Constructed Action in American Sign Language: A Look at Second Language Learners in a Second Modality

Abstract

Constructed action is a cover term used in signed language linguistics to describe multi-functional constructions which encode perspective-taking and viewpoint. Within constructed action, viewpoint constructions serve to create discourse coherence by allowing signers to share perspectives and psychological states. Character, observer, and blended viewpoint constructions have been well documented in signed language literature in Deaf signers. However, little is known about hearing second language learners’ use of constructed action or about the acquisition and use of viewpoint constructions. We investigate the acquisition of viewpoint constructions in 11 college students acquiring American Sign Language (ASL) as a second language in a second modality (M2L2). Participants viewed video clips from the cartoon Canary Row and were asked to “retell the story as if you were telling it to a deaf friend”. We analyzed the signed narratives for time spent in character, observer, and blended viewpoints. Our results show that despite predictions of an overall increase in use of all types of viewpoint constructions, students varied in their time spent in observer and character viewpoints, while blended viewpoint was rarely observed. We frame our preliminary findings within the context of M2L2 learning, briefly discussing how gestural strategies used in multimodal speech-gesture constructions may influence learning trajectories.

Sign languages and second language acquisition research: An introduction

“…Blended or mixed viewpoints were rarely used. Blended viewpoints were also rarely used by beginning-level L2 ASL signers according to by Kurz et al (2019). They were unable to arrive at any conclusions based on quantitative analysis.…”

Using depiction for efficient communication in LIS (Italian Sign Language)

“…In sign languages, depiction plays a prominent role, given the rich iconic potential of the visual modality in which these languages are realized. Depictions in sign languages can be grouped into two types: depictions from an observer perspective and depictions from a character perspective (see Kurz, Mullaney, & Occhino, 2019, for a different terminology). Manual depictions from the observer perspective are called 'depicting constructions' (also called 'classifier constructions', 'classifier predicates', 'polycomponential verbs', and 'polymorphemic verbs'; see Schembri, 2003).…”

“…Nonmanual depictions known as 'mouth gestures' or 'mouth actions' (Boyes-Braem & Sutton-Spence, 2001) can be used to provide adjectival or adverbial information in respect to the manual depicting constructions (Crasborn, Van Der Kooij, Waters, Woll, & Mesch, 2008;Fontana, 2008). Depictions from the character perspective, in contrast, put the signer's body at the center of the production as the signer projects the referent directly onto their body and depicts the actions performed by the referent with corresponding body parts in life-sized scale (Cormier et al, 2015a;Kurz et al, 2019;Perniss, 2007). Such a depicting strategy is called a 'constructed action' (Metzger, 1995;Tannen, 1989), and it is the focus of the present study.…”

“…1 . c o n s t r u c t e d a c t i o n a n d t y p e s o f i c o n i c i t y Constructed action (Metzger 1995), also known as 'role shift' (Padden 1986;Quer, 2011), 'transfer of person' (Cuxac, 1999(Cuxac, , 2000Cuxac & Sallandre, 2007;Volterra, Roccaforte, Di Renzo, & Fontana, 2019), and 'enactment' (Ferrara & Johnston, 2014;Hodge & Johnston, 2014), is a depicting strategy attested in a plethora of sign languages (see Kurz et al, 2019) and is when the signer uses one or more bodily articulators, including hands, torso, head, eye-gaze, and facial expressions, to directly map the referent to the signer's corresponding body part. Accordingly, the event depicted is represented as if it were from the perspective of the character involved in the event.…”

Emerging ASL Distinctions in Sign-Speech Bilinguals' Signs and Co-speech Gestures in Placement Descriptions

“…Researchers are increasingly asking to what extent the principles of L2 acquisition apply when the source language is spoken and the target language is signed (Chen Pichler and Koulidobrova, 2016 ). While many challenges are similar for hearing learners of signed and spoken second languages, additional issues arise when acquiring a new language in a new modality (McKee and McKee, 1992 ; Wilcox and Wilcox, 1997 ), including learning to manage visual-manual phonology (Bochner et al, 2011 ; Chen Pichler, 2011 ; Ortega, 2013 ; Ortega and Ozyurek, 2013 ; Ortega and Morgan, 2015 ), multiple articulators (Gulamani et al, 2020 ), spatial grammar and depicting referents with the body (Bel et al, 2014 ; Ferrara and Nilsson, 2017 ; Frederiksen and Mayberry, 2019 ; Kurz et al, 2019 ; Gulamani et al, 2020 ), using the face to display grammatical information (McIntire and Reilly, 1988 ), and the high degree of iconicity in sign languages (Lieberth and Gamble, 1991 ; Campbell et al, 1992 ; Baus et al, 2013 ; Ortega and Morgan, 2015 ). At the same time, it is possible that hearing learners' experience with co-speech gesture in their L1 affects their acquisition of a sign language (McIntire and Reilly, 1988 ; Taub et al, 2008 ; Chen Pichler and Koulidobrova, 2016 ).…”