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Abrupt grammatical reorganization of an emergent sign language

The expression of motion in Zinacantec Family Homesign

ORCID logo | The University of Texas at Austin
This study traces the development of discrete, combinatorial structure in Zinacantec Family Homesign (‘Z Sign’), a sign language developed since the 1970s by several deaf siblings in Mexico (Haviland 2020b), focusing on the expression of motion. The results reveal that the first signer, who generated a homesign system without access to language models, represents motion events holistically. Later-born signers, who acquired this homesign system from infancy, distribute the components of motion events over sequences of discrete signs. Furthermore, later-born signers exhibit greater regularity of form-meaning mappings and increased articulatory efficiency. Importantly, these changes occur abruptly between the first- and second-born signers, rather than incrementally across signers. This study extends previous findings for Nicaraguan Sign Language (Senghas et al. 2004) to a social group of a much smaller scale, suggesting that the parallel processes of cultural transmission and language acquisition drive language emergence, regardless of community size.
Keywords: homesign, sign language, language emergence, combinatorial structure, segmentation, cultural transmission, acquisition, expression of motion
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The expression of manner and path in established and emergent sign languages
    • 2.1The expression of manner and path in homesign and emergent sign languages
  • 3.Zinacantec Family Homesign
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Motion expressions in Z Sign
  • 6.Quantitative results
    • 6.1Segmentation of manner and path
    • 6.2Form-meaning mappings
      • 6.2.1Classifier predicates
      • 6.2.2Constructed action
    • 6.3Use of the hands versus the body in the representation of path
  • 7.Discussion
    • 7.1Trade-offs between iconicity, combinatoriality and ease of articulation
    • 7.2The role of cultural transmission and the rate of emergence
    • 7.3Deaf signers versus hearing signers
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 7 December 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.22039.ger
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