Smith, S., & Cormier, K. (under review). In or out? Spatial scale and enactment in narratives of native and non-native
signing deaf children acquiring British Sign Language. (submitted 15 September 2012)
In or out? Spatial scale and enactment in narratives of native and non-native signing deaf
children acquiring British Sign Language
Sandra Smitha and Kearsy Cormierb
a
b
Centre for Deaf Studies, University of Bristol
Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, University College London
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Kearsy Cormier
Deafness, Cognition & Language Research Centre
University College London
49 Gordon Square
London WC1H 0PD
England
k.cormier@ucl.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)20 7679 8674
Fax: +44 (0)20 7679 8691
Co-author email address:
sandra.d.smith@bristol.ac.uk
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Funding
This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain
[119360 to K.C. and S.S.]; and the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain
[RES-620-28-6001 and RES-620-28-6002], Deafness, Cognition and Language Research
Centre (DCAL).
Acknowledgements
We thank Zed Sevcikova and Katherine Mumford for assistance in coding the data presented
here, and to Natalie Smith for acting as model in the figures showing examples from the data.
Thanks to Dr. Susan Gregory for allowing these data to be used for SS’s Postgraduate
Diploma in Social Science dissertation project at the Centre for Deaf Studies, University of
Bristol (1995) and to Prof. Jim Kyle for supervising that project. Thanks especially to the
deaf children (and their teachers and parents) who took part in this project.
Author references removed for anonymity
Cormier, K., Quinto-Pozos, D., Sevcikova, Z., & Schembri, A. (in press). Lexicalisation and
de-lexicalisation processes in sign languages: Comparing depicting constructions and
viewpoint gestures. Language and Communication.
Cormier, K., Smith, S., & Sevcikova, Z. (under review). Predicate structures and embodiment
in the representation of action in British Sign Language: Evidence from deaf children
and adults.
Cormier, K., Smith, S., & Zwets, M. (under review). Framing constructed action in British
Sign Language narratives.
2
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
In or out? Spatial scale and enactment in narratives of native and non-native signing deaf
children acquiring British Sign Language
Abstract
Age of sign language acquisition effects have been found at various levels of linguistic
structure, and also in cognitive abilities such as perspective taking. The current study
investigates two aspects of perspective taking in BSL narratives by 4 deaf native signing
children and 4 non-native signing children ages 8-10, via use of spatial scale – character
(large) scale vs. observer (small) scale - and enactment (i.e. constructed action). Results show
that all children from both groups use constructed action in character space (i.e. fully “in” the
character space); this points to the primacy of enactment in all children early in development.
Two deaf children from hearing families used observer scale with constructed action, but no
deaf children from deaf families did. Likewise, three deaf children from deaf families used
character scale without constructed action, but no deaf children from hearing families did.
The differences between the two groups suggest that complex uses of perspective taking
require very early exposure to a sign language.
Keywords: scale, perspective, character, observer, constructed action
In or out? Use of spatial scale and enactment in narratives of native and non-native signing
deaf children acquiring British Sign Language
1. Introduction
The vast majority of research on sign language development in deaf children has been
on deaf children from deaf families – i.e. children who are acquiring a sign language as a
native language (Anderson & Reilly, 2002; Emmorey & Reilly, 1998; Harris, Clibbens,
Chasin, & Tibbitts, 1989; Maestas y Moores, 1980; Schick, 1987; Supalla, 1982). This is for
3
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
a good reason – we need to have an understanding of how native acquisition works before
considering other developmental situations. However, the fact is that 90-95% of deaf children
are born to hearing families, most of whom do not sign (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004). Age of
sign language acquisition varies enormously, with some deaf children from hearing families
learning to sign when they start school, some later in childhood, some later in life, and some
not at all. These highly variable and unusual language transmission patterns with sign
languages provide a testing ground for notions about a critical or sensitive period for
language. A range of studies have shown clear age of acquisition effects in adult signers, such
that the earlier a sign language is learned, the better the linguistic performance later in life,
both in production and in perception (see Mayberry, 2010 for a review).
Fewer studies have examined critical period effects in deaf children, but some
differences have been found between deaf children in deaf families and deaf children in
hearing families, in both linguistic and cognitive abilities. For example, Galvan (1989) found
differences between native and non-native signing deaf children between ages 3 and 9 in use
of American Sign Language (ASL) morphology. Also, Courtin (2000) found that deaf
children from deaf families between ages 5 and 8 scored significantly higher on false belief
tasks than deaf children from hearing families within the same age range, suggesting that
theory of mind is also affected by age of sign language acquisition. Furthermore, it appears
that some differences between native and non-native signers might begin to emerge as early
as infancy, partly due to interaction with deaf versus hearing parents. For instance, studies
have shown that deaf parents interacting with their deaf children use a variety of strategies to
establish and maintain joint attention with their infants (Harris et al., 1989; Maestas y
Moores, 1980) and these patterns differ between deaf mothers and hearing mothers of deaf
children (Harris & Mohay, 1997; Kyle, Ackerman, & Woll, 1987; Waxman & Spencer,
1997).
4
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
In the current study, we investigate the use of spatial scale and enactment (via
constructed action) in narratives of deaf children aged 8-10 using British Sign Language
(BSL). We compare the use of these devices in four deaf children from deaf families
acquiring BSL natively, and four deaf children from hearing families with varying degrees of
sign language exposure at home. All children attend a bilingual school where BSL and
English are used. Given that a wide range of age of acquisition effects that have been found
at various levels in adults, and given the various differences in acquisition of theory of mind
in native vs. non-native signing children and eyegaze patterns used by deaf and hearing
parents, we expect to find some differences in the combined use of spatial perspective and
enactment in native vs. non-native signing children’s BSL narratives.
2. Background
2.1. Spatial scale
Signers use the space in front of them in a variety of communicative ways. The most
commonly discussed split is between a large scale use of space (where the signer uses the
space as if he/she were interacting with people/objects on a real-world scale), and a small
scale use of space (where the signer uses his/her hand to represent all or part of an entity on a
small scale in front of the body). Some researchers also distinguish other types of space such
as the space used for pointing, including pronominal signs and locative points (Liddell, 2003;
Poizner, Klima, & Bellugi, 1987), and the space that is used for phonological purposes but
not necessarily in any meaningful way, particularly with lexical signs (Emmorey, 2002;
Poizner et al., 1987). Other terminology for these various uses of space (and related
perspectives) are shown in Table 1. For the purposes of the current study, we are interested in
children’s use of large-scale space on the one hand (what we refer to as character scale)
5
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
versus the use of small-scale space, pointing space and non-locative space on the other.
Therefore we combine the latter three uses of space into observer scale.
TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE
Large-scale and small-scale uses of space are often described in terms of the
prototypical depicting constructions that signers tend to use with each. Depicting
constructions are predicates of location, motion, and/or handling and are considered to be part
of the productive lexicon which consists of constructions which are highly variable and
weakly lexicalised (Brennan, 1992, 1994; Author, in press). Small-scale space is typically
associated with entity constructions which depict location and/motion of all or part of an
entity, as shown in Figure 1. Large-scale space is typically associated with handling
constructions which depict handling or manipulation of an object, as shown in Figure 2.
FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE
FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE
Although these patterns are prototypical, other patterns may occur as well. Entity
constructions are often used with large-scale space (e.g., Aarons & Morgan, 2003; Dudis,
2004; Metzger, 1995; Perniss & Ozyurek, 2008; Perniss et al., 2007; Quinto-Pozos, 2007;
Sallandre, 2007; Sallandre & Cuxac, 2002; Slobin et al., 2003) which lends to a mixing of
perspectives, with the signer’s body representing a referent on a large scale, and the signer’s
hand representing the same (or a different) referent on a small scale, as shown below in
Figure 4. The opposite pattern – i.e. use of handling constructions in small-scale space – has
6
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
been documented for only two sign languages (German Sign Language and Turkish Sign
Language) and appears to be relatively infrequent (Perniss & Ozyurek, 2008).
Perniss and Ozyurek (2008) also describe another even less typical pattern with scale
and perspective which involves a fusion of character perspective and observer perspective –
such that the signing space in front of the signer is mapped onto two different perspectives at
once. Figure 3a shows a Turkish Sign Language signer describing a cartoon mouse handling
a pan and flipping a pancake within the pan repeatedly (which the action occurring directly
up and down at the signer’s saggital axis). On an up swing, the direction of the movement
then changes laterally so that the motion and location of the falling pancake is depicted as
falling toward the signer’s left side, and the signer looks down at her left side. From the
perspective of the mouse in the cartoon, the pancake falls directly in front of him. As a
viewer watching the cartoon, the mouse is on the right side of the screen, and the pancake on
the left, as shown in Figure 3b. Thus this signer is simultaneously depicting the character’s
perspective (i.e. the signer’s head and torso are mapped onto the mouse), and an observer’s
perspective (i.e. her own perspective as she is watching the cartoon). Perniss and Ozyurek
note that this type of fused construction only occurred in their Turkish Sign Language data
(and rarely), and did not occur at all in their German Sign Language data.
FIGURE 3A ABOUT HERE
FIGURE 3B ABOUT HERE
2.2. Constructed action
Another feature that has been noted to be particularly common with the use of largescale space is constructed action (Dudis, 2004; Metzger, 1995) – i.e. the use of the signer’s
head, face, torso, arms and/or hands to directly represent the same articulator(s) of a referent.
7
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Constructed action is certainly not limited to large-scale space, however, and may be used
concurrently with any other type of space, including small-scale space - e.g., where an entity
construction (small-scale space) is used simultaneously with constructed action (large-scale
space). Constructed action may also be used simultaneously with pointing or non-locative
space (de Beuzeville, Johnston, & Schembri, 2009; Dudis, 2004; Emmorey & Reilly, 1998;
Metzger, 1995; Reilly, 2000). However, few studies have explicitly investigated the use of
spatial scale with the use of constructed action.
Although large-scale space is typically associated with handling constructions, it is
also possible for signers to represent the arms and/or hands of a referent without any
representation of handling or manipulation of objects. For example, Figure 4 shows an
example of constructed action where the signer is enacting a bear about to attack someone.
This is an overt example of constructed action, where all visible articulators (head, face,
arms, hands, torso) are meant to map onto the equivalent articulators of the bear.
FIGURE 4 ABOUT HERE
Many researchers seem to agree that a change or a break in eyegaze is the main and
obligatory marker of CA in sign languages (Kegl, 1985; Loew, 1984; Padden, 1986).
Although shift in eyegaze is indeed seen by many as the most prominent marker of
constructed action, some have claimed that such shift in eyegaze is optional, and that other
markers such as facial expression and/or head/body position may mark constructed action
without break in eyegaze (Metzger, 1995; Pyers & Senghas, 2007). According to Padden
(Padden, 1986), both eyegaze and facial expression determine constructed action (which she
refers to as role shifting) with a body position change as optional.i
8
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
2.3. Space rotation and perspective shift
Although Padden (1986) notes that a change in body position to mark role shift is
optional, this body shift has traditionally been considered to be a primary (and noticeable)
marker of constructed action (or role shift) within sign languages, so much so that this is
often taught to hearing students learning sign language (Lentz, 1986). This change in body
position involves rotating the torso one direction to represent one role, and then rotating the
torso the other direction to represent another role. Padden (1986) notes that this is particularly
common when representing dialogue between two people. However, Janzen (2004) argues
that such shifts in body position need not occur, and that a shift in perspective can be
achieved (with or without constructed action) by using the signing space in a way such that
the space is used (and understood) relative to the signer’s body. Although Janzen (2004)
notes that eyegaze and other non-manual features are used commonly (and in complex ways)
throughout adult signers’ narratives for the purposes of indicating a particular role, it is the
use of space in a particular way, rather than the use of these non-manual features, that mark
that the signer is taking on a given role: “…given… the fact that eye gaze is frequently
directed toward the addressee during the articulation of these clauses, it is clear that eye gaze
directed toward various loci around the space is not the sole determinant of perspective and
nor therefore perspective shifts” (pg. 163).
2.4. Spatial scale, constructed action and narrative skills in deaf children
Deaf children start using large-scale space for the purposes of enactment as early as 23 years of age (Loew, 1984; Schick, 2006).ii Slobin et al. (2003) report that the earliest uses
of depicting constructions, including handling constructions, are used before age 3 and are
heavily gestural with overt use of facial expressions and body movements. The use of entity
constructions within small-scale space starts around the same age (2-3 years) but progresses
slowly. Furthermore, Slobin et al. (2003) suggest that after an early phase of fairly successful
9
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
mastery, there is a prolonged phase of learning to use these constructions as a flexible
discourse tool. Some studies have shown that by age 8, depicting constructions have not yet
been fully mastered (de Beuzeville, 2006; Schick, 1987, 1990). Even by age 12, Slobin et al.
(2003) claim, children still struggle with various discourse and pragmatic functions of
depicting constructions in small-scale and large-scale space.
While children are developing a mastery of spatial scale, they are also developing
narrative skills. Morgan (2002, 2006) studied BSL narratives of deaf children (native signers
and early learners who all used BSL at home and in school) between ages 4;3 and 13;4 telling
the ‘frog story’ (Frog Where Are You?, Mercer Mayer). Morgan observed that at the earliest
stage (ages 4-6), the children had difficulty sequencing co-occurring events. They were able
to use different types of constructions and different types of space, but not cohesively
throughout the narrative. At the latest stage (ages 11-13), the children’s narratives were not
yet as complex and cohesive as adults, but they were able to combine the use of large scale
and small scale space simultaneously, and they were able to “flashback” in the narrative to
refer to earlier episodes and then jump back ahead, as adult signers do. At the middle stage
(ages 7-10), children were able to include relevant information about both characters and to
switch reference between them, but they still used primarily sequential strategies for telling
the narrative. In terms of development of sequential and simultaneous organisation, and also
gradual development of both linguistic and gestural devices, these stages are comparable to
narrative development in hearing children (Colletta, 2009).
3. Research questions
The general research question for the current study is: How do deaf children at ages 810 with different signing backgrounds combine spatial scale and constructed action in BSL
narratives? In particular, we compare the use of character scale (i.e. large-scale space, where
10
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
the signer can be considered ‘in’ the story space) and observer scale (small-scale space,
where the signer can be considered ‘out’ of the story space), as described in §2.1, and the use
of constructed action in deaf children from deaf families (native signers) and deaf children
from hearing families (early learners).
Given previous research, we expect that native and non-native signing children will
use character scale with constructed action. Additionally we expect that native and non-native
signing children will use observer scale without constructed action. As noted above, these
patterns have been documented in both native and non-native signing children around ages 23 years (Schick, 2006; Slobin et al., 2003). We leave open the question of whether we may
find the use of small-scale space with constructed action, or large-scale space without
constructed action. The former has been noted to be rare in adult signers of German Sign
Language and infrequent in adult signers of Turkish Sign Language (Perniss & Ozyurek,
2008). The latter has not been explicitly documented or discussed in any detail in the sign
language literature, though as noted above, Janzen (2004) does suggest that the use of
character scale without constructed action is possible.
4. Method
4.1. Participants
Participants in this study include a total of 8 profoundly deaf children: 4 deaf children from
deaf families and 4 deaf children from hearing families, as shown in Table 2. Four of the
children (DD) are from deaf families with deaf parents. The generations of deafness in each
family varied from one generation (deaf parents but hearing grandparents) to four generations
(deaf great grandparents). All four children attended a school for the deaf with a bilingual
policy – i.e. where BSL was used in the classroom alongside written English. Four of the
children (DH) are from hearing families with no other deaf members of the family. Two of
11
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
the children had some (minimal) signing input from their families but attended a deaf unit
within a hearing school with a bilingual policy with BSL used in the classroom so they did
have daily signing input at school starting from around age 5. The other two children are
from single parent households but both mothers have good signing skills (one with a
qualification as a BSL/English interpreter). No other members of their families could sign.
One of the DH children attended a deaf school with a bilingual policy and the other three
attended a deaf unit within a hearing school with a bilingual policy.
TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE
4.2. Stimulus
Narratives were elicited from the children using a Pink Panther cartoon clip called
“Keep our Forests Pink”. This cartoon has no spoken dialogue. The full length of the clip that
was shown is 2.53 minutes. The current study focuses on the part of the children’s narratives
that covered one particular 45-second excerpt from the cartoon. In this 45-second excerpt, a
man comes out of a tent holding an axe and sees a signpost that says “NO OPEN FIRES”.
The man walks up to the signpost and chops it down. While the man is busy, a dog comes out
from behind the trees. As the dog approaches, he sees that the man has started a fire using the
wood from the signpost. The dog happily curls up in front of the fire, and the man leaves.
The Pink Panther then arrives, wearing a park ranger hat. Alarmed by the fire, he runs off to
get some water, comes back on the scene with a bucket of water and pours it on the fire,
putting it out. This wakes up the sleeping dog. The Pink Panther, satisfied that he has done
his duty, walks off the scene calmly. The man then comes back out of the tent, smiling and
carrying a frying pan, and walks toward the fire (not realising that it had been put out). The
dog smiles, pleased to see the man with the frying pan. The man stops when he sees the
12
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
dampened fire and picks up a dripping stick from the remains of the fire. The dog is still
grinning and wagging his tail. The man, dropping the stick, then points accusingly at the dog,
as if blaming him for putting out the fire. The dog looks back with an innocent expression
and shakes his head.
Importantly, from the perspective of the viewer, all of the primary movements of the
characters within the cartoon (i.e. entering and leaving the scene) are from right to left or
from left to right of the screen.
4.3. Task
The children met one at a time with the researcher, Author, a Deaf native signer of
BSL with many years of experience working with deaf children. The children were told they
would be watching a cartoon on video and that the researcher had never seen the cartoon
before. They were to watch the video and remember it so they could explain it to the
researcher. They were told they would have the chance to watch the clip again. The child
would watch the cartoon with either the mother or the father (if at the child’s home) or with a
colleague (if at the child’s school) whilst the researcher left the room or read a book in
another part of the room. After the second viewing, each child then described the cartoon to
the researcher. The researcher showed appropriate interest in the story and if anything was
unclear the child was questioned.
4.4. Coding
All narratives were annotated by the first author (XX) using the ELAN multimedia
annotation tool (Wittenburg, Brugman, Russel, Klassmann, & Sloetjes, 2006). Each child’s
narrative was first glossed in English using two gloss tiers, one for the dominant hand and
one for the non-dominant hand. Additionally, narratives were coded for spatial scale and
constructed action on another tier. Figure 5 shows an example screenshot of the tiers used for
13
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
coding. The narratives also coded by two research assistants who were given the coding
criteria described below and asked to comment on any coding that they thought did not
follow the coding guidelines: one research assistant commented on all 8 child narratives, and
a second research assistant independently commented on 4 of those 8 narratives. Some
annotations were changed based on these comments; for others, disagreements were resolved.
FIGURE 5 ABOUT HERE
4.4.1. Scale/CA tier. On the scale/CA tier, there were four different options: character scale
with constructed action, character scale without constructed action, observer scale with
constructed action, and observer scale without constructed action. We define constructed
action as the use of one or more manual or non-manual articulators to represent the actions,
thoughts, feelings or attitudes of a referent. This was operationalised via a dependency
between articulators used for constructed action and the role(s) represented by those
articulators (Author, under review(a); Author, under review(b)). That is, if it was suspected
that one or more articulators (e.g. eyegaze, face, head, torso, arms, hands) were being used
for constructed action (via native signer intuition), one or more character roles needed to be
attributed to those articulators. Likewise, if it was suspected that one or more character roles
was being represented (via native signer intuition), then one or more articulators needed to be
identified as the marker(s) of that constructed action. In all cases, we define entity
constructions as any construction where the hand represents an entity in order to describe
location and/or motion of that referent.
1. Character scale with CA (CSCA) was coded when the child was using constructed
action and the space surrounding the child was used on a real-world scale as if the
child was taking on the role of that referent. Character scale with CA could occur
14
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
alone without any lexical signs or depicting constructions (as in Figure 6), or it could
include simultaneous use of lexical signs, pointing signs, entity constructions (as in
Figure 4 or 5) or handling constructions (as in Figure 2).
2. Observer scale with CA (OSCA) was coded where the child was using constructed
action and the signing space in front of the child was not used on a real-world scale –
i.e. if the space were used on a small scale using entity constructions (as in Figure 1,
except with constructed action), or use of space for articulation of lexical signs.
3. Observer scale without CA (OSnoCA) was coded when the child was taking on the
perspective of an observer, using the signing space for lexical signs and/or partly
lexical constructions such as entity constructions to describe events, with no evidence
of co-occurring constructed action.
4. Character scale without CA (CSnoCA) was coded when the child was taking on the
perspective of an observer using entity classifier constructions to represent referent(s)
in the signing space relative to his/her own body as another referent, with no evidence
of co-occuring constructed action.
4.4.2. Segmentation of scale/CA annotations. Segmentation of annotations for scale/CA
proceeded as follows. From the beginning of the narrative, an annotation for scale/CA was
begun, with one of the four values above. The end of this annotation was considered to be
when there was a change in scale/CA (e.g. from CSCA to OSnoCA or from CSnoCA to
CSCA), or when there was a change in role (e.g. from CSCA representing the Pink Panther to
CSCA representing the dog), or when there was a change in subject (e.g. from OSnoCA with
the man as the subject to OSnoCA with the Pink Panther as the subject).iii
3. Results
Here we report the frequencies of each of the 4 possible combinations of spatial scale and
constructed action, within each group of children (DD and DH), as shown in Table 3. Table 4
15
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
summarises which combinations of spatial scale and constructed action occurred (or did not
occur) in each group. Below we go through each combination of spatial scale and
constructions action in turn.
TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE
TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE
5.1. Character scale with constructed action (CSCA)
Character scale with constructed action was used by all children from both groups.
Figure 6 replicates DH3 representing the man looking down, putting the wood into a pile
before lighting it up with matches.iv
FIGURE 6 ABOUT HERE
All of the children produced tokens of CSCA similar to these, for these events and for
others within the cartoon. This is hardly surprising, given that these enacting constructions
have been documented in deaf children as early as 2-3 years of age, and that hearing children
produce similar enacting gestures along with their speech by a similar age, as noted above in
§2.4. The examples given here show some fairly overt tokens of constructed action within
character scale, such that the head, face, torso, arms and hands all appear active as markers of
constructed action. More subtle uses of constructed action within character scale such as use
of only eyegaze or facial expression were also identified. For example, Figure 7 replicates
DD4 producing the lexical sign WALK, with a slight break in eyegaze with the addressee
16
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
(who was just next to the camera), and with the head and face slightly enacting the Pink
Panther within the cartoon.
FIGURE 7 ABOUT HERE
5.2. Observer scale without constructed action (OSnoCA)
Observer scale without constructed action was also used by all children in all groups.
This was used for a variety of purposes, including establishment of subject and object
arguments via lexical noun signs as well as entity constructions without CA (as shown above
in Figure 1 and below in Figure 8). In Figure 8, the child represents two entity constructions,
one on each arm/hand, to represent the dog in the story and a tree. This child, a deaf child
from a hearing family (DH3), had some difficulty negotiating his left hand around his upright
right arm when showing that the dog comes around from behind the tree.
FIGURE 8 ABOUT HERE
5.3. Observer scale with constructed action (OSCA)
The use of observer scale with constructed action occurred much less frequently than
CSCA or OSnoCA. In fact, we only found 4 tokens of OSCA, from two deaf children from
hearing families (DH2 and DH4). Three tokens of OSCA occurred in DH2’s narrative after
he has described the Pink Panther throwing water on the fire and leaving the scene. In the
cartoon, the Pink Panther simply leaves the scene and does not return (presumably he has left
the scene entirely). In DH4’s narrative, he uses CA to “become” the Pink Panther hiding
behind a tree (an event which not actually occur in the cartoon), with simultaneous use of his
right arm representing a tree (as an entity construction, in observer scale), and use of his head
17
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
and shoulders hunched down behind his upright forearm (i.e. constructed action representing
someone, presumably the Pink Panther, hiding behind the tree). Simultaneously, with his left
hand, with his arm outstretched, he produces an entity construction representing someone
coming on to the scene, from left to right, as shown in Figure 9. During his narrative, DH4
produces the construction shown in Figure 9, then signs MAN with his left hand, then repeats
Figure 9. Then still with his arm outstretched, in the same location where he shows the man
walking on the scene with an entity construction, he also signs with his left hand FIRE STOP
(i.e. ‘the fire went out’). Thus he is fusing two different scales here: character scale via CA
representing someone behind a tree hiding, and also observer scale, via the entity
construction and the placement of his lexical signs in the signing space well in front of him,
from the child’s own perspective as viewer of the cartoon.
FIGURE 9 ABOUT HERE
During DH2’s narrative he does not mention the Pink Panther or the fire being
extinguished. When asked what happened to the fire, DH2 says that he doesn’t know, that
maybe someone poured water on it. (See §5.5 for more discussion of this.) When asked who
put out the fire, he says he doesn’t know and then ME SEE MAN followed by the directional
verb LOOK with constructed action. Specifically, DH2 signs LOOK which he moves from
left to right (as shown in Figure 10), indicating that someone is watching the man walk from
left to right as he comes out of the tent. This is accompanied by simultaneous constructed
action with his head and eyegaze (both of which follow the path of LOOK from left to right),
a representation of the child himself as viewer of the cartoon casually watching the man walk
past on the screen.
FIGURE 10 ABOUT HERE
18
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Importantly, the direction of DH4’s entity construction representing the man walking
out of the tent was from the left to the right of DH4’s signing space, and likewise DH2’s
directional verb LOOK indicating someone watching the man walking from the tent also
moved from his left to his right. These cues indicate that both children were representing the
spatial layout of the scene as an observer, since the movement of the man as viewed by the
child as an observer is from the left to right, while the movement of the man from the
perspective of anyone hiding behind the tree would have been right to left, and from the
perspective of the dog the man would have been approaching from in front.
5.4. Character scale with no constructed action (CSnoCA)
The use of character scale with no constructed action was also not very frequent. This
combination of scale and CA was found only in the deaf children from deaf families, and was
identifiable by the use of entity constructions depicting the movement of the characters in the
cartoon forwards and backwards. Because the movement of the characters as viewed by the
child on screen was mainly left to right or right to left, the fact that these children were using
entity constructions forwards and backwards suggests that they were taking on a character
perspective – i.e. that the position and the movement of the entity constructions was meant to
be with respect to their own (imagined) position within the story, rather than representations
of the spatial layout as an external observer of the scene (cf. OSCA above). These examples
(as shown in Figure 11) all lacked constructed action, showing that these children were able
to position themselves in the story without needing to embody the characters at all. This may
be due to the importance of location and motion in these narratives – i.e. showing how and
where the different characters came onto and left the scene. For example, when DD4 has
described how the Pink Panther put the fire out and then left the scene, she then signs MAN
19
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
and then an entity construction moving forward, representing the man coming out of the tent
and back on the scene, as shown in Figure 11.
In these cases it appears that the children focused on showing these arrivals and
departures of characters by assuming the position of a character already on the scene.
Importantly, because they are not using constructed action, the only cue to their assuming this
position is the use of space of the entity constructions around them, relative to their own
position. Three of the 4 DD children used this type of construction; none of the DH children
did.
FIGURE 11 ABOUT HERE
5.5 Individual patterns
There was some individual variation in the use of scale and CA across all children.
Each of the DD children used both CSCA and OSnoCA in their narratives. DD2 used only
CSCA and OSnoCA – i.e. fully “in” as character or fully “out” as narrator. The remaining
DD children (i.e. DD1, DD3, and DD4) additionally used CSnoCA, with clear transitions
between CSnoCA and CSCA, or between CSnoCA and OSnoCA. For example, immediately
after the token of CSnoCA shown in Figure 15, DD4, then goes fully “into” character as the
man (CSCA) holding the saucepan. Likewise DD1 uses CSnoCA to show the man leaving
the scene then clearly transitions into OSnoCA to explain as narrator that the man is going
into the tent to fetch his frying pan.
Within the DH children, all of them used CSCA. DH1 used CSCA only, and thus was
fully “in” character during his whole narrative (including walking around the room even
though he began seated). The remaining DH children used CSCA and OSnoCA, and two of
them also used OSCA (which none of the DD children did).
20
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
DH2’s narrative was notable in that he did not mention the Pink Panther at all. He
described the man coming on the scene, cutting down the signpost, making the fire, and the
dog being happy. But rather than saying that the man left and the Pink Panther arrived and
extinguished the fire, he then skipped ahead to the man scolding the dog. When asked how
the fire was extinguished, DH2 said that he didn’t know and that perhaps someone poured
water on it. When asked who might have done that, he said that he didn’t know and then
explained how he had seen the man walk across the screen (using the directional verb LOOK
as described in §5.3). The man in the cartoon does not know who put the fire out, so it is
interesting that DH2 also claims to not know how the fire was put out.
When describing the dog waking up after the fire has been put out, DH3 uses
constructed action to represent the dog waking up surprised. While keeping one hand held as
the dog’s paw, he then goes on to sign WHAT-FOR BAD BEHAVE (“why this bad
behaviour?”), with his head and eyegaze directed downward. Both the scolding content of the
lexical signs WHAT-FOR BAD BEHAVE as well as the downward direction of his head and
eyegaze should represent the Pink Panther, and yet his non-dominant hand is kept as the dog
throughout this stretch of CA.
It may be possible that the use of OSCA in DH2 and DH4 is linked to the fact that
they had little if any signing exposure at home, compared to DH1 and DH3 whose mothers
both signed with them at home (cf. Table 2). However, this does not mean that DH1 and DH3
were more native-like in their use of scale and CA, given that DH1’s narrative was entirely in
CSCA, and DH3’s narrative included some conflicting uses of constructed action.
6. Discussion
As we initially hypothesised, the use of CSCA and OSnoCA was similar for both
groups of children – i.e. deaf children from deaf families (DD) and deaf children from
21
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
hearing families (DH). This is consistent with the early use of enactment and entity
constructions reported in deaf children as early as 2-3 years of age (Loew, 1984; Schick,
1987; Slobin et al., 2003; Supalla, 1982). It seems that by ages 8-10 deaf children have
mastered these combinations of CA and perspective well enough that there are no differences
in frequency in narratives between native and non-native signing children. This is true even
though two of the non-native signing children had little or no exposure to BSL until they
started school at age 5. This is not surprising if we consider that hearing children have also
been found use visible forms of enactment very early in their gestures (McNeill, 1992). In our
initial hypotheses, we left open the question of whether we may find small-scale space with
constructed action (OSCA) or large-scale space without constructed action (CSnoCA).
Interestingly we found opposing patterns with these two uses of spatial scale and constructed
action. That is, only deaf children from deaf families used CSnoCA (no deaf children from
hearing families did), while only deaf children from hearing families used OSCA (no deaf
children from deaf families did).
The tokens of OSCA identified in the current study were identified only in the DH
children, not in the DD children. Furthermore, these tokens seem odd for an adult signer of
BSL. These OSCA tokens are very similar to the “fused” perspective constructions identified
by Perniss and Ozyurek (2008). These “fused” constructions were found to be rare in the
Turkish Sign Language (TID) data and did not occur at all in their German Sign Language
(DGS) data. Perniss and Ozyurek argue that this difference may be due to language-specific
patterns, such that different sign languages might impose different constraints on the use of
space and perspective. Given these few tokens of OSCA that have occurred in the current
study, there may be a few other explanations for Perniss and Ozyurek’s findings. One may be
the age of acquisition of their Turkish signers. They note that all of their participants were
native or early learners of TID – i.e. all had learned TID at age 6 or earlier. If all of their
22
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
participants who produced “fused” productions were non-native TID signers, then this would
be consistent with the findings of the current study, where only the deaf children from
hearing families produced OSCA. However, this does not appear to be the case; three of the
four TID signers from the Perniss and Ozyurek study were native signers, including the
signer shown in Figure 3a who had deaf parents and grandparents (Perniss, personal
communication). Therefore another explanation is needed. One possibility may be the age of
TID as a language. Perniss and Ozyurek note that the first deaf school in Turkey was
established in 1902. BSL and DGS are both older sign languages, with the first deaf schools
in Britain (Jackson, 2001) and Germany (Vogel, 1999, cited in Perniss & Ozyurek, 2008)
being established more than 100 years earlier than in Turkey. Sign languages can change
rapidly within that amount of time, as we have seen with the evolution of Nicaraguan Sign
Language in the past 40 years (Senghas, 2000, 2003; Senghas & Coppola, 2001; Senghas,
Coppola, Newport, & Supalla, 1997). Of particular relevance here is the speed with which
has Nicaraguan Sign Language developed systematic spatial modulations. For example,
Senghas (2003) reports that in a task which requires spatial rotation for the purposes of verb
directionality, first cohort adult signers (i.e. those who attended the first school for the deaf
between 1974 and 1983) were largely unrestricted in their spatial rotation for verb agreement
purposes. However, second cohort adult signers (i.e. who attended the school between 1985
and 1990) were much more consistent in their rotation patterns, i.e. more consistently rotating
their signing space to take on the perspective of the referent. Thus, it may be that the relative
youth of TID compared to BSL and DGS accounts for why “fused” constructions (i.e. a
mixture of two scales) may occur in TID but may not occur in BSL or DGS. The fact that a
few of the DH children in the current study used this type of construction in BSL (OSCA)
may reflect early stages in both language diachrony and child development. v
23
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
The tokens of CSnoCA in this study were identified only in the DD children, not in
the DH children. With CSCA, signers position themselves “in” the story space in terms of
how they use the space around them, but also use elements of constructed action. With
CSnoCA, the use of space is the only cue that the signer is positioning themselves “in” the
story space; there is no CA to additionally give this indication. The use of CSnoCA is
consistent with Janzen’s (2004) claim that a shift in signer’s perspective can be achieved by
using the signing space in a way such that the space is used relative to the signer’s body, and
the implication that this can occur with or without constructed action. Janzen’s study was
based on personal experience narratives by adult native signers of ASL. The fact that we see
in the current study the use of CSnoCA in BSL narratives in native signing children (but not
non-native signing children) at 8-10 years of age suggests that native exposure to a sign
language is required for this skill to be acquired by children by this age. This may be linked
to differences in eyegaze as used by deaf versus hearing mothers when deaf children are
infants (Harris & Mohay, 1997; Kyle et al., 1987; Waxman & Spencer, 1997). It could also
be linked to age of acquisition effects that have been found for theory of mind in deaf
children via false belief tasks (Courtin, 2000). Whether there is CA or not, the use of
character scale does require taking on someone else’s perspective. However, CSCA involves
full embodiment where various articulators on the signer’s body are mapped onto the other
referent and also the space around the signer is used as if the signer is the referent. CSnoCA
is similar but requires the ability of the signer to “switch off” CA via his/her bodily
articulators and only use the space as if he/she is the referent. Thus CSnoCA is a quite
complex use of spatial scale compared to CSCA. It may be that the early use of sign language
appropriate eyegaze patterns that deaf native signing children are exposed to early on as
infants, and the increased abilities of theory of mind in deaf native signing children, both help
24
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
explain why this complex CSnoCA is found in native signing children but not non-native
signing children in these data.
In addition to the presence of OSCA and lack of CSnoCA in the DH children, all four
of the DH children exhibited some problems with their narrative skills, This included
embellishment of narratives with events that did not occur in the cartoon and likewise
omission of important events in the cartoon. For example, DH4 narrated that the Pink Panther
hid behind a tree (as described in §5.3 above), and DH3 described the Pink Panther scolding
the dog (the Pink Panther does not even acknowledge the dog in the cartoon). Also, DH2
omitted the Pink Panther from his narrative entirely, and when asked about who put the fire
out, he claimed that he did not know, even though this is an important event that the
addressee would need to know in order to understand the story. Additionally, as noted above,
DH1 mimed the entire narrative so in a sense there was no real narration at all. These patterns
contrast with Morgan’s (2002, 2006) studies on BSL narratives in native signing / early
learning deaf children who use BSL both at school and at home. As noted in §2.4, these
children at ages 7-10 were able to include relevant information about characters. The fact that
the DH children in the current study lacked important (or included inaccurate) information, or
lacked narration altogether, suggests that early exposure at both home and school (not just at
school) is important for acquisition of narrative skills.
These findings have important implications for our understanding of age of
acquisition effects in sign languages. While age of acquisition effects (i.e. differences
between native and non-native signers) have been found in deaf adults at various levels of
sign language grammar, there have been fewer studies examining age of acquisition effects in
deaf children. The current study suggests that cognitive abilities such as perspective taking
and use of spatial scale should be considered along with linguistic abilities when looking at
age of acquisition effects.
25
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
There are also important implications for the sign linguistics literature which has
largely focussed on the use of constructed action with or without use of depicting
constructions (Aarons & Morgan, 2003; Dudis, 2004; Metzger, 1995; Quinto-Pozos, 2007) or
spatial scale with depicting constructions (Perniss, 2007; Perniss & Ozyurek, 2008). Very
rarely are all three considered together – i.e. spatial scale, constructed action, and depicting
constructions (Janzen, 2004 may be one exception). The current study has shown subtle but
important differences between native and non-native signing children in the combined use of
spatial perspective and constructed action, which would not have been found if we had only
compared one or the other. To our knowledge, the use of CSnoCA in signers has not been
described explicitly in the literature before. More attention to CSnoCA (and also OSCA),
and further evidence from larger datasets, may help us further untangle what may often be
subtle differences in age of acquisition related to perspective, space and enactment within
sign languages.
7. Conclusion
The current study has addressed the question of how deaf children from deaf and
hearing families use scale in their signing space and how this interacts with use of
constructed action. We have found that deaf signing children at ages 8-10 – whether from
deaf families or hearing families - use enactment in their narratives within large-scale space,
as if they become fully “in” the space, and also that these children use the signing space on a
small scale for topographic reference and/or for articulation of lexical material without
enactment. These similarities reflect the primacy of enactment and straight narration (e.g. via
lexical material or topographic constructions) in sign language development. Furthermore,
we have found differences between native and non-native signing deaf children in (a) the use
of observer scale with constructed action, which may reflect early stages in child language
26
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
development and language diachrony, and (b) the use of character scale without constructed
action, which may require native sign language exposure to arise in narratives by ages 8-10.
These groups also exhibited differences in narrative skills. Together, these differences reflect
age of acquisition effects which may not be at a purely grammatical level reinforcing the
notion that cognitive abilities are also subject to such effects.
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i
It has also been argued that eyegaze grammatically marks person in pronouns and in
agreement verbs (Alibasic Ciciliani & Wilbur, 2006; Bahan, 1996; Meurant, 2008; Neidle,
Kegl, MacLaughlin, Bahan, & Lee, 2000; Thompson, Emmorey, & Kluender, 2006),
although there have been no clear attempts to distinguish eyegaze as person marker from
eyegaze as a marker of constructed action.
ii
This is not limited to deaf children; hearing children also make use of large-scale space in
enacting/iconic gestures, and they start doing so at a similar age (McNeill, 1992).
iii
Our notion of ‘subject’ here corresponds to Van Valin & LaPolla ‘s (1997) semantic
macrorole ‘actor’ which in the case of these narratives is the animate character executing the
action.
iv
Data collection for this study took place in 1993, before it became widely standard within
sign language research to obtain indefinite consent for specific uses of video clips in
publications. Therefore, examples are modeled here by a deaf adult BSL signer, replicated as
closely as possible to the actual productions of the child participants in this study.
v
It would be useful to know if OSCA constructions occur in non-native adult signers of older
sign languages like BSL, as evidence of whether OSCA as identified in non-native child
signers of BSL might persist into adulthood. It would also be useful to know at what age this
type of construction emerges in native signing children, or if this stage is bypassed by native
signing children completely. We leave these issues for future research.
34
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Table 1
Overview of Types of Signing Space as Described by Different Researchers
Character scale
Observer scale
Large-scale space Small-scale space Pointing
Emmorey
Viewer space
(2002)
Diagrammatic
Non-locative
space
space
--
Articulatory space
--
space
Schick (1987)
Real-world space Model space
--
Liddell (2003)
Surrogate space
Token space --
Depicting space
Morgan (2002, Shifted referential Fixed referential
--
2006)
space (SRS)
Poizner et al.
Shifted referential Topographic space Fixed
(1987)
space
--
space (FRS)
Syntactic space
referential
space
Perniss (2007)
Character
Observer
perspective
perspective
Slobin et al.
Protagonist
Narrator
(2003)
perspective
perspective
--
--
--
--
35
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Table 2
Participant Details
Participant Age of Family background
Communication at Type of
Communication
code
child
home
school
method of school
DH1
8
Mother signs at
Deaf unit
Bilingual
Bilingual
Hearing family
home
DH2
9
Hearing family
Parents sign a little Deaf unit
DH3
9
Hearing family
Mother signs at
Deaf school Bilingual
home
DH4
9
Hearing family
Parents sign a little Deaf unit
Bilingual
DD1
9
3-4 generation deaf
BSL
Deaf school Bilingual
BSL
Deaf school Bilingual
Deaf parents, hearing BSL
Deaf school Bilingual
family, deaf siblings
DD2
10
3 generation deaf
family, hearing
sibling
DD3
9
grandparents, deaf
siblings
DD4
10
2 generation deaf
BSL
Deaf school Bilingual
family, deaf and
hearing siblings
36
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Table 3
Frequency of Spatial Scale and Constructed Action Use: Number of Tokens by Participant
Participant code
CSCA
OSnoCA
OSCA
CSnoCA
DH1
9
0
0
0
DH2
6
5
1
0
DH3
10
7
0
0
DH4
9
7
3
0
Total DH
34
19
4
0
DD1
10
10
0
3
DD2
10
11
0
0
DD3
13
19
0
3
DD4
9
11
0
2
Total DD
42
51
0
8
37
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Table 4
Use of Spatial Scale and Constructed Action in DD and DH Group Narratives
DD
DH
CSCA


OSnoCA


OSCA


CSnoCA


38
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Figure 1. Depicting (entity) construction representing an upright entity moving from right to
left in small-scale space
39
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Figure 2. Depicting (handling) construction representing handling a flat object in large-scale
space
40
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
<IMAGE PERMISSIONS TBC>
Figure 3a. Fused character and observer perspective production in Turkish Sign Language,
describing scenes shown in Figure 3b (reprinted with permission from Perniss & Ozyurek,
2008).
41
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Figure 3b. Stills from stimulus for Figure 3a (from Perniss & Ozyurek, 2008) Reprinted with
permission: © I. Schmitt-Menzel / Friedrich Streich, WDR mediagroup GmbH, Die Sendung
mit der Maus ® WDR
42
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Figure 4. Constructed action in large-scale space with no handling/manipulation (Woll et al.,
2004)
43
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Figure 5. ELAN tiers and annotations
44
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Figure 6. Example from DH3 using CSCA representing the man making a fire
45
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Figure 7. Example from DD4 using CSCA with subtle use of CA enacting the Pink Panther
46
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Figure 8. Example from DH3 in observer scale with entity constructions representing a tree
on the right hand and the dog on the left
47
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Figure 9. Example from DH4 in observer scale representing location and motion of man with
simultaneous CA as Pink Panther hiding behind tree
48
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Figure 10. Example from DH2 in observer scale signing LOOK with simultaneous CA as
himself as viewer watching man walk across screen
49
SPATIAL SCALE AND ENACTMENT IN BSL
Figure 11. Example from DD4 signing MAN then using character scale with an entity
construction showing the man moving forward, with no constructed action.
50