Age of exposure and subject/object asymmetries when <i>wh</i>-movement goes rightward

Cecchetto, Carlo; Checchetto, Alessandra; Giustolisi, Beatrice; Santoro, Michael D.

doi:10.1075/sll.20015.cec

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As for the comprehension of wh- questions, only the results concerning LIS and LSF were analyzed so far. In LIS, native signers outperformed non-native not only in object questions, that were expected to be complex, but also in control questions, which were easy ( Cecchetto et al, 2021 ). Even in this simple task, a difference emerged, confirming permanent effects of delayed exposure to sign language.…”

Section: Native Early and Late Signers In A Large-scale Cross-linguis...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With the aim of investigating the role of AoE in language comprehension in adulthood, four morpho-syntactic comprehension tests were developed in three different sign languages (Catalan Sign Language (LSC), French Sign Language (LSF), and Italian Sign Language (LIS)]. Results of those tests, separately discussed in Aristodemo et al (2020 , in press) , Cecchetto et al (2021) , Hauser et al ( 2021 , in press ), are crucial to understanding whether native and non-native signers differ categorically, or whether what matters is simply early exposure to sign language for which we expect a gradient effect associated to different AoE groups.…”

Section: Native Early and Late Signers In A Large-scale Cross-linguis...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to providing new results contributing to the debate of age of language exposure as a factor in language assessment, which we shall discuss here, the SIGN-HUB tests also provide crucial data from a different modality on how to explain the Subject Advantage from a theoretical point of view. We refer to Cecchetto et al (2021) , Hauser et al ( 2021 , in press ) for a detailed discussion of these conclusions.…”

Section: Native Early and Late Signers In A Large-scale Cross-linguis...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As for wh- interrogatives (also called content questions), the SIGN-HUB tests aimed at assessing comprehension of subject and object questions in a similar sentence-to-picture matching task ( Cecchetto et al, 2021 ; Hauser et al, in press ). The pictures also displayed three characters, like the one in Figure 2 , and the answer to the question always targeted the characters on the sides in order to test the subject and object conditions (i.e., “Who licks the cow?” and “Who does the cow lick?,” respectively).…”

Section: Native Early and Late Signers In A Large-scale Cross-linguis...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It was also found that the complexity provoked by object questions especially in which-questions particularly affected late learners of LSF. Importantly, in both LIS and LSF, early and late signers did not perform differently ( Cecchetto et al, 2021 ; Hauser et al, in press ).…”

Section: Native Early and Late Signers In A Large-scale Cross-linguis...mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

On the Reliability of the Notion of Native Signer and Its Risks

et al. 2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Who is a native signer? Since around 95% of deaf infants are born into a hearing family, deaf signers are exposed to a sign language at various moments of their life, and not only from birth. Moreover, the linguistic input they are exposed to is not always a fully fledged natural sign language. In this situation, is the notion of native signer as someone exposed to language from birth of any use? We review the results of the first large-scale cross-linguistic investigation on the effects of age of exposure to sign language. This research involved about 45 Deaf adult signers in each of three sign languages (Catalan Sign Language, French Sign Language, and Italian Sign Language). Across the three languages, participants were divided into three groups – those exposed from birth, those between 1 and 5 years of age, and those exposed between 6 and 15 years of age – and received a battery of tests designed for each language targeting various aspects of morphosyntactic competence. In particular, the tests focused on both those morphosyntactic phenomena that are known from the spoken language literature to be good detectors of language impairment or delay (i.e., wh-interrogatives and relative clauses) and on morphosyntactic phenomena that are sign language specific (i.e., role shift and directional verbs). The results showed a clear effect of being native, with significant differences across languages and tests between signers exposed to sign language from birth and those exposed in the 1st years of life. This confirms the life-long importance of language exposure from birth and the reliability of the notion of “nativeness”, at least for syntax. On the other hand, while in most domains the differences observed between populations might be differences in performance, for some specific constructions, signers belonging to the three groups may have different grammars. This latter finding challenges the generalized use of native signers’ grammar as the baseline for language description and language assessment.

show abstract

Section: Native Early and Late Signers In A Large-scale Cross-linguis...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Native Early and Late Signers In A Large-scale Cross-linguis...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Native Early and Late Signers In A Large-scale Cross-linguis...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Native Early and Late Signers In A Large-scale Cross-linguis...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Native Early and Late Signers In A Large-scale Cross-linguis...mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

On the Reliability of the Notion of Native Signer and Its Risks

et al. 2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

On the nature of role shift

Aristodemo

Giustolisi

Zorzi

et al. 2022

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Attitude role shift is a sign language strategy to report someone else’s utterance or thought. It has been analyzed either as a kind of demonstration or, alternatively, as a complex construction involving subordination plus a context-shifting operator. The present work reports the results of a sentence-to-picture matching task developed in three different sign languages (Italian Sign Language, French Sign Language and Catalan Sign Language) with the aim of providing experimental evidence about the nature of role shift. The task assessed the comprehension of indexical first-person pronouns in various syntactic contexts with and without role shift. We showed that constructions with role shift, which require context-shifting for the first-person pronoun, are never easier to comprehend than constructions without role shift that do not require context-shifting. In some cases, they are even more difficult. Additionally, we show that, in Italian Sign Language only, sentences in which the role shifted first-person pronoun is in object position are more difficult than sentences in which it is in subject position. We argue that this can be interpreted as an intervention effect and that this is an argument in favor of positing a context-shifting operator in the periphery of the role shift clause. Considering that the population of adult Deaf signers includes, besides native signers, a majority of individuals with a more or less severe delayed first language exposure, the second goal of this paper is to study the effects of age of exposure on comprehension of sentences with role shift. In the three languages under investigation, we found that native signers generally outperformed non-native signers in sentences with role shift and in subordinate clauses without role shift. This confirms that delayed language exposure has a lasting impact on adults’ comprehension of subordinate clauses of various degrees of complexity.

show abstract

Assessing Lexical and Syntactic Comprehension in Deaf Signing Adults

Zorzi

Aristodemo

Giustolisi

et al. 2023

Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Among the existing sign language assessment tools, only a small number can be used in clinical settings. This contribution aims at presenting three comprehension assessment tests (two lexical and one syntactic) that offer a solid basis to build tools to assess language impairments in deaf signing adults. We provide the material and guidelines, based on psychometric analyses of the items, to make these tests suitable for clinical assessment. They are available for French Sign Language and Italian Sign Language. So far, the three tests were administered to three groups of deaf participants based on age of exposure (AoE) to sign language: native (AoE from birth), early (AoE = from 1 to 5 years), and late (AoE = from 6 to 15 years) signers. The results showed that the three tests are easy for the typical deaf signing population, and therefore, they can be adapted into tests that assess a deaf signing population with language impairments. Moreover, the results of the syntactic test reveal a categorial difference between native and non-native signers and therefore show the need for baselines that mirror the effect of AoE to sign language when assessing language competence, in particular in clinical assessment.

show abstract

Age of exposure and subject/object asymmetries when wh-movement goes rightward

Cited by 5 publications

References 30 publications

On the Reliability of the Notion of Native Signer and Its Risks

On the Reliability of the Notion of Native Signer and Its Risks

On the nature of role shift

Assessing Lexical and Syntactic Comprehension in Deaf Signing Adults

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About