LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.09 (04) [E]

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09 December 2005 * Volume 04
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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.09 (01) [E]


Sandy Fleming wrote....

<In the past, most people were illiterate, and the Deaf had even less 
<education than the Hearing, so BSL developed in isolation from English 
<(though presumably, like English, repeated invasions have given it a 
<complex history of its own).

<So BSL, apart from modern English influences, has no relationship to 
<English.

<There are quite strong reasons why BSL doesn't change to be more like 
<English.

<One is that Deaf people can't hear (I keep having to remind people of

<this!) so that learning English is a bit like learning Japanese from the 
<script alone. Many Deaf people of average education don't make a good job 
<of writing English. One reason for that is, ironically, that many teachers 
<in the UK insist on teaching only English to Deaf children, and no BSL, 
<with the result that they have no complete language to use in communicating 
<the rather difficult ideas involved in learning English via script and 
<speech therapy. More modern theories say that if you learn one language 
<properly early enough then you can learn any later on, whereas if you 
<don't, you'll never learn to either speak or sign properly. But it seems 
<that while the Deaf can't hear, some education authorities, and even some 
<teachers, don't want to. There's nane sae deif as winna hear, as we say in 
<Scots  :)

<The other reason I have in mind is purely linguistic. Imagine you're trying 
<to describe a drum sound in English. You might say:

<"It was three short, light beats followed by a heavy beat and then a cymbal 
<sound."

<or you might just say:

<"It went rat-at-a-boom-tsh!"

<The first version is very long but can be analysed according to English 
<grammar. The second (onomatopoetic) version is very short, the grammar is 
<very different and you couldn't do a proper analysis of how meaning was 
<expressed here without considering how the actual sounds of the "words" 
<relate to the reality being described.

<This second version is possible because the thing being described is a 
<sound, and the English language uses sound as its medium. However, most 
<things we converse about are perceived visually, so onomatopoeia isn't 
<usually the best way to try to describe them in English.

<But BSL uses a visual medium, so there is practically always scope for 
<using (visual) onomatopoeia to describe things!

<This means that, like the second example above, BSL tends to be much 
<briefer than English, and also that BSL grammar is much more closely 
<coupled with semantics (or even reality) than English grammar is.

<There is a form of signed language known as "Signed English", which is 
<English signed word-for-word using BSL signs, plus signs invented for 
<English words that don't exist in BSL. As you might expect from the above 
<description, it's tedious. In fact it's so tedious it's almost never used 
<in conversation, but only for teaching Deaf children English.

<Another form of signed language is "Sign Supported English" (SSE), the idea 
<being to speed up communication by dropping all the "invented" or "purely 
<English" signs while still following word order. But this remains tedious 
<and moreover isn't as clear as either English or BSL. These are both clear:

<"It was three short, light beats followed by a heavy beat and then a cymbal 
<sound." "It went rat-at-a-boom-tsh!"

<But the SSE is neither short nor clear (the lack of such subtleties as 
<rhythm, stress and tone doesn't help, either):

<"That three quick airy hit hard hit round-thing noise."

<There's another reason why BSL is very brief: there are various 
<simultaneous channels of expression in BSL (there are in spoken languages 
<too, eg rhythm, stress, tone, gesture, but not heavily used for lexical 
<items and morphemes as in BSL). For example, if we want to say:

<"He agreed grudgingly"

<This is one sign, and indeed everything is simultaneous and signed in a 
<moment, not like a single word of five sequential syllables! Just to 
<describe it so that you understand, "agreed" is signed with the hands - 
<make two "thumbs-up" signs in front of your chest and immediately bring 
<your hands together to contact at the middle bones of the fingers. At the 
<same time, glance to the side with the eyes only to indicate "he", and 
<wrinkle your nose and press your lips together to indicate "grudgingly". 
<With this one sign on the hands, the head can be used to sign all sorts of 
<agreement:

<"He agreed grudgingly."

<"I agreed to put up with it."

<"Do you agree?"

<"He disagrees."

<"I agree to some extent."

<More examples, to give the full flavour of the language...

<Suppose you're talking about a family, say, a husband, wife and two 
<children. The first time you sign husband, you might point or glance to the 
<left slightly, and you mention the wife and children and point or glance to 
<the right. The positions them in your mind's eye, and in the "listener"'s 
<mind's eye. Thereafter, you can glance to the left when talking about the 
<husband, to the right when talking about the wife, and to the right and 
<downwards when talking about the children. This is how pronouns work in 
<BSL.

<Similarly, suppose two people are comparing the merits of electricity and 
<gas. Though these are abstract ideas, the signers will soon establish, as 
above, that electricity is to the right (say) and gas to the left. 
<Thereafter to say "Gas is cheap, electricity is expensive", they only have 
<to sign:

<"Expensive, cheap"

<with a glance to the right on the first sign, and a glance to the left on 
<the second. The strong spatial or semantic coupling with syntax makes for 
<clarity and brevity which just can't be achieved with SSE.

<Here's an example of a more (visually) onomatopoetic sentence. On Saturday 
<a Deaf man said to me:

<"I went to Guernsey on the boat. I saw the full moon rising over the 
<horizon, it was beautiful."

<So he signed it as follows:

<been Guernsey-over-there boat-sailing-to-over-there full-moon 
I-saw-curve-<of-the-crown-of-the-moon-slowly-rising-above-the-horizon,

<beautiful

<Only six signs, leaving a very clear picture in the mind! Most of this is 
<signed with the hands, but the "over-there" and "I-saw" are signed 
<simultaneously with the eyes. He signs "full-moon" and then in the next 
<sign I see his left arm representing the horizon while a curved right hand 
<is used for the top of the moon.

<You'll notice that the syntax is partly dictated by the semantics here. He 
<has to sign the object (full-moon) before the verb

<(curve-of-the-crown-of-the-moon-slowly-rising-above-the-horizon)

<otherwise I won't know what his curved hand is supposed to represent ( part 
<of the full moon).

<This takes us back to the "cake eats girl" incident:

<"Cake girl eat."

<"Girl cake eat."

<both mean the same thing, thanks to a bit of common sense or cultural 
<agreement. But I said the verb has to come after the object. This is 
<because the verb "eat" varies in BSL according to what's eaten: a piece of 
<cake, a slice of pizza, a potato crisp, dinner with fork and knife, they're 
<all held in different ways. And just as I can't tell what the man's curved 
<hand was before he signs "full moon", I can't tell what the girl's hand is 
<supposed to be holding until the sign for "cake", "pizza" or whatever, has 
<been made, so the verb must come after the object!

<Of course this is basic grammar, and as in English or any other language 
<you can always vary the meaning by putting the words in less-usual 
<orderings. And there are other sign languages that follow quite different 
<ordering rules. But I'd normally expect stronger coupling between reality 
<and grammar in sign languages, due to the prevalence of onomatopoeia.

<That's why English and BSL are very different, and likely to remain so!

<Sandy Fleming

Dear Sandy, Thank you so much for taking the time to give that eloquent 
explanation of the why's and wherefores of BSL. I am richer for having read 
it!

I do not know whether you get the same TV commercials as we do here (Seattle 
US), but there is this commercial from a faucet factory in which an 
obviously blind person goes to visit the men's room and comes back to his 
girlfriend and says... You must see the faucet!

Of course it is presumptuous of me to assume that a deaf person has the same 
relationship to the word as I have. Example: I just typed the word 
presumptuous as "presumptious" because that was the way I heard it in my 
head. (Long live the spelchecker, by the way). Since deaf people live in a 
seeing world they must do the same with signs. That is like the written word 
is a point of reference to me, the sign must be for them. So what I "see" 
happen, if I could follow BSL, is that signers set a stage before they fill 
it with props and action. This is visually is much more to the point of 
course. Wonderful!!!

I also know that in spoken languages a difference of syntax has its effect. 
My native language is Dutch but for the last forty years I have lived in the 
US. When I first came here I spoke some English, but was not really fluent. 
I found myself developing the nasty habit of interrupting people in the 
middle of a sentence; something my parents had told me was "extremely bad 
manners". It took me a while but I finally figured out what was going on. 
Take the sentence:

I have seen the crows fly over the field. The syntax makes clear that "I 
have seen" something and "the crows fly" and finally there is a description 
of the scene "over the field".

The Dutch version of this would be:

Ik heb de kraaien over het veld zien vliegen. "Ik heb" sets the tense, then 
comes the stage (de kraaien over het veld) and finally the action verbs come 
at the end of the sentence. It is a system of delayed gratification. You 
have to sit and wait until the sentence is finished before you know what 
happened and therefore it is much more difficult to interrupt somebody in 
mid-sentence.

There are some problems with the sentence itself, but I tried to find one 
where the words were cognates of each other. I realize that in English you 
would have preferred to use the simple past, where the Dutch prefer to use 
the perfect present (It is over isn't it?).

It is therefore no joke when I say that I am a different person when I speak 
English than when I speak Dutch.

It is really fascinating to observe the different ways we can communicate.

My cat has a cat-friend. He comes over and they will sit on the deck several 
yards apart and communicate. Heaven knows what they are "saying" (see there 
it is again, when I talk about communication I use "to say"), but I am sure 
they are communicating. On the other hand Lulabelle greets me with extensive 
"meow-talk", hoping that her stupid human understands that she has forsaken 
her for all of 2 hours and "don't I understand that she is hungry (again)".

I hope we will continue to communicate. Jacqueline

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