Diane Lillo-Martin

WH-Movement and the Position of Spec-CP: Evidence from American Sign Language

Some researchers have claimed that wH-movement in ASL is rightward, contrary to the apparent universality of leftward wH-movement. In contrast to this claim, we argue that wH-movement in ASL is to a leftward specifier of CP. We account for the occurrence of rightward wH-elements by independently motivated syntactic and discourse factors which lead to the appearance of wH-elements in sentenceor discourse-final positions-not by rightward wH-movement. Our analysis provides an account for a variety of ASL direct and indirect wH-questions and is in accord with cross-linguistic generalizations. *

On the linguistic status of 'agreement' in sign languages.

Abstract In signed languages, the arguments of verbs can be marked by a system of verbal modification that has been termed “agreement” (more neutrally, “directionality”). Fundamental issues regarding directionality remain unresolved and the phenomenon has characteristics that call into question its analysis as agreement. We conclude that directionality marks person in American Sign Language, and the ways person marking interacts with syntactic phenomena are largely analogous to morpho-syntactic properties of familiar agreement systems. Overall, signed languages provide a crucial test for how gestural and linguistic mechanisms can jointly contribute to the satisfaction of fundamental aspects of linguistic structure.

Spoken English Language Development Among Native Signing Children With Cochlear Implants

Bilingualism is common throughout the world, and bilingual children regularly develop into fluently bilingual adults. In contrast, children with cochlear implants (CIs) are frequently encouraged to focus on a spoken language to the exclusion of sign language. Here, we investigate the spoken English language skills of 5 children with CIs who also have deaf signing parents, and so receive exposure to a full natural sign language (American Sign Language, ASL) from birth, in addition to spoken English after implantation. We compare their language skills with hearing ASL/English bilingual children of deaf parents. Our results show comparable English scores for the CI and hearing groups on a variety of standardized language measures, exceeding previously reported scores for children with CIs with the same age of implantation and years of CI use. We conclude that natural sign language input does no harm and may mitigate negative effects of early auditory deprivation for spoken language development.

Universal Grammar and American Sign Language

One far-reaching goal of linguistic theory is to determine universal principles which hold for the structures of all human languages.1 Such principles are proposed as part of a system of UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR (UG), which is claimed to be part of the biological endowment for all human beings. Thus, these principles must be general and abstract enough so that a child learning his or her native language — whatever that language might be — will unconsciously use them, along with the primary language input data, to guide the formation of a grammar for his or her own particular language. Since there is great variety in the form of the world’s languages, it has been proposed that the universal principles are supplemented by language-particular parameters, which allow for a limited and specific set of options within the confines of the universal principles (e.g., Chomsky 1981, Hornstein and Lightfoot 1981, Lightfoot 1982, Newmeyer 1983, Roeper and Williams 1987).

Effects of sign language experience on categorical perception of dynamic ASL pseudosigns

We investigated effects of sign language experience on deaf and hearing participants’ categorical perception of minimal manual contrast stimuli that met key criteria of speech perception research. A continuum of meaningless dynamic stimuli was created with a morphing approach, which manipulated videorecorded productions of phonotactically permissible pseudosigns differing between American Sign Language (ASL) handshapes that contrast on a single articulatory dimension (U—V: finger-spreading). AXB discrimination and AXB categorization and goodness ratings on the target items were completed by deaf early (native) signers (DE), deaf late (nonnative) signers (DL), hearing late (L2) signers (HL), and hearing nonsigners (HN). Categorization and goodness functions were less categorical and had different boundaries for DL participants than for DE and HL participants. Shape and level of discrimination functions also differed by ASL experience and hearing status, with DL signers showing better performance than DE, HL, and especially HN participants, particularly at the U end of the continuum. Although no group displayed a peak in discrimination at the category boundary, thus failing to support classic categorical perception, discrimination was consistent with categorization in other ways that differed among the groups. Thus, perception of phonetic variations underlying this minimal sign contrast is systematically affected by language experience.

Language choice in bimodal bilingual development

Bilingual children develop sensitivity to the language used by their interlocutors at an early age, reflected in differential use of each language by the child depending on their interlocutor. Factors such as discourse context and relative language dominance in the community may mediate the degree of language differentiation in preschool age children. Bimodal bilingual children, acquiring both a sign language and a spoken language, have an even more complex situation. Their Deaf parents vary considerably in access to the spoken language. Furthermore, in addition to code-mixing and code-switching, they use code-blending—expressions in both speech and sign simultaneously—an option uniquely available to bimodal bilinguals. Code-blending is analogous to code-switching sociolinguistically, but is also a way to communicate without suppressing one language. For adult bimodal bilinguals, complete suppression of the non-selected language is cognitively demanding. We expect that bimodal bilingual children also find suppression difficult, and use blending rather than suppression in some contexts. We also expect relative community language dominance to be a factor in childrens language choices. This study analyzes longitudinal spontaneous production data from four bimodal bilingual children and their Deaf and hearing interlocutors. Even at the earliest observations, the children produced more signed utterances with Deaf interlocutors and more speech with hearing interlocutors. However, while three of the four children produced >75% speech alone in speech target sessions, they produced <25% sign alone in sign target sessions. All four produced bimodal utterances in both, but more frequently in the sign sessions, potentially because they find suppression of the dominant language more difficult. Our results indicate that these children are sensitive to the language used by their interlocutors, while showing considerable influence from the dominant community language.

Processing spatial anaphora: Referent reactivation with overt and null pronouns in american sign language

Abstract Unlike English, American Sign Language (ASL) permits phonologically null pronouns in tensed clauses. Null pronouns are licensed by morphological marking of “agreeing” verbs which agree with the spatial loci of the subject and object noun phrases of the sentence. We present two probe recognition experiments which investigated whether overt and null pronouns similarly reactivate their referents during on-line sentence comprehension. Experiment 1 revealed faster response times to probes that were referents of either an overt pronoun or a null pronoun compared to control probes, indicating that both overt pronouns and null pronouns associated with verb agreement reactivate their spatial referents. However, response times to non-referent probes were also faster than to control probes, and it was hypothesiscd that an end-of-sentence probe presentation may have tapped into a sentence integration process in which all possible referents were reactivated. In a second experiment, the Same sentences were pre...

Auditory Deprivation Does Not Impair Executive Function, But Language Deprivation Might: Evidence From a Parent-Report Measure in Deaf Native Signing Children

Deaf children are often described as having difficulty with executive function (EF), often manifesting in behavioral problems. Some researchers view these problems as a consequence of auditory deprivation; however, the behavioral problems observed in previous studies may not be due to deafness but to some other factor, such as lack of early language exposure. Here, we distinguish these accounts by using the BRIEF EF parent report questionnaire to test for behavioral problems in a group of Deaf children from Deaf families, who have a history of auditory but not language deprivation. For these children, the auditory deprivation hypothesis predicts behavioral impairments; the language deprivation hypothesis predicts no group differences in behavioral control. Results indicated that scores among the Deaf native signers (n = 42) were age-appropriate and similar to scores among the typically developing hearing sample (n = 45). These findings are most consistent with the language deprivation hypothesis, and provide a foundation for continued research on outcomes of children with early exposure to sign language.

A ‘point’ of inquiry: The case of the (non-)pronominal IX in ASL

It has been claimed that in American Sign Language (ASL), the sign glossed as IX is used for a variety of functions, including personal pronouns, locatives, and determiners (Meier and Lillo-Martin 2013). We propose to unify these disparate functions by analyzing IX as ademonstrative, appearingwith orwithout an overt complement. Appealingly simple, this move accounts for a wide range of facts regarding the distribution and interpretation of IX. We focus on points to third-person referents. Such points are directed toward loci – real people, objects, or locations in the physical space around the signer, or places (possibly arbitrarily) associatedwith their referents in the signed discourse (Lillo-Martin and Klima 1990). The loci themselves raise considerable interesting issues (Barberà 2012, Gagne andDavidson 2014); however, their contribution is often conflatedwith the contribution of IX alone. Thus, we specifically ask: for a sign involving pointing, what is the nature of IX (i.e. the lexical item realized in a pointing hand-shape) when dissociated from the issue of locus (i.e. the space where it points to)?

Best Practices for Building a Bimodal/Bilingual Child Language Corpus

This article addresses the special challenges associated with collecting longitudinal samples of the spontaneous sign language and spoken language production by young bimodal bilingual children. We discuss the methods used in our study of children in the United States and Brazil. Since one of our goals is to observe both sign language and speech, as well as any language mixing, it is important for us to address issues of language choice and techniques for directing the child participant toward primary use of the target language in each session. Suggestions and guidelines for achieving this in effective yet respectful ways are presented. We are especially dependent on the participation, flexibility, and direction of our participant children’s parents, who work with us to elicit samples that are genuinely representative of their children’s linguistic abilities. We illustrate our procedures for training parents and other interlocutors in data-collection sessions. In return for their generous participation in our research, we address parents’ questions and concerns about language development, especially in bimodal bilingual contexts. We take very seriously the need to negotiate with participants regarding their expectations for the use of the data they provide, and we abide by their wishes in this matter. The strategies presented here improve the quality of the investigations we can conduct by making the experiences of the participant families as pleasant as possible.