What You See Is What You Feel: Sign Language Phonology in a ProTactile World

语言渗透在人类的生活中;它调节我们的互动，影响我们的思维模式，塑造我们的经验，是一种将知识传递给另一个人和一代又一代人的关键机制。尽管语言的意义是明确而深远的，但我们仍然不了解它的本质，它是如何出现的，以及它是如何发展的。自20世纪60年代初以来，手语为观察语言的核心属性提供了一个新的透镜。由于这项工作，语言学家越来越多地将语言视为一个抽象的认知系统，它可以通过视觉-手势渠道表达和感知，就像它可以通过口头-听觉渠道表达和感知一样。这一见解有助于我们理解语言最强大的特征之一：其独特的灵活性，这使得它能够适应不同的环境，人群和条件的transmission.This研究建立在过去的60年的手语研究通过检查语言的重组，因为它是从视觉-手势模态转换到一个竞争-本体感受模态。研究人员在一个前所未有的历史时刻进行这项研究，当时，第一次，一个大型的，有社会组织的，有政治参与的聋盲语言使用者网络，通过相互的，触觉和本体感受的渠道直接相互交流。聋盲人将这些交流实践称为“protactile”（PT）。在初步的研究中，人们已经观察到，PT通信的做法似乎是导致系统的变化，在语音结构的promalle-ASL。为了分析这些变化，研究人员提出了一些假设，这些假设将在三组人中进行为期五年的测试：PT DeafBlind签名者，非PT DeafBlind签名者和非PT Deaf签名者。比较这些组将允许紧急语音模式，以区分从飞行补偿感官损失。美国手语的出现和发展为理解人类语言如何适应完全不同的传播和互动条件提供了一个独特的机会。

Language permeates human existence; it mediates our interactions, influences our patterns of thought, frames our experiences, and is a key mechanism for transmitting knowledge to one another and from generation to generation. Despite the clear and far-reaching significance of language, there are still many things we do not understand about its nature, about how it emerges, and about how it develops. Since the early 1960s, signed languages have offered a new lens for viewing the core properties of language. As a result of this work, linguists have increasingly come to see language as an abstract cognitive system, which can be expressed and perceived through a visual-gestural channel just as it can be expressed and perceived through an oral-aural channel. This insight helps us understand one of the most powerful characteristics of language: its unique flexibility, which allows it to be adapted to different circumstances, populations, and conditions of transmission.This research builds on the past sixty years of sign language research by examining a restructuring of language as it is transferred from a visual-gestural modality to a tactile-proprioceptive modality. The investigators are conducting this research in
a historically unprecedented moment, when, for the first time, a large, socially organized 
and politically engaged network of DeafBlind language-users are communicating directly with
one another via reciprocal, tactile and proprioceptive channels. DeafBlind people refer to these communication practices as "protactile" (PT). In preliminary research, it has been observed that PT communication practices seem to be leading to systematic changes in the phonological structure of protactile-ASL. In order to analyze these changes, the investigators have developed hypotheses, which will be tested over a five-year period among three groups: PT DeafBlind signers, non-PT DeafBlind signers, and non-PT Deaf signers. Comparing these groups will allow emergent phonological patterns to be distinguished from on-the-fly compensation for sensory loss. The emergence and development of protactile-ASL offers a unique opportunity to understand how human language can be adapted to radically different conditions of transmission and interaction.