Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language

小行星9310116 摘要 本研究基于美国聋人群体的大量录像语料库，对美国手语的社会语言学变异进行了研究，旨在探讨两个理论问题：1）口语研究中对变异的内部语言限制是否可以被识别和描述; 2）同样，外部社会约束是否可以被识别和描述，什么样的模型最好地解释了外部约束？具体来说，是一个传统的分层模型最合适的，或者可以使用社会网络分析来解释个体的变异性，以及是否有相关的因素，以确定网络得分，可能是唯一的美国聋人社区？将在八个有代表性的地理区域、小组会议和个人访谈中收集录像数据。告密者将包括根据社会经济状况控制的三个年龄组中的美国手语的白色和非洲裔美国人本地或近本地用户。这些数据将被检查的语音，词汇和形态句法变量，这些变量的内部和外部约束将被描述，使用Varbrul程序。社会网络分数将计算选定的线人和相关的语言行为。这项研究具有理论和实践的重要性：它将有助于我们理解美国手语作为一种人类语言的时候，美国手语的教学正在迅速扩大听力成人和儿童和聋哑儿童。 ***

9310116 LUCAS ABSTRACT Based on a large videotaped corpus representative of the American Deaf community, this study of sociolinguistic variation in American Sign Language (ASL) will investigate two theoretical questions: 1) Can the internal linguistic restraints on variation such as those identified and described in spoken language studies be identified and described for variation in ASL; 2) Similarly, can external social constraints be identified and described and what kind of model best accounts for the external constraints? Specifically, is a traditional stratification model most appropriate or can a social network analysis be used to account for individual variability, and are there factors relevant to the determination of the network score that may be unique to the American Deaf community? Videotaped data will be collected in eight representative geographical regions, in group sessions and in individual interviews. Informants will include White and African_American native or near-native user of ASL in three age groups controlled for socioeconomic status. The data will be examined for phonological, lexical, and morphosyntactic variables, and the internal and external constraints on these variables will be described, using the Varbrul program. Social network scores will be calculated for selected informants and correlated for their linguistic behavior. The study has both theoretical and practical importance: it will contribute to our understanding of ASL as a human language at a time when the instruction of ASL is rapidly expanding both for hearing adults and children and for deaf children. ***