on previous work (Senghas 2003, 2010, Kocab et al. 2015), we isolate spatial modulation through different phonological expressions. Specifically, we look at the use of the body as an anchor in space and the use of axis i.e. front-back or left-right (figure 1) for establishing referents. We track the development of these devices through four participant groups: 4 homesigners, 4 cohort 1 (C1), 5 cohort 2 (C2), and 7 cohort 3 (C3) signers, which represent different stages in the emergence of NSL. Participants were shown short video clips and asked to describe what they saw. Stimuli consisted of two animate participants and a single event (figure 2). At present, we have only events with third person referents, but will collect new data to fill this gap for first and second person.

In studying spatial modulation, we find neutral space itself is not the only resource used. In mature sign languages with a developed person system, there is a grammatical first/non-first distinction which poses the body (first person) in opposition to neutral space (non-first person) (Meier 1990). Thus when looking at the grammaticalization of space we must also look at grammaticalization of the body as an anchor in space.

While homesign rarely uses space to establish loci, C1 and most C2 signers use their bodies to represent one of the participants in the event. We find the body and space first enter the language relative to one another, as a way to contrast participants in an event. When posed in opposition to the body, the axis utilized to establish discourse referents is the front-back axis. By C3, this axis has shifted significantly (figure 3). Both third person referents have been displaced from the body and established in neutral space, using the left-right axis. This shift in axis preference in directional verbs is similarly found in Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language and Israeli Sign Language (Padden et al. 2010).

As the spatial layout of the contrast changes to left-right, C3 shows a distinction between the signer’s body and that of the participant in the event, leading us to hypothesize a distinction between first and non-first person in C3. While we only have third person referents available in our data, that both C1 and C2 use their bodies as a stand-in for a third person participant leads us to conclude they do not distinguish grammatical person. Crucially cohorts without a person distinction still differentiate participants in an event (i.e. subject and object) by using their body in opposition to neutral space. This may suggest that contrast, the ability to keep participants separate, and ability to refer back to these participants, are present from the onset, even without a language model as in C1.

References

Kocab, A., Pyers J., and Senghas, A.. 2015. Referential shift in Nicaraguan Sign Language: A transition from lexical to spatial devices. Frontiers in Psychology. 5.

Meier, R. 1990. Person deixis in American sign language. In S. D. Fischer & P. Siple (eds.), Theoretical issues in sign language research, Vol. 1:. 175-190. University of Chicago Press.

Padden, C., Meir, I., Aronoff, M., & Sandler, W. 2010. The grammar of space in two new sign languages. In D. Brentari (ed.), Sign languages. 570-592. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Senghas, A. 2003. Intergenerational influence and ontogenetic development in the emergence of spatial grammar in Nicaraguan Sign Language. Cognitive Development, 18(4), 511–531.

Senghas, A. 2010. The emergence of two functions for spatial devices in Nicaraguan Sign Language. Human Development, 53(5), 287–302.