Variation in Sign Language

Hodgyai Réka

            Some people are under the delusion that there is only one sign language, which is universal, used by all the deaf people around the world to communicate with each other. They also tend to think that this is a very simplified language.

            However, it is not a universal language. Different sign languages are used in different countries and in some cases one country such as Belgium, the UK, the USA or India may have more than one sign language. Hundreds of sign languages are used around the world and in some aspects they are similar to spoken languages.

            Sign Languages are organized like spoken ones, and can be analysed at the phonological, morphological, grammatical and lexical levels, and there are differences at each of these levels between the many different sign languages. Therefore, they contain systematic variations on all of these levels.

            This research has the aim to point out these possible variations, based on the American Sign Language (ASL) in parallel with variation in spoken language.

Lucas, C., Bayley, R., & Valli, C. (2003). What's Your Sign for Pizza? - An Introduction to Variation in American Sign Language. Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press.

                        Beginning from the 3^rd chapter, this book presents the basic concepts of variation, which refers to alternative ways of signing the same thing. Phonological variation affects the basic part of signs, units can be changed, added, removed or rearranged (KNOW for example may be signed on the forehead or further down on the cheek). Signs are composed of sequences of movements and holds. Each movement or hold is known as a segment. Sometimes a combination of movement and hold may be deleted in what resembles the syllable deletion that occurs in spoken languages (older form of SNOW consists of WHITE followed by wiggling fingers; it is common to see nowadays only the second part).

Variation can affect the whole sign which is called lexical variation. There are many different signs for HALLOWEN or BIRTHDAY and in most cases these signs are completely different from each other.

            Variation in word-sized units also occurs at the level of sentences, which is syntactic variation. ASL is a ‘pro-drop’ language: the verb in a sentence may be accompanied by a pronoun, but the pronoun may also be left out (“I think” can also be signed as THINK without the pronoun).

            There were different projects in the USA which studied sociolinguistic variation. Researchers gathered and analyzed a lot of examples of natural language use. They found that the grammatical function of the variable signs is very important in sign language. The same kind of social constraints that operate in spoken language variation also operate in sign language (gender, age, region, ethnicity), but there are unique ones as well (such as whether the signers parents are deaf ASL signers).

Variation in American Sign Language. (2010). In D. Brentari (Ed.), Cambridge Language Surveys - Sign Languages. New York: Cambridge University Press.

            Language users sometimes have different ways of signing the same idea. Variation may be realized at all different levels of a language. In ASL, phonological variation can be seen in all of the parts that make up signs. Variation may also occur in the morphological and syntactic components of a language. Sociolinguistic variation takes into account the fact that the different linguistic variants may correlate with social factors including age, socioeconomic class, gender, ethnic background, region and sexual orientation.

            The same kinds of variation found in spoken languages can also be found in sign languages. For instance, features of individual segments in spoken language are final consonant devoicing, vowel nasalization, vowel raising and lowering, in sign language these are the following: change in location, movement, orientation, handshape in one or more segments of a sign. Individual segments can be deleted or added: in spoken language the –t,-d,-s deletion, epenthetic vowels and consonants, and in sign language the deletion of holds, movement epenthesis, hold epenthesis. We can talk about metathesis as well, in both cases, which is the rearrangement of syllables, segments and parts of segments. Syntactic variation also occurs in these two languages, for example copula deletion and lexical variation in spoken languages and null pronoun and lexical variation in case of sign languages.

Schembri, A., & Jonhston, T. (2013). Sociolinguistic Variation and Changes is Sign Language. In The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics. New York: Oxford University.

            Work over the last two decades has shown that factors that drive sociolinguistic variation and change in both spoken and signed language communities are broadly similar.

Social factors include, for example, the signer’s age group, region of origin, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Linguistic factors include phonological processes such as assimilation, reduction and grammaticalization.

            Variation in signed languages, just like in spoken language, may be found at all levels of structural organization but some factors involved in sociolinguistic variation in sign language, however, are distinctive. For instance, phonological variation includes features such as the production of signs that has no direct parallel in spoken language phonology.

            The chapter examines and exemplifies sociolinguistic variation in sign language at the level of phonology, lexicon and grammar, highlighting the fact that the clearest examples of sociolinguistic variation are presented by lexical variations. A lexical variation study shows that there are different lexical variants for PIZZA in ASL, none of which share handshape, movement, or location features.  Shared lexical forms, however, exist alongside regional variants due to the fact that residential schools all had direct or indirect links with the first school in Connecticut, which trained its deaf graduates as teachers who were sent out to establish new schools, spreading a standardized variety of ASL. Specific schools were established for African American deaf children during the nineteenth and twentieth century, African American ASL signers having unique lexical variants.

            A number of studies have suggested that gender may influence lexical variation in ASL. Ceil Lucas reports that only eight of the 34 stimulus items they studied did not show variants unique to either men or women.