A contact sign language, or contact sign, is a
variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
or
style
Style is a manner of doing or presenting things and may refer to:
* Architectural style, the features that make a building or structure historically identifiable
* Design, the process of creating something
* Fashion, a prevailing mode of clothing ...
of language that arises from contact between
deaf
Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an Audiology, audiological condition. In this context it ...
individuals using a
sign language
Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign l ...
and hearing individuals using an oral language (or the written or
manually coded
Manually coded languages (MCLs) are a family of gestural communication methods which include gestural spelling as well as constructed languages which directly interpolate the grammar and syntax of oral languages in a gestural-visual form—that ...
form of the oral language).
Contact language
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for the ...
s also arise between different sign languages, although the term
pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...
rather than contact sign is used to describe such phenomena.
Contact sign has been characterized as "a sign language that has elements of both
natural sign language and the surrounding
rallanguage".
Language contact
Language contact
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...
is extremely common in most
Deaf communities, which are almost always located within a dominant oral language ('hearing') culture. Deaf people are exposed to the oral language that surrounds them, if only in visual forms like
lip reading
The lips are the visible body part at the mouth of many animals, including humans. Lips are soft, movable, and serve as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. Human lips are a tactile sensory organ, and can be ...
or writing, from early childhood. Within everyday life it is not uncommon for Deaf people to be in contact with oral languages.
Hearing
Hearing, or auditory perception, is the ability to perceive sounds
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psycholog ...
parents and teachers of deaf children, if they sign at all, are usually
second language
A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language (first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a fo ...
learners, and their signing style will exhibit features of
interference
Interference is the act of interfering, invading, or poaching. Interference may also refer to:
Communications
* Interference (communication), anything which alters, modifies, or disrupts a message
* Adjacent-channel interference, caused by extr ...
from the oral language. A mixing of languages and modes may also occur when
interpreting
Interpreting is a translational activity in which one produces a first and final target-language output on the basis of a one-time exposure to an expression in a source language.
The most common two modes of interpreting are simultaneous inter ...
between a spoken and a sign language.
While deaf sign languages are distinct from oral languages, with a different vocabulary and grammar, a boundary between the two is often hard to draw. A language 'continuum' is often described between signing with a strong sign-language grammar to signing with a strong spoken-language grammar, the middle-regions of which are often described as contact sign (or Pidgin Sign). In a conversation between a native signer and a second-language learner, both conversation partners may be signing at different ends of the spectrum. A blend that is often seen is vocabulary from the sign language signed in the
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
of the oral language, with a simplified or reduced grammar typical of contact languages. We can recognize that the speaking habits of an English speaker learning French for the first time will differ from those of a native French speaker. The same thing happens when a hearing individual is learning a sign language.
However, even a dialogue between two native deaf signers often shows some evidence of language contact. Deaf people in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
may use a more
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
-like signing style in a more formal setting, or if unfamiliar with the interlocutor.
Huenerfauth claims that Pidgin Signed English, as well as contact languages, can create accessibility benefits for users of sign language who have lower levels of written literacy. While
Cecil Lucas explains how contact also occurs when deaf signers modify their language for the sake of hearing people who are in the process of learning to use a sign language.
Linguistic features of language contact
Sign language researchers
Ceil Lucas
Ceil Lucas (born March 19, 1951) is an American linguist. Lucas is a ''professor emerita'' of Gallaudet University. Lucas was a professor in the Department of Linguistics at Gallaudet University until her retirement in 2014. Lucas is currently th ...
and
Clayton Valli
Clayton Valli (May 25, 1951 – March 7, 2003) was an American prominent deaf linguist and American Sign Language (ASL) poet whose work helped further to legitimize ASL and introduce people to the richness of American Sign Language literatur ...
have noted several differences between the language contact arising between two sign languages and the contact phenomena that arise between a signed and an oral language.
When two sign languages meet, the expected contact phenomena occurs:
lexical
Lexical may refer to:
Linguistics
* Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language
* Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification
* Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge
* Lexical ...
borrowing, foreign "accent", interference,
code switching
In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualism ...
,
pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...
s,
creoles and mixed systems. However, between a sign language and an oral language, lexical borrowing and code switching also occur, but the interface between the oral and signed modes produces unique phenomena:
fingerspelling
Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets) have often been used in deaf e ...
(see below), fingerspelling/sign combination, initialisation,
CODA
Coda or CODA may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* Movie coda, a post-credits scene
* ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television
*''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...
talk (see below),
TTY
TTY may refer to:
Communications and technology
* Teleprinter or teletypewriter (TTY), an electromechanical typewriter paired with a communication channel
** Sometimes used more generally for any type of computer terminal
** Sometimes used for a v ...
conversation,
mouthing
In sign language, mouthing is the production of visual syllables with the mouth while signing. That is, signers sometimes say or mouth a word in a spoken language at the same time as producing the sign for it. Mouthing is one of the many ways in w ...
, and contact signing.
Long-term contact with oral languages has generated a large influence on the vocabulary and grammar of sign languages.
Loan translation
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...
s are common, such as the
American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
signs BOY and FRIEND, forming a compound meaning "boyfriend" or the
Auslan
Auslan () is the majority sign language of the Australian Deaf community. The term ''Auslan'' is a portmanteau of "Australian Sign Language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the 1980s, although the language itself is much older. Auslan is relate ...
partial-
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...
DON'T MIND, which involves the sign for the
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
MIND combined with an upturned palm, which is a typical Auslan
negation
In logic, negation, also called the logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P or \overline. It is interpreted intuitively as being true when P is false, and false ...
. When a loan translation becomes fully acceptable and considered as 'native' (rather than Contact Signing) is a matter over which native signers will differ in opinion.
The process appears to be very common in those sign languages that have been best documented, such as
American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
,
British Sign Language
British Sign Language (BSL) is a sign language used in the United Kingdom (UK), and is the first or preferred language among the Deaf community in the UK. Based on the percentage of people who reported 'using British Sign Language at home' on ...
and
Auslan
Auslan () is the majority sign language of the Australian Deaf community. The term ''Auslan'' is a portmanteau of "Australian Sign Language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the 1980s, although the language itself is much older. Auslan is relate ...
. In all of the cases, signers are increasingly
bilingual
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...
in both a sign and a "spoken" language (or visual forms of it) as the deaf signing community's
literacy
Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, huma ...
levels increase. In such bilingual communities, loan translations are common enough that deeper grammatical structures may also be borrowed from the oral language, which is known as
metatypy
Metatypy is a type of morphosyntactic and semantic language change brought about by language contact involving multilingual speakers. The term was coined by linguist Malcolm Ross.
Description
Ross (1999: 7, 1) gives the following definition:
e ...
.
Malcolm Ross writes:
Some populations with a high proportion of deaf people have developed sign languages that are used by both hearing and deaf people in the community, such as
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) was a village sign-language that was once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard from the early 18th century to 1952. It was used by both Deaf and hearing people in the community; consequently, dea ...
,
Yucatec Maya Sign Language
Yucatec Maya (; referred to by its speakers simply as Maya or as , is one of the 32 Mayan languages of the Mayan language family. Yucatec Maya is spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula and northern Belize. There is also a significant diasporic commu ...
,
Adamorobe Sign Language
Adamorobe Sign Language or Adasl is a village sign language used in Adamorobe, an Akan village in eastern Ghana. It is used by about 30 deaf and 1370 hearing people (2003).
The Adamorobe community is notable for its unusually high incidence of ...
and
Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language
Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) is a village sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert of southern Israel.
As deafness is so frequent (4% of the population is deaf, c ...
. It is unclear what kind of language contact phenomena, if any, occur in such environments.
Fingerspelling
One of the most striking contact sign phenomena is
fingerspelling
Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets) have often been used in deaf e ...
in which a
writing system
A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form ...
is represented with manual signs. In the sign languages with such a system, the manual alphabet is structurally quite different from the more 'native' grammatical forms, which are often spatial, visually motivated, and multilayered. Manual alphabets facilitate the input of new terms such as technical vocabulary from the dominant oral language of the region and allow a
transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
of phrases, names, and places. They may also be used for
function word
In linguistics, function words (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. ...
s such as 'at', 'so' or 'but'.
Pidgin Sign English
The phrase Pidgin Sign English (PSE, sometimes also 'Pidgin Signed English') is often used to describe the different
contact languages
Contact may refer to:
Interaction Physical interaction
* Contact (geology), a common geological feature
* Contact lens or contact, a lens placed on the eye
* Contact sport, a sport in which players make contact with other players or objects
* C ...
that arise between the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
and any of
British Sign Language
British Sign Language (BSL) is a sign language used in the United Kingdom (UK), and is the first or preferred language among the Deaf community in the UK. Based on the percentage of people who reported 'using British Sign Language at home' on ...
,
New Zealand Sign Language
New Zealand Sign Language or NZSL ( mi, te reo Turi) is the main language of the deaf community in New Zealand. It became an official language of New Zealand in April 2006 under the New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006. The purpose of the act was t ...
,
Auslan
Auslan () is the majority sign language of the Australian Deaf community. The term ''Auslan'' is a portmanteau of "Australian Sign Language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the 1980s, although the language itself is much older. Auslan is relate ...
or
American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
. However, that term is falling out of favour. Pidgin Signed English generally refers to a combination of
American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
and English language. Individuals who are hard of hearing, or become deaf later on in life, after using Spoken English, may often use a mixture of ASL and English, which is known as PSE. With PSE, it is common to sign most English words of a sentence, using English grammar and syntax, using ASL signs.
When communicating with hearing English speakers, ASL-speakers often use PSE.
[ at ''Ethnologue''] Various types of PSE exist, ranging from highly English-influenced PSE (practically
relexified English) to PSE which is quite close to ASL lexically and grammatically, but may alter some subtle features of ASL grammar.
Fingerspelling may be used more often in PSE than it is normally used in ASL.
Reverse phenomenon by children of deaf adults
Contact phenomena have been observed in the reverse direction, from a sign language to an oral language. Hearing adults who grew up in deaf signing households as
children of deaf adults (CODAs) sometimes communicate with one another in spoken and written English and knowingly use ASL loan translations and underlying grammatical forms.
See also
*
Bimodal bilingualism Bimodal bilingualism is an individual or community's bilingual competency in at least one oral language and at least one sign language, which utilize two different modalities. An oral language consists of an vocal-aural modality versus a signed lang ...
*
Manually Coded English
Manually-Coded English (MCE) is a type of sign system that follows direct spoken English. The different codes of MCE vary in the levels of directness in following spoken English grammar. There may also be a combination with other visual clues, suc ...
References
Further reading
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{{sign language navigation
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Pidgins and creoles