Kinship terminology in SLs

[Constanze Schmaling]

Hello Mara,

Hausa Sign Language (Nigeria) uses gender marker signs to 
differentiate the signs "sister" and "brother" and 
"grandfather/-mother" These gender markers are the signs with the 
meanings "father/man"/"male" and "mother/woman"/"female", i.e. 
"mother" and "father" themselves need no gender markers.

The gender markers appear after the sign they specify.

They may also be used with non-kinship signs such as "old man/woman", 
"boy/girl", "groom/bride".

Kind regards,
Constanze Schmaling

>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: slling-l-bounces at majordomo.valenciacc.edu 
>[mailto:slling-l-bounces at majordomo.valenciacc.edu] On Behalf Of 
>emaragreen at berkeley.edu
>Sent: dinsdag 2 december 2008 22:04
>To: slling-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>Subject: [SLLING-L] Kinship terminology in SLs
>
>
>Hello, all,
>
>This is my first post so please accept my apologies if it is in any 
>way unclear!  By way of introduction, let me briefly say that I am a 
>PhD student in linguistic anthropology at UC Berkeley working in 
>Nepal with both Nepali Sign Language signers and home signers.
>
>For a linguistics course I am currently taking, I am looking at 
>kinship terminology in Nepali Sign Language and thinking about its 
>relationships (semantically and morphologically) to other languages, 
>including (spoken) Nepali and signed languages with which Nepali 
>signers have had substantial contact.  My professor suggested that 
>it would be of great help to gather some cross-linguistic data on 
>kinship terms/structure in other sign languages, and I've had no 
>luck either with articles or on-line SL dictionaries (except for BSL 
>and a few KSL signs).
>
>Basically, in NSL, the distinctions made in kinship terminology (ie 
>which relationships are named) exactly parallel those made in spoken 
>Nepali (the one article I found, on Argentinean Sign Language, 
>indicated that this isn't the case in Argentina, in relation to 
>Spanish).  While Nepali always distinguishes between male and female 
>relatives, sometimes using gender suffixes and sometimes using 
>distinct lexical items, NSL distinguishes between male and female by 
>beginning all kinship terms (with two exceptions) with the sign for 
>female or the sign for male.  For example, mother might be analyzed 
>as "female + parent" and father as "male
>+ parent," except that the morpheme glossed here as "parent" can never
>stand alone.
>
>If anyone has the time to point me towards articles or online 
>dictionaries, or to provide me with a brief description of these 
>matters in a sign language they know well, including a) the 
>relationship between the structure of kinship terminology in the SL 
>and in the relevant/dominant spoken language(s) and b) the 
>morphological/compounding structure used (if any) in the individual 
>terms that would be fantastic.
>
>Thank you and I look forward to being a part of this listserv!
>Mara
>
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-- 
-----------------------------------
Dr. Constanze Schmaling
Chamonixstr. 6
82467 Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Fon: 08821 9435539
Fax: 08821 9435634
mailto:constanze.schmaling at t-online.de
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