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

语言渗透于人类的存在之中；它调解我们的互动，影响我们的思维模式，构建我们的经验，是知识相互传递和代代相传的关键机制。尽管语言有着清晰而深远的意义，但关于它的本质、它是如何产生的、它是如何发展的，我们仍有许多不了解的地方。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视角。由于这项工作，语言学家越来越多地将语言视为一种抽象的认知系统，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。这种见解有助于我们理解语言最强大的特征之一：它独特的灵活性，使它能够适应不同的环境、人群和传播条件。本研究以过去60年的手语研究为基础，考察了语言从视觉-手势模态到触觉-本体感受模态的重构过程。调查人员正在进行这项研究。这是历史上前所未有的时刻，有史以来第一次，一个大型的、社会组织起来的和政治参与网络的聋哑盲人语言用户直接与&amp；#8232；通过相互的触觉和本体感觉通道相互作用。聋哑人将这些沟通方式称为“主动沟通”（PT）。在初步的研究中，我们已经观察到PT交际实践似乎导致了手语语音结构的系统性变化。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聋哑手语者、非PT聋哑手语者和非PT聋人手语者。比较这些群体将有助于区分紧急的语音模式和对感觉丧失的即时补偿。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.