WHO chased the bird? Narrative cohesion in Nicaraguan signing

Abstract

Narrative cohesion is the use of linguistic devices to signal relationships among clauses in a narrative (Stromqvist & Verhoeven 2004;Halliday & Hasan 1976). While such relationships include a variety of relationships (e.g., temporal or causal) between clauses, we focus here on establishing reference. Referring expressions must be more informative (e.g., noun phrases) when a referent has not yet been introduced in the discourse, or when another referent is active, or more accessible. Conversely, referring expressions can be less informative (e.g., pronouns) when a referent is highly accessible, particularly when it is the active referent (Chafe 1975;Ariel 1991). This pattern is robust cross-linguistically and across modalities. Studies of the effect of modality on language structure generally find few structural differences between sign and spoken languages. Those that do exist relate to the visuo-manual modality's use of space to express linguistic structure; such as spatial verb agreement and simultaneous expression of components of motion events in classifier constructions (see Meier 2002 and references).How are patterns of narrative cohesion acquired by children? English-speaking adults use lexical nouns (as opposed to pronouns) the first time a character is mentioned, and pronouns (as opposed to lexical nouns) to maintain reference to that character. Children are not sensitive to discourse context and the accessibility of referents, and do not use these devices in an adult-like way for narrative cohesion until around 9 years of age (Karmiloff-Smith 1985). Children acquiring established sign languages produce a range of forms similar to that of signing adults, including nonmanual forms and enactments of a character's actions (constructed action). Like children acquiring spoken language, they do not reliably show the adult pattern of using full noun phrases the first time a character is mentioned (Morgan 2006). Overall, the acquisition literature suggests that narrative cohesion is not an automatic consequence of language structure at the lexical and syntactic levels. Here we ask whether narrative cohesion in an emerging language resembles that of established languages, and whether it arises immediately once lexical and syntactic structures are in place.To investigate this, we look to Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), a rapidly emerging language approximately thirty years old. NSL possesses a range of syntactic devices to refer to characters. In particular, the use of pronominal points and a switch-reference device developed over the first two decades of its emergence (Coppola & Senghas 2010). To investigate the development of discourse structure, particularly the role of an emerging linguistic community on narrative development, we asked whether signers in Nicaragua used these devices for narrative cohesion, and, in using them, unambiguously identified the characters within their narratives.We can envision at least two scenarios regarding how discourse conventions might emerge in a new language: 1) Discourse p...

Referential shift in Nicaraguan Sign Language: a transition from lexical to spatial devices

“…In related work on the emergence of NSL, the use of devices for building discourse cohesion increased as the language was passed from the first to the second cohort. These developments included an increase in the range and frequency of devices for explicitly marking grammatical subjects (Coppola et al, 2013 ) and the development of anaphoric uses of pointing (Coppola and Senghas, 2010 ). Consequently, signers could manage narratives more explicitly at a meta-level, introducing and referring back to characters unambiguously.…”

What sign language creation teaches us about language

“…In narratives, homesigners often fail to identify a character when mentioning the character for the first time (34% of the time), while signers of cohort 1 (and subsequent cohorts) always mark the introduction of a character in some way [e.g., [ø]chase (homesigner) vs cat chase] (cohort 1 signer). 47 At the initial stage of contact deaf community sign languages have a community of people using them as a primary communication system, but there is no language model; hence the differences enumerated above may be attributed to the presence of a linguistic community.…”