**Update (12.03.2021)**
@[youtube](https://youtu.be/1kM7_6ydNqE)
**HDLS14 presentation**
@[youtube](https://youtu.be/tuFMlMtai0E)
**POSITIONALITY STATEMENT**
I am a hearing PhD student from Trinidad and Tobago currently living in the United States.
**ABSTRACT**
How are multimodal semiotic resources recruited in sign language emergence?
I address this question using mouthings, mouth movements that show a
connection to spoken language words (Boyes-Braem & Sutton-Spence 2001). Mouthings can vary based on
level of exposure to oralist education (Luna 2015), register (Nadolske &
Rosenstock 2007), grammatical
context (Penner 2013) and word
class (Kimmelman 2009).
Linguistic analyses of them vary because there are different ways of
defining what belongs to a language e.g. Lin (2019) and Johnston, van Roekel &
Schembri (2016). Mouthings
are also linked to oralist education (Hohenberger & Happ 2001). For this reason, I link them
to deaf community sign languages, which emerge in deaf schools. This
context of language emergence contrasts with that of shared sign languages,
in that spoken language norms are not formally taught and there is a
greater proportion of hearing native signers. I therefore expect that
mouthings will be used differently in these two types of languages. To
investigate this question, I explore the use of mouthings in 27 signed
languages.
The sample consists of 26 deaf community and 10 shared sign languages from
Africa (1), the Americas (7), Asia (9), Oceania (4), the Caribbean (2) and
Europe (12). Two usage patterns emerge: across
signed language types, mouthings are (i) reported in the majority of
languages, and (ii) are used in conjunction with manual signs to specify
and disambiguate meaning. Additionally, free mouthings, i.e. those made
without any manual sign, are reported to a low extent in both sign language
types.
Previous literature has connected mouthings to oralism, but these findings
show that there are other paths to mouthing, as evidenced by their presence
in 8/10 shared sign languages. Additionally, the tendency for mouthings to
occur with manual signs suggests that semiotic resources are imported in
groups.
References
Boyes-Braem, Penny & Rachel Sutton-Spence. 2001. The Hands are the Head of
the Mouth: The Mouth as Articulator in Sign Languages (International
Studies on Sign Language and the Communication of the Deaf 39). Gallaudet
University Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=EyeLQgAACAAJ.
Hohenberger, Annette & Daniela Happ. 2001. The linguistic primacy of signs
and mouth gestures over mouthing: Evidence from language production in
German Sign Language (DGS). In Penny Boyes-Braem & Rachel Sutton-Spence
(eds.), The hands are the head of the mouth: The mouth as articulator in
sign language, 153–189. Signum.
Johnston, Trevor, Jane van Roekel & Adam Schembri. 2016. On the
Conventionalization of Mouth Actions in Australian Sign Language. Language
and Speech 59(1). 3–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830915569334.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0023830915569334 (16 November,
2019).
Kimmelman, Vadim. 2009. Parts of speech in Russian Sign Language: The role
of iconicity and economy. Sign Language & Linguistics 12(2). 161–186.
https://doi.org/10.1075/sll.12.2.03kim.
http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/sll.12.2.03kim (18
April, 2019).
Lin, Hao. 2019. Interrogative marking in Chinese Sign Language: A
preliminary corpus-based investigation. Sign Language & Linguistics 22(2).
241–266. https://doi.org/10.1075/sll.19001.lin.
http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/sll.19001.lin (22
July, 2020).
Luna, Stéphanie. 2015. Mouthing rates in Deaf Seniors’ production of Quebec
Sign Language (LSQ). Poster presented at the New Ways of Analyzing
Variation 44 (NWAV44), Toronto, Canada.
Nadolske, Marie A. & Rachel Rosenstock. 2007. Occurence of mouthings in
American Sign Language: a preliminary study. In Pamela M. Perniss, Roland
Pfau & Markus Steinbach (eds.), Visible Variation (Trends in Linguistics.
Studies and Monographs 188), 35–62. Berlin ; New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Penner, Mark. 2013. The Mouthing Of Verbs In Japanese Sign Language. North
Dakota, United States: University of North Dakota MA.
**DATA**
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cenr-iL-qwKZJmObKjeq-kRMFDnOQn9b1dWebDNt5E0/edit?usp=sharing
