Te Reo : proceedings of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand最新文献

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Towards a National Sign Language in Vanuatu. 走向瓦努阿图的国家手语。

Te Reo : proceedings of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand Pub Date : 2025-01-01 Epub Date: 2025-12-07

Angelinah Eldads Vira, Leniker Thomas, Rachel Miles

{"title":"Towards a National Sign Language in Vanuatu.","authors":"Angelinah Eldads Vira, Leniker Thomas, Rachel Miles","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"As of 2025, there is no national sign language in Vanuatu. Sign languages are natural languages that emerge in deaf communities. While studies in the United States have estimated that approximately 95% of deaf children are born into hearing families who do not sign (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004), there is no equivalent demographic data available for Vanuatu. This highlights a critical evidence gap. Because most deaf children are born into hearing families without signing skills, language acquisition of a language of wider use typically occurs in schools or other gathering places of the deaf community. These settings are critical for the establishment of intergenerational transmission of a national sign language. Historically, such settings have not existed for the deaf community in Vanuatu. This article reports on efforts by the Curriculum Development Unit through the Ministry of Education and Training and the Vanuatu Deaf Association to improve access to language for deaf people in Vanuatu. The project consists of multiple phases which broadly include building a corpus of recordings the signs for common objects and actions used by deaf people in all the provinces of Vanuatu, selecting signs from this corpus to be included in a dictionary, and finally dissemination of these signs to stakeholders. This last ongoing phase aims to equip educators around the country and disability associations so that teachers can use the signs with deaf children in public schools. By providing access to sign language for all deaf children as well as gathering places for the deaf community, future generations of Vanuatu deaf people will have access to language which allows them to thrive in all areas of society.","PeriodicalId":521165,"journal":{"name":"Te Reo : proceedings of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand","volume":"68 3","pages":"5-19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12718632/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145812583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Argument marking in a new sign language. 一个新的手语参数标记。

Te Reo : proceedings of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand Pub Date : 2025-01-01 Epub Date: 2025-12-07

Rachel Miles, Rachel I Mayberry

{"title":"Argument marking in a new sign language.","authors":"Rachel Miles, Rachel I Mayberry","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"While there has been no recognized sign language in Vanuatu and no record of intergenerational transmission of language between deaf people, a cohort of deaf children have been attending a school in Port Vila. Previous reports of the gathering together of deaf people, specifically deaf children, have documented the emergence of new sign languages. Studies of emerging sign languages show that linguistic devices for marking argument structure, including word order and grammatical use of space, emerge over time through intergenerational transmission. We examine longitudinal emergence of these devices in the first cohort of a new sign language in Vanuatu. Participants include six deaf children from Vanuatu (ages 8-14, mean 11.6), four of whom had 5-14 months of exposure to Fiji Sign Language. Spontaneous descriptions of sixteen transitive events were elicited using a communicative task. Data were collected 1.5 years after the establishment of the signing community in Vanuatu, and then again one year later. We measured a variety of argument marking strategies: word order, split events, constructed action, assigning characters to present individuals, use of space in marking arguments, spatial modulation of verb, and use of semantic classifiers. Comparing time one and time two rates of argument differentiation strategies in the deaf children, we found a decrease in constructed action and an increase in the use of spatial marking of arguments, classifiers, and spatial modulation of verbs, with few changes in word order. Comparison of these argument marking strategies with those used by thirteen children in Fiji Sign Language, suggests that the change in argument marking is not due to language contact but is arising from sustained community use.","PeriodicalId":521165,"journal":{"name":"Te Reo : proceedings of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand","volume":"68 4","pages":"152-177"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12751594/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145879811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0