Some Procedural Guidelines for The Study of the Acquisition of Sign Language

Abstract

SOME PROCEDURAL GUIDELINES FOR THE STUDY OF THE ACQUISITION OF SIGN LANGUAGE Robert J.Hoffmeister,DonaldE Moores, andRuth L. Ellenberger The study of language acquisition in children is a difficult process in which an investigator constantly is faced with decisions concerning various procedures for gathering a corpus of data, for establishing rules for data analysis, and, ultimately, for interpreting results in a consistent, coherent manner. Given recent trends away from purely structural descriptions toward a "rich interpretation" of child utterances (e.g., Bloom 1970; Bowerman 1973) and toward consideration of cognitive/semantic foundations of language (Antinucci and Parisi 1973; Macnamara 1972; Slobin 1973), the chance of misunderstanding among investigators increases greatly. In the absence of a commonly agreed upon frame of reference, a confusing, even chaotic, situation results. Individual researchers may use different terminology to refer to the same or similar phenomena, or they may use the same terms in a variety of ways. For example, terms such as pivot grammar, holophrastic speech, ostension, telegraphic speech and mean length of utterance have each been used to mean different things by different researchers. For a complete treatment of the problem, the reader is referred to Brown (1973). The situation is compounded when the investigation involves the acquisition of a language of signs. This is not because a manual communication system is by nature more complex than a vocal communication system, but rather is because the acquisition of manual systems has received relatively little attention. In their investigations of the sign systems used by deaf individuals, researchers generally have translated signs into a spoken language for analysis (Tervoort and Verbeck 1967; Bellugi 1972; Schlesinger and Meadow 1972; Hoffmeister and Moores 1973). Frequently, interpretation of results has been difficult due to a lack of detailed information describing the translation process. In commenting on investigations of the use of sign languages Winslow (1973:30) summed up the situation by stating that many researchers "have managed to present their data in written form, but for the most part neglected to make their transcription rules explicit." Sign Language Studies 7 The present paper provides guidelines for transcribing sign language using English glosses. The guidelines have been developed as part of a study of sign language acquisition of deaf children of deaf parents. Full details of the complete study may be found in the project's most recent progress report (Hoffmeister, Moores and Best 1974). The possible benefits of the translation and definition rules presented herein are: 1. They make explicit the procedures upon which analysis of utterances will be based in a study of sign language acquisition of deaf children, thus reducing the possibility ofmisinterpretation. 2. The guidelines may be of benefit to other researchers with similar interests. 3. They may form the basis for more comprehensive guidelines. DEFINITION AND TRANSLATION RULES Analysis of sign language data presents a unique problem. Sign language cannot be transcribed using conventional phonological approaches. In the present study, each sign is translated into its closest English equivalent and the same English gloss is used for all occurrences of any given sign. The English gloss is merely a symbol for the sign; the sign is generally neither syntactically nor semantically equivalent to its English gloss. Exact translation is seldom possible. Therefore, the rules described in this paper were developed to facilitate interpretation and analysis of data. Two levels of rules are involved in this analysis of sign language. The first level, the definitionrules (DR), gives definitions of terms used in the analysis and their relation to terms used in other language development studies. Within the framework established by the DR, the second level, the translation rules (TR), establishes principles for (1) transcribing sign language using English glosses and (2) counting morpheme units in sign language. This makes possible the calculation ofmean length of utterances (MLU), range count, and upper bound (Brown 1973). These rules constitute a preliminary effort to describe sign language and should not be regarded as exhaustive. Basic Components of Sign Language, Signs and Sign Units. In spoken language, a morpheme is considered to be the "minimal unit of syntax in a language, a unit from which words are formed" (Falk 1973 :26). Morphemes are the smallest linguistic units...