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While it is common for deaf children to be bilingual in a spoken and signed language, studies often attribute any delays in language acquisition to language deprivation, rather than as a result of cross-linguistic interaction. This study compares the production of simple sentences in three languages (Palestinian Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and Israeli Sign Language [ISL]) and three language modalities (spoken, written, and signed) by deaf and hearing students in an Arabic-speaking community. Thirty-eight school-age Palestinian Arabic-speaking students participated in a sentence elicitation task in which they retold the events portrayed in video clips. Hearing students (n = 19) produced the sentences in spoken Palestinian Arabic and in written Modern Standard Arabic. Deaf students (n = 19) produced the sentences in these two language varieties and additionally in ISL. Omissions of arguments and verbs were compared across the two groups and three languages. Results showed that deaf students omitted more arguments and verbs compared with their hearing peers who scored at close to ceiling. Deaf students produced more omissions for direct objects and more omissions in ISL. The findings can be interpreted in two possible ways: atypical effects resulting from inconsistent language input and cross-linguistic transfer known to arise in multilingual children.

We investigate the contact situation between Israeli Sign Language (ISL) and Kufr Qassem Sign Language (KQSL) in a bilingual deaf community in Israel. We examine one outcome of language contact, known as reiteration--when two semantically equivalent lexical items from two different languages are produced sequentially. Until now, reiteration has been accepted as a clear example of code-switching. Yet, when we find multiple examples of reiteration present in monolingual signers of KQSL, we ask the following question: Is this a case of code-switching? KQSL monolingual signers produce the signs girlISL girlKQSL not as an example of reiteration but rather as a compound with the meaning of "wife." We conclude that, in this case, the sign girlISL is borrowed from ISL into a preexisting compound present in KQSL. Using examples from monolingual and bilingual data, we unravel the mystery of the "wife" and the stages of language change it has undergone.

Just as vocalization proceeds in a continuous stream in speech, so too do movements of the hands, face, and body in sign languages. Here, we use motion-capture technology to distinguish lexical signs in sign language from other common types of expression in the signing stream. One type of expression is constructed action, the enactment of (aspects of) referents and events by (parts of) the body. Another is classifier constructions, the manual representation of analogue and gradient motions and locations simultaneously with specified referent morphemes. The term signing is commonly used for all of these, but we show that not all visual signals in sign languages are of the same type. In this study of Israeli Sign Language, we use motion capture to show that the motion of lexical signs differs significantly along several kinematic parameters from that of the two other modes of expression: constructed action and the classifier forms. In so doing, we show how motion-capture technology can help to define the universal linguistic category "word," and to distinguish it from the expressive gestural elements that are commonly found across sign languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Short-term linguistic accommodation has been observed in a number of spoken language studies. The first of its kind in sign language research, this study aims to investigate the effects of regional varieties in contact and lexical accommodation in British Sign Language (BSL). Twenty-five participants were recruited from Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, and Newcastle and paired with the same conversational partner. Participants completed a "spot-the-difference" task which elicited a considerable amount of contrasting regionally specific sign data in the participant-confederate dyads. Accommodation was observed during the task with younger signers accommodating more than older signers. The results are interpreted with reference to the relationship between language contact and lexical accommodation in BSL, and address how further studies could help us better understand how contact and accommodation contribute to language change more generally.

The degree of mutual intelligibility of British Sign Language (BSL) regional varieties has been a subject of some debate. Recent research in which dyads of signers from contrasting regional backgrounds engaged in a conversational task showed no problems understanding one another. The present study investigated signers' knowledge of different BSL regional varieties. Twenty-five participants from Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, and Newcastle took part in a computer-based lexical recognition task in which they had to identify the meaning of 47 color signs from various regions in the United Kingdom. The results indicate that overall signers have a poor knowledge of regional signs for colors when signs are presented in isolation and without mouthing. Furthermore, signers with deaf parents performed better in the recognition task than signers with hearing parents and varieties from London and Birmingham were easiest to recognize. This article discusses how signers cope with regional differences and considers the features that facilitate in the recognition of regional varieties in BSL.

This article presents findings from the first major study to investigate lexical variation and change in British Sign Language (BSL) number signs. As part of the BSL Corpus Project, number sign variants were elicited from 249 deaf signers from eight sites throughout the UK. Age, school location, and language background were found to be significant predictors for the use of regional number sign variants. The results suggest that leveling may be taking place in BSL number signs inasmuch as younger signers are using a decreasing variety of regionally distinct number sign variants. These results need to be understood in light of the sociolinguistic characteristics of the British deaf community, which differ from those of spoken language communities, with which linguists are more familiar.

One striking commonality between languages is their Zipfian distributions: A power-law distribution of word frequency. This distribution is found across languages, speech genres, and within different parts of speech. The recurrence of such distributions is thought to reflect cognitive and/or communicative pressures and to facilitate language learning. However, research on Zipfian distributions has mostly been limited to spoken languages. In this study, we ask whether Zipfian distributions are also found across signed languages, as expected if they reflect a universal property of human language. We find that sign frequencies and ranks in three sign language corpora (BSL, DGS and NGT) show a Zipfian relationship, similar to that found in spoken languages. These findings highlight the commonalities between spoken and signed languages, add to our understanding of the use of signs, and show the prevalence of Zipfian distributions across language modalities, supporting the idea that they facilitate language learning and communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common feature of discourse coherence is hierarchical organization: more generally, central relations (characterizing the overall topic or goal) dominate complementary or modifying relations. In this hierarchy, higher levels tend to be marked by stronger prosodic cues than lower levels. This study seeks to understand how such a system emerges in human communication – what is present at the outset, and what takes time to develop. Specifically, we investigate whether the conceptualization of hierarchical organization precedes overt linguistic structuring, and whether distinct types and strengths of prosodic marking at different hierarchical levels can be discerned in the process of emergence. The only empirical evidence for such an investigation comes from sign languages, because they can arise de novo at any time. Sign languages offer the additional advantage of directly linking instantiations of linguistic structure to articulations of different visually perceived bodily articulators. Our study of a young sign language, Israeli Sign Language (ISL), finds that conceptual hierarchical structuring of discourse arises very early. However, the organization of bodily articulators to linguistically mark hierarchical information takes time to emerge: Younger ISL signers use smaller, less salient articulators at lower levels of the hierarchy compared to older signers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The current study aimed to examine morphosyntactic errors in sentences produced by DHH students, who are signers of Israeli Sign Language, and also users of Palestinian Colloquial Arabic (PCA) and written Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)., Method: Nineteen school-age DHH students participated in a sentence elicitation task in which they retold events portrayed in 24 videos in PCA and MSA. A control group of 19 hearing students was tested with the same task. Sentences in each language variety were coded for grammatical versus ungrammatical productions and for type of morphosyntactic errors for the latter. In addition, code-switched words were counted., Results: The hearing group showed no morphosyntactic errors, whereas the DHH students showed morphosyntactic errors in both PCA and MSA. In addition, both groups code-switched in both PCA and MSA, with more code-switching in the MSA task than in the PCA task. Furthermore, an interaction with age revealed that young students code-switched more in MSA and older students code-switched more in PCA., Conclusions: It is suggested that the morphosyntactic abilities of DHH students are incomplete in both language varieties. Lack of spoken language input may negatively influence the acquisition of spoken language, which impacts further the acquisition of the standard language in diglossic contexts. Code-switching is explained as both due to lexical gaps, when occurring in MSA, and an effort to raise the register in PCA.