The Face of Bimodal Bilingualism

TLDR

Bimodal bilinguals, fluent in both a signed and a spoken language, offer insight into syntactic integration and language control, and in ASL eyebrow movements signal conditionals and wh‑questions synchronized with clause onset. The study examined whether bimodal bilinguals speaking with English monolinguals produce ASL grammatical facial expressions alongside parallel English syntactic structures. Bimodal bilinguals produced more ASL‑appropriate facial expressions than nonsigners, synchronized them with English clause onset, and demonstrated that morphosyntactic elements from two languages can be articulated simultaneously, though complete inhibition of the nonselected language is difficult.

Abstract

Bimodal bilinguals, fluent in a signed and a spoken language, provide unique insight into the nature of syntactic integration and language control. We investigated whether bimodal bilinguals who are conversing with English monolinguals produce American Sign Language (ASL) grammatical facial expressions to accompany parallel syntactic structures in spoken English. In ASL, raised eyebrows mark conditionals, and furrowed eyebrows mark wh-questions; the grammatical brow movement is synchronized with the manual onset of the clause. Bimodal bilinguals produced more ASL-appropriate facial expressions than did nonsigners and synchronized their expressions with the onset of the corresponding English clauses. This result provides evidence for a dual-language architecture in which grammatical information can be integrated up to the level of phonological implementation. Overall, participants produced more raised brows than furrowed brows, which can convey negative affect. Bimodal bilinguals suppressed but did not completely inhibit ASL facial grammar when it conflicted with conventional facial gestures. We conclude that morphosyntactic elements from two languages can be articulated simultaneously and that complete inhibition of the nonselected language is difficult.