[Lingtyp] Are there (can there be?) more than two modalities?

[Riccardo Giomi]

Dear David,

This definitely makes perfect sense, but I wouldn't say it would be "more
appropriate" to reorganize the table in the way you suggest: it would just
yield a different classification, based on a different paradigmatic
opposition.

Best,
R

David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> escreveu no dia domingo, 30/01/2022 à(s) 19:19:

> Wouldn't the vertical column more appropriately be labelled "Autonomous"
> vs. "Derivative", reflecting the fact that derivative modes are parasitic
> on autonomous modes, providing alternative representations for languages
> whose primary and original modes are the ones in the autonomous column?
> (Except that whistled language would belong in the derivative column.)
>
> David
> On 30/01/2022 19:48, Riccardo Giomi wrote:
>
> Right, drummed languages! I had completely forgotten about those..
>
> Come to think of it, I think drummed languages fit quite well, logically,
> in the top-right corner of the tentative taxonomy I came up with in my
> earlier message. But then of course it is no longer accurate to speak of a
> 'graphic' linguistic mode. Perhaps a more useful term for the mode
> opposition, rather than "verbal / graphic", could be "unsupported /
> supported" -- meaning (not) using a concrete, tangible support besides the
> human body itself. So, reformulating the taxonomy (for what it's worth) and
> of course with no prejudice to multi-channel communication, we would have
>
> *↓Sensory channel / Mode→*
>
> *Unsopported*
>
> *Supported*
>
> *Acoustic*
>
> Speaking, Whistling, others?
>
> Drumming
>
> *Visual*
>
> Signing
>
> Writing, Sign writing
>
> *Tactile*
>
> Pro-tactile signing
>
> Braille
>
> I am not sure how useful this can be, and as I mentioned earlier, this is
> not really a taxonomy of modalities as such.. But, to me, it is always kind
> of fun to try and decompose things into features :)
>
> Best wishes,
> R
>
>
> Jess Tauber <tetrahedralpt at gmail.com> escreveu no dia sexta, 28/01/2022
> à(s) 18:12:
>
>> Don't forget drummed language. And one can imagine that if we had better
>> noses and a bigger palette of odor producing glandular secretions we could
>> have an olfactory language.
>>
>> Jess Tauber
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 10:29 AM Adam Schembri <A.Schembri at bham.ac.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Some of us in sign language linguistics distinguish language, modality,
>>> and channel. If we see face to face interaction as primary (and writing as
>>> secondary), then natural languages exist in three modalities.
>>>
>>> -Spoken English is a language in the auditory-oral modality.
>>>
>>> -British Sign Language (BSL) is a language in the visual-gestural
>>> modality.
>>>
>>> -Pro-tactile American Sign Language is variety of a language in the
>>> tactile-gestural modality.
>>>
>>> Some deaf people are born with Ushers Syndrome, which means they lose
>>> their vision over time, and they may shift from one modality to another
>>> (e.g., from visual-gestural ASL to Pro-tactile ASL) as their primary form
>>> of face-to-face communication. The Bay Islands community mentioned below is
>>> a multi-generational community of deaf people with Ushers Syndrome.
>>>
>>> Of course, English is often accompanied by head movements (e.g.,
>>> nodding, shaking) and manual co-speech gestures in face-to-face
>>> communication, so it includes visual-gestural aspects as well. The vocal
>>> tract, head, and hands are all different channels used in multimodal
>>> communication.
>>>
>>> BSL is primarily in the visual-gestural modality, but it is also
>>> multi-channel: using manual signs, head movements, and mouth actions, for
>>> example. Some bimodal-bilinguals may combine aspects of spoken English and
>>> BSL together as a form of multimodal communication.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Adam
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Adam Schembri (he/him), PhD
>>>
>>> Professor of Linguistics
>>>
>>> Department of English Language and Linguistics
>>>
>>> Frankland Building, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK.
>>>
>>> a.schembri at bham.ac.uk
>>>
>>> Twitter: @AdamCSchembri
>>>
>>> [image: /Users/schembra/Desktop/Screenshot 2021-02-07 at 14.49.24.png][image:
>>> signature_2040405135]
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From: *Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf
>>> of "francoise.rose at univ-lyon2.fr" <francoise.rose at univ-lyon2.fr>
>>> *Date: *Friday, 28 January 2022 at 14:26
>>> *To: *"rgiomi at campus.ul.pt" <rgiomi at campus.ul.pt>, Harald Hammarström <
>>> harald at bombo.se>
>>> *Cc: *LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> *Subject: *Re: [Lingtyp] Are there (can there be?) more than two
>>> modalities?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> note that the whistled modality (and also drummed, …) is not of the same
>>> type, as it is a rendering of the oral language.
>>>
>>> Françoise
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *De :* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> *De la part
>>> de* Riccardo Giomi
>>> *Envoyé :* vendredi 28 janvier 2022 14:51
>>> *À :* Harald Hammarström <harald at bombo.se>
>>> *Cc :* LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> *Objet :* Re: [Lingtyp] Are there (can there be?) more than two
>>> modalities?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear Ian, dear all,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I confess I had never thought about this before, but how about a
>>> taxonomy of modalities such as the following:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *↓Sensory channel / Mode→*
>>>
>>> *Verbal*
>>>
>>> *Graphic*
>>>
>>> *Acoustic*
>>>
>>> Speaking, Whistling, others?
>>>
>>> ―
>>>
>>> *Visual*
>>>
>>> Signing
>>>
>>> Writing, Drawings
>>>
>>> *Tactile*
>>>
>>> Tactile signing
>>>
>>> Braille
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> As many of you probably know, there have been various attempts to work
>>> out a graphic system for the representation of signed languages of the type
>>> I -- somewhat sloppily -- refer to as 'drawings', but I am not aware of any
>>> really established convention (probably my ignorance). 'Verbal' is also a
>>> very tentative, and perhaps inaccurate term, but off the top of my head I
>>> cannot think of a better definition. Finally, the 'others?' in the
>>> acoustic/verbal cell refers to Daniel Everett's work on Pirahã, a language
>>> for which the author has documented three other modes besides speaking and
>>> whistling (namely yelling, humming and singing), each with its own,
>>> distinct phonetics.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Everett, Daniel. 1985. Syllable weight, sloppy phonemes, and channels in
>>> Pirahã discourse. In Mary Niepokuj, Deborah Feder, Vassiliki Nikiforidou,
>>> and Mary Van Clay (eds.), *Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting
>>> of the Berkeley Linguistics Society*, 408-416. California: Berkeley
>>> Linguistics Society.
>>>
>>> O'Neill, Gareth. 2014. Humming, whistling, singing, and yelling in
>>> Pirahã: Context and channels of communication in FDG. In Núria Alturo,
>>> Evelien Keizer & Llúis Payrató (eds.), *The interaction between context
>>> and grammar in Functional Discourse Grammar. * Special issue of
>>> *Pragmatics* 24(2): 349–375.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Riccardo
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Harald Hammarström <harald at bombo.se> escreveu no dia sexta, 28/01/2022
>>> à(s) 01:54:
>>>
>>> Hi Ian! There may be a third modality, tactile, attested on the Bay
>>>
>>> Islands off the Honduran coast where a critical mass of deaf-blind
>>>
>>> people existed for perhaps three generations. If I understood it
>>> correctly,
>>>
>>> there's a hereditary disease which causes deafness at birth and
>>> (gradually)
>>>
>>> blindness later in life. So this group developed their own rural sign
>>>
>>> language (Bay Islands Sign Language aka French Harbour Sign Language)
>>>
>>> which was continued in a tactile modality for those of age. While there
>>>
>>> is little to no documentation on the actual signs in sign or tactile
>>>
>>> modality, it seems clear that it is a sign language turned tactile, not
>>>
>>> a tactile language developed independently of the other modalities. As
>>> such
>>>
>>> it is perhaps not very different from most (all?) sign languages which
>>> can
>>>
>>> be used in a tactile way optionally (e.g., in the dark), without losing
>>> too
>>>
>>> much efficiency. The only difference is that this was possibly used by
>>>
>>> a community (albeit small) as their main and only means of communication,
>>>
>>> and as far as I know such a congregation of deaf-blind people is attested
>>>
>>> nowhere else, and might never happen again. The little information
>>>
>>> available on the tactile language is due to Ali & Braithwaite (2021) but
>>>
>>> I understand the genetic background to the disease has been researched
>>>
>>> for much longer.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Of course, I would speculate that if there were a community of humans
>>>
>>> who, for some reasons, could not use speech/sign/touch they would develop
>>>
>>> a smell language or a taste language (assuming they could physically
>>>
>>> produce the required amount of signals at will), so there could be all
>>>
>>> five modalities corresponding to our senses.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> all the best, H
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Ali, Kristian & Ben Braithwaite. (2021) Bay Islands Sign Language: A
>>>
>>> Sociolinguistic Sketch. In Olivier Le Guen, Josefina Safar & Marie
>>>
>>> Coppola (eds.), Emerging Sign Languages of the Americas (Sign Language
>>>
>>> Typology [SLT] 9), 435-438. Berlin: DeGruyter Mouton.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Pada tanggal Jum, 28 Jan 2022 pukul 00.15 JOO, Ian [Student] <
>>> ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk> menulis:
>>>
>>> Dear typologists,
>>>
>>> about a year ago, there was a discussion on whether writing is a
>>> linguistic modality of its own right, like spoken or signed modalities.
>>> Although the majority opinion is that writing is simply a reflection of
>>> the spoken modality and not a modality by itself, I argued that written
>>> modality can be independent, based on several factors:
>>>
>>>    - The deaf people can learn and write written languages without
>>>    exposure to its spoken form;
>>>    - Some parts of the written modality are untranslatable to speech
>>>    (such as the bullets I am using here);
>>>    - There are languages that have been used almost exclusively in
>>>    written form, such as Classical Chinese, which is incomprehensible when
>>>    read aloud in any spoken language (other than perhaps Old Chinese).
>>>
>>> David Gil disagreed and argued that even if deaf person writes a written
>>> language, they are still in some sense communicating in a spoken language,
>>> just in its written form.
>>> For now, let's leave that discussion aside, and say that written
>>> modality is not an independent modality.
>>> The question I would like to ask is: Are there any other linguistic
>>> modalities? Or do we have only two - signed and spoken?
>>> If we have only two modalities, then is it hypothetically possible to
>>> have other modalities?
>>> Or are the two modalities biologically ingrained in our brains, and we
>>> can only truly acquire a language in either signed or spoken form?
>>> To me this seems to be a critical question regarding how we understand
>>> human language, yet to my knowledge, it has been seldom discussed. So I
>>> would appreciate your opinion on this issue.
>>>
>>>
>>> From Uppsala,
>>>
>>> Ian
>>>
>>> [image: Image removed by sender.]
>>>
>>>
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> --
> David Gil
>
> Senior Scientist (Associate)
> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
>
> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
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