Exploring the bimodal capacity of human language. A sociolinguistic study of language contact in the Hungarian Deaf Community

该项目的重点是记录匈牙利聋人社区双峰双语的使用情况。双语聋人同时使用匈牙利和匈牙利手语(Magyar Jelnyelv，MJNY)。这两种语言属于不同的形式(听觉-声音和视觉-手势)。因此，语言用户可以将口语元素合并到他们的手语中。根据我的博士论文分析，这种接触情况导致了口语中尚未有文献记载的语言现象。该项目的目标是对这种独特的语言双峰表达方式有一个大致的了解。这项研究将表明，语言交际远远超越了语言学传统上所处理的一种语言和一种情态。本研究扩展了博士论文关于MJNY口音变化模式的研究成果，并考察了手语者双语话语的形态模式。在分析的第一部分中，调查了手语手语中匈牙利语调变化标记与手势结构中的语法意义匹配的策略。第二部分实证研究涉及MJNY本族语手语者填写的判断测试。他们的任务是根据不同的标准，将带有匈牙利口器的手语置于语言接触连续体中，以或多或少接近匈牙利手语。在对双语话语进行实证分析的基础上，进一步探讨了这一特定语言运用的理论意义。假设MJNY签名者不仅能用匈利语和MJNY发声，还能使用第三种系统，即两种语言的一组独特的、单独着色的图案。本研究的挑战在于建立一个手语双语话语中动态语言使用的工作模型。本项目的研究结果将有助于对未被充分研究的少数民族语言MJNY进行文献记录。这个以经验为基础的模型将提供一个独特的视角，让我们了解双语双峰语言产生的未知能力，并扩展我们对人类语言能力的理解。

The project focuses on the documentation of the bimodal bilingual language use in the Deaf Community in Hungary. Bilingual Deaf people use both spoken Hungarian and Hungarian Sign Language (Magyar Jelnyelv, MJNY). The two languages belong to different modalities (auditory-vocal and visual-gestural). As a result, language users can incorporate spoken elements in their signed utterances. According to the analysis of my doctoral thesis, this contact situation leads to linguistic phenomena not yet documented among spoken languages. The goal of the project is to gain a general understanding of this unique bimodal expression of language. The research will show that linguistic communication goes way beyond one language and one modality than it is traditionally dealt with in linguistics. The project extends the findings of the doctoral dissertation on the inflectional patterns of mouthings in MJNY and examines the morphological patterns of bilingual utterances of signers.In the first part of the analysis a corpus is investigated to find strategies of signers for matching Hungarian inflectional markers in mouthings with the grammatical meaning in the manual sign structure.The second part of the empirical study involves a judgement test filled out by native signers of MJNY. Their task is to place sign utterances with Hungarian mouthings on a language contact continuum, based on various criteria, as to being more or less close to Hungarian Sign Language. This will supplement the linguistic evidence on certain characteristic patterns of the dynamic bilingual language use.Based on the empirical analysis of bilingual utterances, further theoretical implications of this specific language use are discussed. It is assumed that MJNY signers not just produce utterances in Hungarian and MJNY, but can use a third system, a unique and individually colored set of patterns from both languages. The challenge is to draw a working model of the dynamic language use in sign bilingual utterances.The findings of this project will contribute to the documentation of the under-researched minority language MJNY. The empirically based model will offer a unique insight into the unexplored capacity of bilingual bimodal language production and extends our understanding of what is possible in the human language faculty.