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使用双模双语的情况。双语聋人使用匈牙利语和匈牙利手语（Magyar Jelnyelv， MJNY）这两种语言属于不同的形态（听觉-发声和视觉-手势）。因此，语言使用者可以在他们的手语话语中融入口语元素。根据我博士论文的分析，这种接触情况导致了口语中尚未记载的语言现象。该项目的目标是获得对这种独特的双峰语言表达的一般理解。研究将表明，语言交际远远超出了传统语言学所研究的一种语言和一种情态。该项目扩展了博士论文关于MJNY口腔屈曲模式的发现，并研究了手语者双语话语的形态模式。在分析的第一部分，我们调查了一个语料库，以寻找手语的策略，以匹配匈牙利语屈曲标记在口腔与手势结构中的语法意义。实证研究的第二部分是由MJNY的母语签字人填写判断测试。他们的任务是根据各种标准，将匈牙利语的手势话语置于语言接触连续体中，以或多或少接近匈牙利手语。这将对动态双语语言使用的某些特征模式的语言学证据进行补充。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使用的理论含义。假设MJNY的手语使用者不仅用匈牙利语和MJNY发出话语，而且还可以使用第三种系统，即两种语言中独特且单独着色的模式集。我们面临的挑战是绘制一个手语双语话语中动态语言使用的工作模型。该项目的调查结果将有助于记录研究不足的少数民族语言MJNY。基于经验的模型将为双语双峰语言生产的未开发能力提供独特的见解，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.