MODALITY DOMINANCE: THE TIMING OF EARLY SIGNING AND SPEAKING REVISITED

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MODALITY DOMINANCE THE TIMING OF EARLY SIGNING
AND SPEAKING REVISITED

• Anne Baker

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LANGUAGE GENESIS Why are sign languages
interesting?

• Possible that SLs are forerunners of spoken
  languages
• Or
• Both have their origins in a gestural system

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LANGUAGE GENESIS Theories of language origins

• Ding-Dong
• The origin of human language in onomatopoeia
  imitative sounds that humans make to mimic the
  sounds of the world around them.
• Bow-wow
• Humans formed their first words by imitating
  animal sounds.
• Pooh-pooh
• The first words developed from sighs of pleasure,
  moans of pain, and other semi-involuntary cries
  These then became the names of the phenomena that
  made people say them.
• Uh-oh
• human language begins with the use of arbitrary
  symbols that represent warnings to other members
  of the human band.

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LANGUAGE GENESIS Theories (cont.)

• Yo-he-ho
• language arose in rhythmic chants and vocalisms
  uttered by people engaged in communal labour.
• Watch the Birdie
• human language became elaborated because humans
  found it advantageous to be able to deceive other
  humans. Since exclamations and vocalisms can
  involuntarily reveal your true mental state,
  humans learned to feign them in order to deceive
  others for selfish advantage.
• Ta-ta
• According to this, human language represents the
  use of oral gestures that began in imitation of
  hand gestures that were already in use for
  communication.

View from Acquisition of sign languages
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BACKGROUNDSign languages as full languages

• Full grammatical system
• Not derived from spoken languages
• Change as any other languages do
• In contact with spoken languages as result of
  social situation of Deaf people

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BACKGROUNDAcquisition of a signed language

• Same stages as in a spoken language
• Babbling before 1 year
• One-sign stage around 1 year
• Two-sign stage around 1year 6 months
• Multi-sign combinations from 2 years
• But variability between signed languages as to
  when specific structures are learned

Some claims that a sign language is learned more
quickly
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BACKGROUNDMultimodality in languages

• Spoken languages use speech but are also
  accompanied by gesture facial expression
• Sign languages combine manual signs with actions
  of other body parts
• eyebrows eye gaze
• head movements mouth movements

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Video clip of Laura (011) and her mother in NGT
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Video clip of Mark (20) and his mother in NGT
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Non-manual actions in sign languages
Mouth actions
Eyes, brows, head, body...
Mouthings derived from spoken language
Mouth gestures not derived from spoken language
Echo phonology
Adverbials
in loans e.g. to disambiguate
Enactions
in code blending
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Use of mouth actions in signed languages

• Signs with mouth gestures, i.e. not derived from
  spoken words
• e.g. fa in NGT sign FINALLY UNDERSTOOD
• pa in sign THROW AWAY
• Signs with mouthings, i.e. derived from spoken
  words
• e.g. bal in NGT sign BAL
• Latter can be seen as a form of code-blending.

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Types of code-blending

• (1) Dutch Base Language
• Signed VALLEN
• Spoken die gaat vallen
• English that goes fall
• Translation That doll is going to fall 
• (2) NGT Base Language
• Signed INDEXhij JAS BLAUW
• Spoken blauw
• English INDEXhe COAT BLUE
• Translation He has a blue coat

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Types of Code-blending contd

• (3) Mixed
• Signed POP SPELEN
• Spoken geel
• English DOLL PLAY
• yellow
• Translation (I want) to play with the
  yellow doll 
• (4) Full

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Amount of code-blending by 3 deaf children and
their deaf mothers at 30
Mothers considerable amount children little or
none at 30.
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Amount of code-blending by 3 hearing children and
their deaf mothers at 30
Mothers more than with deaf children children
also a considerable amount.
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How to explain the differences between the deaf
and hearing children at age 30?

• Level of acquisition in the two languages
• Input
• Own language choice

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Windows project question

• At 3 years of age deaf and hearing children are
  behaving differently in their acquisition
• Amount of code-blending is different
• Base language is different
• Spoken language seems to be driving the
  hearing children and sign language driving the
  deaf children at this age.
• How did they get there? What was the starting
  point?

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What is happening in the earliest period of
acquisition?

• How are the two modalities combined from the
  beginning?
• 1. mouth actions hand actions
• 2. mouth actions signs (echo phonology?)
• 3. words hand actions (incl. sign onset)
• 4. words signs
• What is the timing in these combinations?
• do mouth actions / words start earlier than hand
  actions / signs or vice-versa?
• Is one driving the other?

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Method

• Analyze all hand and mouth actions
• 3 deaf children (11-13 months to 2 years)
• 3 hearing children (9-13 months to 2 years)
• Analyze
• Frequency of combined productions
• Frequency of types of combinations (types 1-4)
• Timing of manual and oral parts
• 1. simultaneous beginning
• 2. manual action later than mouth action
• 3. manual action earlier than mouth action

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Example of analysis

• Transcript from Sander (20)
• Mother
• Manual AV_____/ onset_____POES
• Oral waar__/ is____________/poes
• 1st combination type 4, simultaneous
• 2nd comb. type 3, manual later
• 3rd comb. type 4, manual earlier

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Tools

• Developed by the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen
  with the aim of managing data and metadata files
• ELAN annotation software
• The IMDI (ISLE Metadata Initiative) Editor
  Browser
• NWO project Visibase
• NWO infrastructure project just awarded to
  Nijmegen UvA

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Example of ELAN coding
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Argumentation

• If hearing children and deaf children are
  different in this very early period, then
  hearing status is clearly important and there is
  no universal pattern that could point to the
  original relationship between the modalities.
• If they are similar, this might indicate that
  there is a universal pattern that suggests the
  origins of language.

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RESULTSFrequency of combinations of mouth and
hand actions in children
Deaf children have mainly hand actions overall
incl. manual babbling, at 24 months more mouth
movements Hearing children equal spread across
manual and mouth actions
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RESULTSFrequency of combinations of mouth and
hand actions in children and mothers
The mothers have far more combinations than their
children. This appears to be learned
behaviour. The Deaf mothers of the Deaf children
have far more combinations compared to the
mothers of the hearing children. There is an
increase at 24 months.
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RESULTSMain types of combinations of mouth and
hand actions in children
Deaf children have mainly handmouth actions and
signmouth actions Hearing children have no
signmouth actions.
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RESULTSExamples of childrens combinations
Transcript from Laura (011) Manual hands
moved up and down Oral mouth open and
shut Type 1 Transcript from Carla (20) Manual
SAMEN Oral lips smacking Type 2
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RESULTSMain types of combinations of mouth and
hand actions in children and mothers
Deaf mothers all have mainly signmouth
actions and signword combinations
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RESULTSTiming of combinations of mouth and hand
actions in children and mothers
Children There is no clear pattern. The manual
actions in combination with a mouth action do not
begin consistently earlier or late. The deaf and
hearing children are not different in this
respect. Mothers The mothers do have the
tendency to produce wordsign combinations with
identical semantic content with a simultaneous
beginning.
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Interpretation

• Hearing children and deaf children are producing
  relatively few combined utterances in the early
  months but the proportion increases.
• The hearing children are different from the deaf
  children in having more combined utterances.
• The type patterns seem to be different.
• The timing is not clearly indicative of one
  modality driving the other.
• Conclusion there seems to be no universal
  pattern that could point to the original
  relationship between the modalities. The
  patterns found seem more related to hearing
  status and input patterns.

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Collaborators on the Acquisition project

• Universiteit van Amsterdam
• Beppie van den Bogaerde, Roland Pfau, Marijke
  Scheffener, Joni Oyserman

And all the families.