Doctoral Dissertation Research: Sign language spatial modulation across sociohiohistorical contexts

手语位于视觉-空间通道中，在交流过程中身体和手是直接可见的。这为SLS提供了以基本方式使用三维空间的能力。空间被用来或调制，以一种标志性的方式指代位置，允许签名者根据他们现实世界的位置或相对的空间配置来放置或移动所指对象。空间也被调节以跟踪语法论元，即引入和维持语篇指称。在手语语言学文献中，手语者如何在整个语篇中同时编织人称指称和位置指称一直是手语语言学研究中的一个重要理论问题。为了更好地理解这两种指称功能在不同语言环境中的起源和发展，本研究分析了空间调节(方位和论元)在三种语言中的分布--美国手语(ASL)，一种已有300多年历史的成熟手语，尼加拉瓜手语(NSL)，大约50岁的年轻手语，在没有外部影响的情况下自主发展，以及Lengua de señas Costarricense(LESCO)，这是一种年轻的手语，它是在与ASL有强烈语言接触的情况下发展起来的。学生研究人员将从NSL和LESCO的三个代表语法发展早期阶段的亚组中获得语言样本，并将其与公认的手语ASL中的对等样本进行比较。这项工作的目的是梳理空间事件中指示语追踪所涉及的因素及其在论元结构中的应用。这项拟议的研究还将用于进一步记录研究不足的手语，并将收集到的数据归档到永久的、机构维护的储存库中。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Sign languages (SLs) are situated in the visual-spatial modality, and the body and hands are directly visible during communication. This affords SLs the use of three-dimensional space in fundamental ways. Space is used, or modulated, to refer to locations in an iconic way, allowing signers to place or move referents based on their real world locations or relative spatial configurations. Space is also modulated to track grammatical arguments—i.e., to introduce and maintain discourse referents. How signers weave both person and location referents throughout a discourse has been of great theoretical interest in the sign language linguistics literature. Among proposed frameworks, some reconcile these two uses of space within a single linguistic agreement analysis, while others employ both linguistic (morphemic) and non-linguistic (gestural) analyses rather than an entirely linguistic one.In order to better understand the origins and development of these two referent functions in differing linguistic environments, this research analyzes the distribution of spatial modulations (locative and argument) across three languages–American Sign Language (ASL) a well-established sign language over 300 years old, Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) young sign language of approximately 50 years old that is developing autonomously without outside influence, and Lengua de Señas Costarricense (LESCO) a young sign language that is developing in a situation with strong language contact with ASL. The student researcher will obtain language samples from three sub-groups of NSL and LESCO that represent earlier stages of grammatical development, using the “apparent time” hypothesis, and compare them with equivalent samples from the well-established sign language, ASL. The goal of this work is to tease apart the factors involved in deictic reference tracking in spatial events from its use in argument structure. The proposed research will also serve to further document under-studied sign languages, and to archive the data collected in a permanent, institutionally-maintained repository.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.