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Can experience with co-speech gesture influence the prosody of a sign language? Sign language prosodic cues in bimodal bilinguals*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2012

DIANE BRENTARI ,
MARIE A. NADOLSKE  and
GEORGE WOLFORD
DIANE BRENTARI*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago
MARIE A. NADOLSKE
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Montclair State University
GEORGE WOLFORD
Affiliation:
Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University
*
Address for correspondence: Diane Brentari, Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, 1010 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637-1512, USA[email protected]
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Abstract

In this paper the prosodic structure of American Sign Language (ASL) narratives is analyzed in deaf native signers (L1-D), hearing native signers (L1-H), and highly proficient hearing second language signers (L2-H). The results of this study show that the prosodic patterns used by these groups are associated both with their ASL language experience (L1 or L2) and with their hearing status (deaf or hearing), suggesting that experience using co-speech gesture (i.e. gesturing while speaking) may have some effect on the prosodic cues used by hearing signers, similar to the effects of the prosodic structure of an L1 on an L2.

Keywords

sign languagegesturelanguage contactprosodysecond language acquisitionconstructed actioncharacter viewpointnarrativediscourse
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 402 - 412
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by NSF grant BCS 0547554 to Diane Brentari and NIH DC5241 Ronnie B. Wilbur. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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