GRAMMATICAL DEVELOPMENT IN

A MAYAN SIGN LANGUAGE

Emerging functions of manual holds in Zinacantec Family Homesign

AUSTIN GERMAN
PhD Student, Department of Linguistics, The University of Texas at Austin
Conference on Indigenous Languages of Latin America IX
October 12th, 2019
Zinacantán
Zinacantec Family Homesign (“Z”)
 Zinacantec Family Homesign (“Z”)
• Nouns and verbs (Haviland 2013a)

• Use of space (Haviland 2013b)

• Grammaticization of co-speech gesture & facial expressions (Haviland

2015, 2019)

• Ideologies about “correct” signing (Haviland 2016)

 Variation in Z: Jane and Will
• Janeː
• first deaf sibling
• no adult language models in childhood
• no same-age signing peers in childhood
• deemed by others to be an incompetent signer

• Will:
• third deaf sibling
• two older language models in childhood (Jane and Frank)
• one same-age signing peer in childhood (Terry)
• deemed a competent signer

How to quantify the linguistic differences between

Jane and Will?
 Simultaneity in signed language
As a sign language matures,
additional articulators are
recruited for grammatical
purposes
(Dachkovsky, Stamp, & Sandler, 2018).

http://signlab.haifa.ac.il/images/pictures/The_Grammar_of_the_Bod
y_new2.jpg
 Manual holds
• A type of simultaneity
• The end position of a sign is maintained on one hand while the other
produces other signs
• A.k.a. non-dominant hand spread, perseveration

• Play roles at all levels of structure

• Delineate prosodic boundaries (Sandler & Vogel 1999; Brentari & Crossley 2002)
• Indicate morphosyntactic relations between signs (Engberg-Pedersen 1994; Miller 1994)
• Mark prominent discourse themes; topic continuity (Liddell 2004)
 Phonetic holds (Sáfár & Kimmelman 2015)
Related to ease of articulation

RH BALLOON ELEPHANT BALLOON

LH BALLOON-------------------------- BALLOON
“The elephant has a balloon”
 Syntactic holds (Sáfár & Kimmelman 2015)
Link syntactically related signs

RH DRIVE----------------------- SPIN---------------------
LH DRIVE NEG NEG
“(The car) doesn’t drive. (Its wheels) don’t spin.”
 Iconic holds (Sáfár & Kimmelman 2015)
Depict temporal simultaneity of events or locative relations between objects

RH SHIVER GET-SPRAYED
LH SHIVER-------------------------
“She shivers while she is sprayed”
 Discourse-related holds (Sáfár & Kimmelman 2015)

Link logically related clauses (e.g. topic comment, sequences of events)

RH SPRAY------------------------WASH--------------------
LH FINISH FINISH
“He gets sprayed, then he washes himself…”
 Corpus studies of manual holds
• Crasborn & Sáfár (2013), Sáfár & Kimmelman (2015)
• frequency of manual holds
• Varies across languages

• distribution of holds across grammatical functions

• Varies by genre

• phonetic characteristics of holds

• Vary by grammatical function
 Data: a small corpus of Z narratives
• Signed retellings of cartoon clips (Die Sendung mit der Maus)

• Elicited & filmed by John Haviland

signer # of narratives # of glosses

Jane 47 1546
Will 39 1512
Total 86 3058
 Research Questions
Compare a) Jane and Will, b) Z sign and established SLs on the following:

1. How frequently do manual holds occur in Z narrative?

2. What is the distribution of holds over the four grammatical

functions identified by Sáfár et al.?

3. What is the average length of a hold in Z?

 Predictions
Given that Will’s signing seems to be more complex than Jane’s:

1. he should produce holds more frequently

2. he should produce a higher proportion of syntactic and discourse-

related holds

3. his holds will be longer / spread over a larger domain

 Frequency of manual holds
Signer Number of glosses Number of holds Holds per 100 glosses

Jane 1546 26 1.68

Will 1512 51 3.37

Total Z 3058 77 2.52

Sáfár & Kimmelman (2015)

RSL 8361 264 4.69

NGT 7736 123 2.37

✓ Prediction 1
ǃ Holds occur as frequently in Z as in established SLs
Distribution of holds across grammatical functions
Signer phonetic syntactic iconic discourse-related
Jane 4% 8% 85% 4%
Will 14% 18% 55% 14%
Total Z 10% 14% 65% 10%

Sáfár & Kimmelman (2015)

RSL 12% 33% 45% 11%
NGT 7% 26% 59% 9%

✓ Prediction 2
• Will looks like the signers of mature languages:
• greater proportion of syntactic & discourse-related holds
 Length of holds by signer/language
(in number of overlapping glosses)

Signer N Mean SD Min. Max.

Jane 39 1.50 1.08 1 5

Will 66 1.30 0.78 1 4

Total Z sign 107 1.36 0.90 1 5

Sáfár & Kimmelman (2015)

RSL 350 3.47 1.79 1 29
NGT 271 3.61 2.80 1 13

Prediction 3: no difference between Jane and Will in

terms of hold length
 Length of holds by grammatical function
Sáfár & Kimmelman (2015)
Mean Mean
Type N SD Min. Max. SD. Min. Max.
Z sign RSL + NGT

Iconic 50 1.50 1.04 1 5 3.91 2.37 1 29

Discourse-related 8 1.25 0.66 1 3 4.63 4.15 1 20

Phonetic 8 1.13 0.33 1 2 3.00 0.91 1 6

Syntactic 11 1.00 0.00 1 1 2.68 1.05 1 7

Hold length depends on grammatical function

 Summary
• Will, compared to Jane:
1. produces holds twice as frequently
2. produces twice as many syntactic holds
3. produces three times as many discourse-related holds

• Overall, the frequency and distribution of holds are similar

in Z and in established SLs

• Holds are much shorter in Z, though like in established SLs

the length of hold depends on its function
 Conclusions
• At the earliest stages of language emergence, signers exploit the
resources of the visual-gestural modality for grammatical purposes

• Incremental changes in linguistic complexity can be observed

within a single generation of signers

• Early access to language matters

The greater degree of syntactic complexity and discourse
cohesion in Will’s signing likely result from the linguistic input
provided by his older siblings
 References
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Dachkovsky, S., Stamp, R., & Sandler, W. (2018). Constructing complexity in a young sign language. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02202

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and Practices: Crossing views on theoretical and applied sign language linguistics . Pp. 179-203. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Acknowledgements
• The Z signers,
especially Jane and
Will, for sharing
their language with
me
• John Haviland for
letting me use his
films
• The UT Signed
Language Lab for all
their input on this
work
 Z as a ‘multi-nucleated sign network’

Deaf
Hearing

---- weak tie: irregular interactions/

interactions between signers of
asymmetrical fluency

strong tie: regular interactions

between fluent signers

Reed (2019)
 Annotation

• Annotation followed Crasborn & Sáfár (2013)

• Each hand annotated on a separate tier in ELAN
• Manual hold = the gloss for a sign produced on one hand overlaps
with at least one full gloss for a sign produced on the other hand