Emerging languages in Esoteric and Exoteric Niches: Evidence

from Rural Sign Languages

Jack J. WilsonThe University of Leeds, Linguistics and Phonetics

Hannah LittleVrije Universiteit Brussel, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Jack J. WilsonLinguistics and Phonetics department at the University of Leeds, England.His PhD project explores the impact gestural contributions may have at the level of discourse and comprehension.Interests: Semantics/Pragmatics, linguistics of sign languages, multimodality, and interactional sociolinguistics.

Hannah LittleVrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.Her PhD topic is looking at the evolution of speech using cultural learning experiments.Interests: Linguistic structure, Evolutionary Linguistics, Evolution of Speech, Linguistic niche hypothesis

The Authors

● Why Sign Languages

● Linguistic Niche hypothesis and USLs and RSLs

● Pragmatic hypotheses of language change

● Kata Kolok

● Data

● Theory

● Conclusions

Talk outline

● They're understudied in the current literature

● As sign languages are more transparent/iconic, it is easier to make good guesses about origins.

● New sign languages not born from other languages.

Why Sign Languages?

Who knows?

Population dynamics were a lot different back then.

Our prehistoric ancestors existed without recourse to writing, telephone, television, computers etc. and within a single, relatively stable socio-cultural space.Wray and Grace (2007)

ARE ANY PRESENT-DAY LANGUAGES LIKE THE FIRST HUMAN LANGUAGE?

Social structure can affect linguistic structures

Populations/languages adapt to environmental niches

Most existing literature looks at trends in morphological and syntactic features as the result of second language learning etc.(e.g. Lupyan & Dale, 2010; Bentz & Winter, 2012).

The Linguistic Niche Hypothesis(Lupyan & Dale, 2010)

Languages in Exoteric Niches:

● larger speaker populations● greater geographical coverage● greater degree of contact with other languages● intergroup communication - use the language

to speak to outsiders (individuals from different ethnic and/or linguistic backgrounds)

● more non-native speakers

Exoteric Niches

Wray and Grace (2007)

Used in exoteric niches

Used by the majority of signers within a country

Embedded within the larger spoken communityEstablished public services e.g. ● media services such as sign interpreted

television● deaf clubs, which provide deaf specific events● deaf education systems

Johnston & Schembri (2007), Jepson (1991), Sutton-Spence & Woll, 1999;

Urban Sign Languages (USLs)

● large lexicons

● phonologically complex elements

● syntactically complex expressions

USLs

Languages in Esoteric Niches:

● smaller speaker populations● smaller geographical coverage● less contact with other languages● intra-group communication● Share:

○ a culture and environment○ general knowledge of the community and its

activities○ have a unified identity.

Esoteric Niches

Used in Esoteric Niches

Found in small villages of the developing world

Have been compared to home-sign systems

(Washabaugh, Woodward, & DeSantis, 1978)

Rural Sign Languages (RSLs)

no access to media services

social events such as religious ceremonies are not translated into sign

no access to any form of formal education

no finger spelling

RSLs

Pragmatic Processes in Language Change

Pragmatic processes = the inferential processes that interlocutors make during interactionSperber & Wilson, Levinson, Grice etc. etc.

Scott-Phillips (2010): communicative systems require pragmatic principles at their core.

Traugott and Dasher (2002) - language change must begin with the speaker (i.e. production)

Pragmatic Processes in Esoteric niches

Wray & Grace: "[languages in esoteric niches have] huge reliance on shared knowledge, pragmatics and common practice."

Rural Indian Sign Language

Uses pointing to refer to:bed, people, clothes, shoes, stone(Jespon, 1991)

Most common use of deictic gestures in referring to body parts (de Vos, 2011)

Pointing in RSLs

Providence Island Sign Language

based on the non-linguistic environment/context

Jepson's continuum

Purely arbitrary, indecipherable from context or iconicity

(Jespon, 1991)

Kata KolokOnly twelve generations old

50 deaf individuals in a population of 2200

Two general strategies for naming colours:

“naming an object that typically has the color”“pointing at an object within the vicinity that is colored in the same way”(: 71)

Colour Terms

● Do not require a technologically advanced culture

● All known languages possess at least two colour terms

● They are abstract

○ This results interesting dilemma in terms of lexicalisation

The use and lexicalisation of colour terms

The Munsell Colour chart

From work on the organisation of the colour lexicon(for a review, see Kay and Maffi, 1999)

Data

Signing videos

de Vos, 2011

Language change is cyclical and parasitic upon itself.

Traugott and Dasher’s (2002)Invited Inference Theory of Semantic Change

ConclusionsEnvironmental niches affect individual pragmatic processes

Individual level processes can explain the shape of population wide trends

RSLs are useful to make inferences about protolanguage

RSLs are useful for observing why semantic change might happen

Questions?

ReferencesBentz, C. & Winter, B. (2012). The impact of L2 speakers on the evolution of case marking. In: Scott-Phillips, T. C., Tamariz, M., Cartmill, E. A., & Hurford, J. R. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (pp. 58-63). New Jersey: World Scientific.de Vos, C. (2011). Kata Kolok color terms and the emergence of lexical signs and rural signing communities. Senses & Society 6 (1): 68-76.Jepson, J. 1991. Urban and Rural Sign Language in India. Language and Society, 20:1, 37-57.Lupyan, G. & Dale, R. (2010). Language is Partly Determined by Social Structure. PLoS ONE: 5(1): e8559.Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. 1986 [1995]. Relevance: Communication and Cognition 2ed. BlackwellPublishing, Oxford: UK.Traugott, E. C., & Dasher, R. B. 2002. Regularity in semantic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Washabaugh, W., Woodward, J. C., & DeSantis, S. (1978). Providence Island Sign: A contextdependent language. Anthropological Linguistics, 20 (3): 95-109.Wray, A. & Grace, G. (2007). The consequences of talking to strangers: Evolutionary corollaries of sociocultural influences on linguistic form. Lingua 117 (3): 543-578.

Further questions? mljjw@leeds.ac.uk or hannah@ai.vub.ac.be

Emerging languages in Esoteric and Exoteric Niches: Evidence

from Rural Sign Languages

Jack J. WilsonThe University of Leeds, Linguistics and Phonetics

Hannah LittleVrije Universiteit Brussel, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory