Contact Sign
Encyclopedia
A contact sign language, or contact sign, is a variety
or style
of language that arises from contact between a deaf sign language
and a spoken language (or the written or manually coded
form of the spoken language). Contact languages also arise between different sign languages, although the term pidgin
rather than contact sign is used to describe such phenomena.
Contact sign has been characterized as "a sign language that has elements of both [a] natural sign language and the surrounding spoken language".
is extremely common in most deaf communities, which are almost always located within a dominant spoken language ('hearing') culture. Deaf people are exposed to the spoken language that surrounds them, if only in visual forms like lip reading
or writing, from early childhood. Hearing
parents and teachers of deaf children, if they sign at all, are usually second language
learners and their signing style will exhibit features of interference from the spoken language. A mixing of languages and modes may also occur when interpreting
between a spoken and a signed language.
While deaf sign languages are distinct from spoken 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
of the spoken language, with a simplified or reduced grammar typical of contact languages.
However, even a dialog between two native deaf signers often shows some evidence of language contact. Deaf people in the United States may use a more English-like signing style in a more formal setting, or if unfamiliar with the interlocutor.
have noted several differences between the language contact arising between two sign languages, and the contact phenomena that arise between a signed and a spoken language. When two sign languages meet, the expected contact phenomena occurs —lexical
borrowing, foreign "accent," interference, code switching
, pidgin
s, creole
s, and mixed systems. However, between a sign language and a spoken language, while lexical borrowing and code switching also occur, the interface between the spoken and signed mode
s produces unique phenomena: fingerspelling
(see below), fingerspelling/sign combination, initalisation, CODA
talk (see below), TTY conversation, mouthing
, and contact signing.
Long-term contact with spoken languages has generated a large influence on the vocabulary and grammar of sign languages. Loan translations are common, such as the American Sign Language
signs BOY and FRIEND, forming a compound meaning "boyfriend", or the Auslan
partial-calque
DON'T MIND, which involves the sign for the noun
MIND combined with an upturned palm, which is a typical Auslan negation
. At what point 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. This process appears to be very common in those sign languages that have been best documented, such as American Sign Language
, British Sign Language
, and Auslan
. In these cases, signers are increasingly bilingual in both a sign and a "spoken" language (or visual forms of it) as the deaf signing community's literacy
levels increase. In such bilingual communities, loan translations are common enough that deeper grammatical structures may also be borrowed — in this case, from the spoken language. This is known as metatypy
. 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
, Yucatec Maya Sign Language, Adamorobe Sign Language
and Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language
. It is unclear what kind of language contact phenomena, if any, occur in such environments.
, in which a writing system
is represented with manual signs. In those sign languages where such a system exists, 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 spoken language of the region, and allow a transliteration
of phrases, names, and places. They may also be used for function word
s such as 'at', 'so' or 'but'.
and either British Sign Language
, New Zealand Sign Language
, Auslan
or American Sign Language
, but the term is increasingly falling out of favor.
(CODAs) sometimes communicate with each other in spoken and written English while knowingly using ASL loan translations and underlying grammatical forms.
Variety (linguistics)
In sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard variety itself...
or style
Stylistics (linguistics)
Stylistics is the study and interpretation of texts from a linguistic perspective. As a discipline it links literary criticism and linguistics, but has no autonomous domain of its own...
of language that arises from contact between a deaf sign language
Sign language
A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's...
and a spoken language (or the written or manually coded
Manually Coded English
Manually Coded English is a general term used to describe a variety of visual communication methods expressed through the hands which attempt to represent the English language...
form of the spoken language). Contact languages also arise between different sign languages, although the term pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
rather than contact sign is used to describe such phenomena.
Contact sign has been characterized as "a sign language that has elements of both [a] natural sign language and the surrounding spoken language".
Language contact
Language contactLanguage contact
Language contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
is extremely common in most deaf communities, which are almost always located within a dominant spoken language ('hearing') culture. Deaf people are exposed to the spoken language that surrounds them, if only in visual forms like lip reading
Lip reading
Lip reading, also known as lipreading or speechreading, is a technique of understanding speech by visually interpreting the movements of the lips, face and tongue with information provided by the context, language, and any residual hearing....
or writing, from early childhood. Hearing
Hearing (person)
The term hearing or hearing person, from the perspective of mainstream English-language culture, refers to someone whose sense of hearing is at the medical norm. From this point of view, someone who is not fully hearing has a hearing impairment or is said to be hard of hearing or deaf. The...
parents and teachers of deaf children, if they sign at all, are usually second language
Second language
A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
learners and their signing style will exhibit features of interference from the spoken language. A mixing of languages and modes may also occur when interpreting
Interpreting
Language interpretation is the facilitating of oral or sign-language communication, either simultaneously or consecutively, between users of different languages...
between a spoken and a signed language.
While deaf sign languages are distinct from spoken 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
Word order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
of the spoken language, with a simplified or reduced grammar typical of contact languages.
However, even a dialog between two native deaf signers often shows some evidence of language contact. Deaf people in the United States may use a more English-like signing style in a more formal setting, or if unfamiliar with the interlocutor.
Linguistic features of language contact
Sign language researchers Ceil Lucas and Clayton ValliClayton Valli
Clayton Valli was a prominent deaf linguist and American Sign Language poet whose work helped further to legitimize ASL and introduce people to the richness of American Sign Language literature....
have noted several differences between the language contact arising between two sign languages, and the contact phenomena that arise between a signed and a spoken language. When two sign languages meet, the expected contact phenomena occurs —lexical
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
borrowing, foreign "accent," interference, code switching
Code-switching
In linguistics, code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals—people who speak more than one language—sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
, pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
s, creole
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
s, and mixed systems. However, between a sign language and a spoken language, while lexical borrowing and code switching also occur, the interface between the spoken and signed mode
Grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
s produces unique phenomena: fingerspelling
Fingerspelling
Fingerspelling is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets , have often been used in deaf education, and have subsequently been adopted as a distinct part of a number of sign languages around the world...
(see below), fingerspelling/sign combination, initalisation, CODA
Child of deaf adult
A child of a deaf adult, often known by the acronym "CODA", is a person who was raised by a deaf parent or guardian. Many CODAs identify with both deaf and hearing cultures...
talk (see below), TTY conversation, mouthing
Mouthing
In sign language, mouthing is the production of visual syllables with the mouth while signing. Although not present in all sign languages, and sometimes not in signers at all levels of education, where it does occur it may be an essential element of a sign, distinguishing signs which would...
, and contact signing.
Long-term contact with spoken languages has generated a large influence on the vocabulary and grammar of sign languages. Loan translations are common, such as the American Sign Language
American Sign Language
American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
signs BOY and FRIEND, forming a compound meaning "boyfriend", or the Auslan
Auslan
Auslan is the sign language of the Australian deaf community. The term Auslan is an acronym of "Australian sign language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the early 1980s, although the language itself is much older...
partial-calque
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.-Calque:...
DON'T MIND, which involves the sign for the noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
MIND combined with an upturned palm, which is a typical Auslan negation
Negation
In logic and mathematics, negation, also called logical complement, is an operation on propositions, truth values, or semantic values more generally. Intuitively, the negation of a proposition is true when that proposition is false, and vice versa. In classical logic negation is normally identified...
. At what point 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. This process appears to be very common in those sign languages that have been best documented, such as American Sign Language
American Sign Language
American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
, British Sign Language
British Sign Language
British Sign Language is the sign language used in the United Kingdom , and is the first or preferred language of some deaf people in the UK; there are 125,000 deaf adults in the UK who use BSL plus an estimated 20,000 children. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands,...
, and Auslan
Auslan
Auslan is the sign language of the Australian deaf community. The term Auslan is an acronym of "Australian sign language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the early 1980s, although the language itself is much older...
. In these cases, signers are increasingly bilingual in both a sign and a "spoken" language (or visual forms of it) as the deaf signing community's literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
levels increase. In such bilingual communities, loan translations are common enough that deeper grammatical structures may also be borrowed — in this case, from the spoken language. This is known as metatypy
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.Malcolm Ross gives the following definition:...
. Malcolm Ross
Malcolm Ross
Malcolm David Ross is a linguist and professor at the Australian National University. He has published work on Austronesian and Papuan languages, historical linguistics, and language contact.-External links:**...
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
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language is a sign language once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, U.S., from the early 18th century to the year 1952. It was remarkable for its use by both deaf and hearing people in the community; consequently, deafness did not...
, Yucatec Maya Sign Language, Adamorobe Sign Language
Adamorobe Sign Language
Adamorobe Sign Language is an indigenous sign language used in Adamorobe, an Akan village in eastern Ghana. It is used by about 30 deaf and 1370 hearing people.”...
and Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language
Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language
The Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language is a sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert of southern Israel...
. 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 fingerspellingFingerspelling
Fingerspelling is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets , have often been used in deaf education, and have subsequently been adopted as a distinct part of a number of sign languages around the world...
, in which a writing system
Writing system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
is represented with manual signs. In those sign languages where such a system exists, 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 spoken language of the region, and allow a transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
of phrases, names, and places. They may also be used for function word
Function word
Function words are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with 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 that arise between the English languageEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and either British Sign Language
British Sign Language
British Sign Language is the sign language used in the United Kingdom , and is the first or preferred language of some deaf people in the UK; there are 125,000 deaf adults in the UK who use BSL plus an estimated 20,000 children. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands,...
, New Zealand Sign Language
New Zealand Sign Language
New Zealand Sign Language or NZSL is the main language of the Deaf community in New Zealand. It became an official language of New Zealand in April 2006, alongside Te Reo Māori....
, Auslan
Auslan
Auslan is the sign language of the Australian deaf community. The term Auslan is an acronym of "Australian sign language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the early 1980s, although the language itself is much older...
or American Sign Language
American Sign Language
American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
, but the term is increasingly falling out of favor.
CODA talk
Contact phenomena have been observed in the reverse direction, from a sign language to a spoken language. Hearing adults who grew up in deaf signing households as children of deaf adultsChild of deaf adult
A child of a deaf adult, often known by the acronym "CODA", is a person who was raised by a deaf parent or guardian. Many CODAs identify with both deaf and hearing cultures...
(CODAs) sometimes communicate with each other in spoken and written English while knowingly using ASL loan translations and underlying grammatical forms.
See also
- Bimodal Bilingualism (in the American Deaf Community)
- Manually Coded EnglishManually Coded EnglishManually Coded English is a general term used to describe a variety of visual communication methods expressed through the hands which attempt to represent the English language...