The prominence of spoken language elements in a sign language

Abstract

Code-blends in sign languages consist of simultaneously articulated manual signs and spoken language words. These "mouthings" (typically silent articulations) have been observed for many different sign languages. The present study aims to investigate the extent of such bimodal code-mixing in sign languages by investigating the frequency of mouthings produced by deaf users of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT), their co-occurrence with pointing signs, and whether any differences can be explained by sociolinguistic variables such as regional origin and age of the signer. We investigated over 10,000 mouth actions from 70 signers, and found that the mouth and the hands are equally active during signing. Moreover, around 80 % of all mouth actions are mouthings, while the remaining 20 % are unrelated to Dutch. We found frequency differences between individual signers and a small effect for level of education, but not for other sociolinguistic variables. Our results provide genuine evidence that mouthings form an inextricable component of signed interaction. Rather than displaying effects of competition between languages or spoken language suppression, NGT signers demonstrate the potential of the visual modality to conjoin parallel information streams.

Bimodal code-mixing: Dutch spoken language elements in NGT discourse

“…From the point of view of bilingual processing, our findings suggest there is more complex bilingual processing going on than simply the lexical co-activation of Dutch word forms with NGT signs, such as is likely taking place in the omnipresent use of redundant mouthings (see also Bank et al, 2016). The use of added mouthings, and especially the use of Dutch function words, suggests that Dutch morphosyntactic constructions or representations are activated in the production of NGT sentences.…”

“…We will use the same corpus as the studies above (Bank et al, 2011, 2015, 2016) and categorise the various occurrences of added mouthings and semantic mismatches. We will distinguish three varieties of special mouthings in this paper: Solo mouthings are isolated words or short phrases that occur while the hands are in rest position or otherwise engaged, and thus constitute code-switching rather than code-blending.…”

“…However, also in cases of code-blended signed and spoken language, one of the two languages serves as the matrix language (Muysken, 2000; Myers-Scotton, 2006), embedding material from the other language in its structure. In the case of NGT combined with Dutch mouthings (the default manifestation of NGT in everyday use, see Bank, Crasborn & Van Hout, 2016), NGT can be considered the matrix language, the elements from spoken Dutch (i.e., mouthings) being the embedded language or guest language.…”

Emphatic fingerspelling as code-mixing in American Sign Language

“…Though widely recognized as a contact phenomenon, fingerspelling is not generally discussed within the context of code-mixing 1 (though code-blending has been attested in sign languages (Emmorey et al 2008, Bank et al 2016a, 2016b). Code-mixing, defined broadly, is the mixing of two or more languages (or dialects), within a sentence or a discourse.…”

Mouth Actions in Sign Languages

“…Moreover, it should be noted that the data set was not very large, and this could possibly have influenced results. In a study of mouthings in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT), for instance, large differences between individuals were found, but no significant differences could be established when comparing groups of signers (Bank 2015, Bank et al 2015b. Another noteworthy finding is the spreading behavior: M found that almost half of the mouthings in the corpus spread leftward (mouthings anticipating the next sign), while rightward spreading (mouthings persevering over the next sign) is normally found more often in sign languages (e.g.…”