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

Abstract

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.

A subject advantage in covert dependencies: The case ofwh‐question comprehension in French Sign Language

“…Finally, our results show that age of exposure has a long‐lasting impact on the comprehension of wh questions, confirming that early language deprivation affects language competence in adulthood. This result joins many others (see Cecchetto et al 2022, Hauser et al 2021, Aristodemo et al 2022, Zorzi et al 2022) and strongly argues in favor of the implementation of language policies addressed to deaf children that prioritize sign‐language exposure as early as possible.…”

The Role of Modality in L2 Learning: The Importance of Learners Acquiring a Second Sign Language (M2L2 and M1L2 Learners)

“…Thus, rather than compare the signing of these individuals to native signer ideals, researchers could instead consider frameworks associated with other “vulnerable” grammars, such as those examined by researchers on language attrition (Hicks & Dominguez, 2020). These alternatives could also provide better baselines for assessing deaf signers who grew up without signing deaf parents (Zorzi et al., 2022), or whose deaf parents do not themselves meet the traditional qualifications for native signers (Sümer & Özyürek, 2022). Such deaf signers, along with hearing M2L2 learners, play a nontrivial role in shaping the sign language, since they constitute the great majority of language users (De Meulder, 2019).…”

“…For those who eventually acquire a conventional SL later, that language is often assumed to be their first but not native language, owing to significant differences between their end state grammars and that of “typical” L1 signers with early sign language input (Mayberry & Kluender, 2018; Newport, 1988). Investigating what happens when a learner with this background embarks on the process of learning a second sign language contributes to our field's critical re‐evaluation of traditional notions of first language and native language, which are difficult to define, particularly among DHH populations (Koulidobrova & Chen Pichler, 2021; Zorzi et al., 2022).…”

FluentSigners-50: A signer independent benchmark dataset for sign language processing

“…All FluentSigners-50 contributors use sign language on the daily basis. Not all of them can be defined as native signers, that is, as signers who have acquired KRSL from birth from their parents, but note that this notion in general is complicated and questionable [ 31 ]. Instead of trying to divide them into native or non-native, we collected data on their hearing status, daily use of KRSL, where they acquired KRSL, and the preferred language of their family when they were growing up (adapted from Allen (2015) [ 32 ]).…”

“…All FluentSigners-50 contributors use sign language on the daily basis. Not all of them can be defined as native signers, that is, as signers who have acquired KRSL from birth from their parents, but note that this notion in general is complicated and questionable [31]. Instead of…”