Emerging Lexicon for Objects in Central Taurus Sign Language

Rabia Ergin

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Language and cultural evolution Hearing Impairment and Communication Categorization, perception, and language

Abstract

This paper investigates object-based and action-based iconic strategies and combinations of them to refer to everyday objects in the lexicon of an emerging village sign language, namely Central Taurus Sign Language (CTSL) of Turkey. CTSL naturally emerged in the absence of an accessible language model within the last half century. It provides a vantage point for how languages emerge, because it is relatively young and its very first creators are still alive today. Participants from two successive age cohorts were tested in two studies: (1) CTSL signers viewed 26 everyday objects in isolation and labeled them to an addressee in a picture-naming task, and (2) CTSL signers viewed 16 everyday objects in isolation and labeled them to an addressee before they viewed the same objects in context being acted upon by a human agent in short video clips and described the event in the clips to a communicative partner. The overall results show that the CTSL signers equally favored object-based and action-based iconic strategies with no significant difference across cohorts in the implementation of iconic strategies in both studies. However, there were significant differences in the implementation of iconic strategies in response to objects presented in isolation vs. context. Additionally, the CTSL-2 signers produced significantly longer sign strings than the CTSL-1 signers when objects were presented in isolation and significantly more combinatorial sign strings than the CTSL-1 signers. When objects were presented in context, both cohorts produced significantly shorter sign strings and more single-sign strings in the overall responses. The CTSL-2 signers still produced significantly more combinatorial sign strings in context. The two studies together portray the type and combination of iconic strategies in isolation vs. context in the emerging lexicon of a language system in its initial stages.

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References

2008Visible embodiment: Gestures as simulated action 2004Children Creating Core Properties of Language: Evidence from an Emerging Sign Language in Nicaragua 2010Iconicity as a General Property of Language: Evidence from Spoken and Signed Languages 2016Interaction of Morphology and Syntax in American Sign Language 2001Language from the Body 2011The gradual emergence of phonological form in a new language 2014Iconicity as structure mapping 2005Comparing Action Gestures and Classifier Verbs of Motion: Evidence From Australian Sign Language, Taiwan Sign Language, and Nonsigners' Gestures Without Speech

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