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Sign Language in Indo-Pakistan: A Description of a Signed Language

Ulrike Zeshan

Zeshan, Ulrike;

Sign Language in Indo-Pakistan: A Description of a Signed Language

John Benjamins Publishing Co, 2000, 178 pages

ISBN 1556198574

topics: |  sign-language | india


based on ph.d thesis at U. Cologne 96, advisor: Hans-Juergen Sasse,
Linguistics.  

SL community:
core: pre-lingual deaf, child-of-deaf-adults CODA, post-lingual deaf,
      hard of hearing, late deaf

villages in Bali and Ghana - all hearing people can also sign - in Bali -
	 48 deaf out of 2300 - and all can sign - to different degrees
	 - some small children not exposed to others can't sign

India has about 1.5mn signers (abt 3.1mn hearing handicapped)
abt 600 deaf schools, many of them residential 
       (as opp to abt 50 in Germany) 
	 dozens of main Sign dialects

ISL typology

sign space - uses space effectively
simultaneous signs -

Q words - are signed using signs similar to the spoken population -
  e.g. q.word uses the same face and hand expression, and negation uses the
  shake of the open hand.

The same wh-word (palms open) - are used for all q words - e.g. "face q-word"
comes at the end.  Word order:

you name what
you siblings num what
you like face what
you go time what
both of us meeting time what

Negation is culture specific - the indian q-word face in Turkey means
negation.  [PROBABLY true for speaking population in turkey also?]

Rehab Council of India - approves the SL teaching material prepared by
NIHH -- who are training teachers etc. in SL

Ishara foundation - Natl deaf literacy project

How children are taught to read and write

start by reading books in SL while pointing to the line so that the child
knows how the line contains meaning - and then the words and finally the
grammar items - like articles etc which are missing in SL.

In Sweden - they are taught to read and write - and then depend on the degree
of residual hearing - to oralize

computers in SL - teaching SL -
internet based SL teaching - film displays

most hearing people find SL difficult - but once you know one you can learn
others. 360 hours for level 1 - 3 mos fulltime - to learn SL. Couple of years
to become comfortable.

deaf identity overrides other identities - caste, poverty, geography etc.
even internationally.

SLs similarity to spoken grammar - varies -
Chinese - many signs are sign mandarin
do not work well for lgs like turkish which is highly agglutinative -
konush|a|ma|di|m - i am not able to accept
accept | able to | not | pres | first-person

the work acknowledges her  husband: hamid mahmood zeshan, and arun rao from
delhi;  dr onkar sharma  

parts of book publ earlier in german 97 and in engl transln 96

Excerpts


[Woodward 93]: rate of sign similarity:
	 karachi and delhi: 76%
	 karachi and bangalore: 63%

W93: SL varieties in India, Pakistan, and Nepal are distinct but clearly
     related. lg varieties that belong to the same lg family.

Variations in fingerspelling (App A fig1 NISE pakistan vs Fig 2 Deshmukh):
O, W are significantly different
I, J, T, U are slightly different, often involving a one-handed version in
   Deshmukh of what is a 2-handed version in NISE

sociology of ISL: [jepson 91]

pakistan natl congress 94 - each lg variety had to agree on a single
sign; only 50 signs of 860 had regional variants.  however
within-region variations were not recorded - particularly kinship
terms had wide variations.

[Dilip Deshmukh 96] : SL and bilingualism in deaf education (Ichalkaranji ?sp)

ICONICITY: A good example of a grammatical process involving iconicity is the
   set of aspectual modifications of the basic form of a sign (see 3.3.2.)
   50

non-discrete requiring analog rules, e.g. pronominal forms that take the form
of points in the signing space, or signs such as MEET in ASL with its
countless variations representing various kinds of "meeting".
[ or SEE with the object as a point in signing space] 50-1

attempts to place SL in the formal canon of "languages" led to downplaying
the iconic aspects, but Klima and Bellugi, 1979, p.21:

   that there _is an iconic relation -- that elements of a form of a sign are
   related to visual aspects of what is denoted -- does not in any way
   determine the actual details of the form. 52

Often the deaf user may not be aware of the iconic basis of many of his
signs.  However, the latent iconic potential can manifest itself in "playful
or poetic forms of SL or in the creation of new signs." [Boyes-Braem:1940,
p.41]

e.g. Car, Drive: hands moved as if turning steering wheel - may be modified
with faster/larger motions, and with appropriate facial expressions, meaning:
"drive ruthlessly" 53

3.3.2 Aspectual Modulation


DISTRIBUTIVE:

Sign is repeated - often three times from right to left [in Pakistan, wonder
if it is that way in India]:

CERTIFICATE PRIVATE KOSHISH-DIST
I tried (to get a job) with my certificate at various private (firms)

But may be more indicative :

SHOOT-1-DIST --> I was hit by several bullets

places of articulation of SHOOT is modificied are distributed over points on
the body of the speaker.

Applying linguistic terminology to SL can be tricky - e.g. distributive
aspect may not be consid3ered 'verbal inflections' or 'inflections of action
signs' - e.g.

ISKUL  JAGAH-DIST ISHARA PURA SIFR
school place	  sign	 all  zero
(Other) schools in various places are all a failure in SL

Here the same -DIST morphology is used for "various places".

[This may be perhaps be considered a polysemy for the lexeme "DISTRIB", which
carries aspect when verbal.  E.g. "repeatedly" vs "in repeated places", or
"many times" vs "many places"].

Usually IPSL does not distinguish between singular or plural, i.e. all signs
may be interpreted as having either Sing or Pl feference depending on context
or co-occurrence with numeral signs or quantifiers.  Only a plural form for
"BACCA" (child) occurs with some frequency and is the only separate PL form
in the ABSA (Karachi school for the deaf) dictionary. 67

ITERATIVE - "every", again, etc. repeated in the same place -
 [Can we consider it the same morpheme, repeated in space is distributed
 spatially, whereas in time is the same space?] 68-9

HUKUMAT	    MAN-NA		  LENA-ITER
Government  obeys (them because) they always get (money from them)

[?COMPOUND VERBS? It appears that both paisa and dena is iterated? or is it
only dena?]

COLD_DRINK  PAISA +DENA-ITER
cold-drink   money-give-ITER
cold-drink (makers) spend money (on this) all the time. 69

GRADUAL ASPECT

the sign proceeds in stages.

signs for BARA-HONA (grow up), BARHNA (grow), TARAQQI (progress, develop),
TANAZZUL (decline, deteriorate), KAM-HONA (reduce, lessen) are the only signs
to employ the gradual aspect.  E.g. though SHIKHANA (teach) has a straight
movement that might easily be adjusted to take a gradual form, "learn
gradually" is not expressed through aspectual modificn.



Contents

Preface                                                       xi
1 Introduction                                                1
    1.1 Indopakistan Sign Language (IPSL)                     1
    1.2 Data                                                  8
    1.3 Transcription Conventions                            12
2 The Signs                                                  17
    2.1 Handshapes                                           17
    2.1.1 Basic Handshapes                                   18
    2.1.2 Central Handshapes                                 21
    2.1.3 Marginal Handshapes                                23
    2.1.4 Problematic Cases                                  24
    2.1.5 Meaningful Handshapes                              26
    2.2 Sign Families                                        28
    2.2.1 Opposites                                          28
    2.2.2 Signs Related by Common Handshape                  29
    2.2.3 Signs Related by Common Place of Articulation      30
    2.2.4 Componential Signs                                 33
    2.3 Extraneous Influences on IPSL                        35
    2.3.1 IPSL and Hindi/Urdu                                35
    2.3.2 IPSL and English                                   36
    2.3.3 IPSL and Gestures                                  38
    2.3.4 IPSL and Other Sign Languages                      40
    2.4 Nonmanual Components of Signs                        42
    2.4.1 Mouth Pattern, Mouth Gesture and Facial Expression 42
    2.4.2 Body Posture, Head Position and Eye Gaze           44
    2.4.3 A Nonmanual Parameter?                             45
    2.5 Iconicity                                            50
    2.5.1 The Role of Iconicity in Sign Languages            50
    2.5.2 Iconic signs                                       51
    2.5.3 Pantomimic Modification                            53
3 Morphology                                                 55
    3.1 Word Classes                                         55
    3.2 Directionality                                       57
    3.3 Aspects                                              62
    3.3.1 Completive Aspect                                  62
    3.3.2 Aspectual Modulation                               65
    3.4 Complex Signs                                        72
    3.4.1 Numeral Incorporation                              73
    3.4.2 LENA: ‘take’ and DENA: ‘give’                      75
    3.4.3 Fusion                                             79
    3.4.4 Compounds                                          82
4 Syntax                                                     87
    4.1 Word Order                                           88
    4.1.1 Predicates and Participants                        88
    4.1.2 Temporal Expressions                               91
    4.1.3 Function Signs                                     92
    4.1.4 Modifying Constructions                            97
    4.2 Localization                                         99
    4.2.1 Loci                                               99
    4.2.2 Directionality                                    102
    4.2.3 Positioning                                       103
    4.2.4 Index                                             105
    4.2.5 Eye Gaze                                          107
    4.2.6 Role Play                                         108
    4.2.7 Inconsistencies                                   109
    4.3 Nonmanual Syntax                                    110
    4.3.1 Affirmation and Negation                          111
    4.3.2 Interrogatives                                    115
    4.3.3 Conditional Clauses                               117
5 Discourse Strategies                                      121
    5.1 Contrasts                                           121
    5.2 Use of the Left Hand                                123
    5.3 Perspective                                         126
Bibliography                                                131
Appendix A                                                  137
Appendix B                                                  147
Index                                                       175


abstract

... based on research collected in Karachi focusing on
Indo-Pakistani sign language. It examines topics from basic, central, and
problematic handshpaes, to sign families, extraneous influences on the sign
language, morphology such as word classes, directionaility, aspectual
modulation and numeral incorporation, as well as syntax including word order,
localization, and nonmanual syntax. This extensive corpus of research should
be of interest to all researchers in the field of linguistics, with
particular emphasis on sign language.


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at-symbol] gmail) 2012 Nov 26