HUNSICKER by Konrad Juszczyk

GESPIN – GESTURE & SPEECH IN INTERACTION – Poznań, 24-26 September 2009

Are There Noun Phrases in Homesign? Dea Hunsicker, Carolyn Mylander and Susan Goldin-Meadow University of Chicago Chicago, IL 60637 deash@uchicago.edu

Abstract Deaf children whose hearing losses are so severe that they cannot acquire spoken language and whose hearing parents have not exposed them to sign language nevertheless use gestures called homesigns to communicate. Homesigners have been shown to refer to entities either by pointing at the entity, or by producing an iconic gesture evoking some aspect of the entity. We used longitudinal data from a homesigner called David to determine whether these two types of noun-like gestures were ever combined to form a larger unit akin to a Noun Phrase. We found that David did combine points with iconic gestures but not until 3;5 (years;months), despite the fact that these combinations would have been expected by chance at 2;10. This late onset suggests that the point+iconic combination was not a random occurrence but rather a distinct way of making noun-like references. We verified this hypothesis by showing that David’s point+iconic combinations served the same semantic and syntactic functions as point gestures and iconic gestures used on their own. In other words, the larger unit substituted for the smaller units and, in this way, functioned as a Noun Phrase.

Introduction

Is hierarchical structure so essential a feature of language that it will be reinvented by a child who is not exposed to input from a conventional language? Homesigners, the profoundly deaf children of hearing adults who have not been exposed to sign language, provide a way to address this question. Although they cannot access the spoken linguistic input available to them, homesigners still communicate by creating a gesture system, called homesign, which has many properties of natural language, including a distinction between nouns and verbs (Goldin-Meadow et al. 1994) and a stable word order (Goldin-Meadow and Feldman 1977; Goldin-Meadow and Mylander 1998). Here we explore whether a homesigner is able to incorporate hierarchical structure into his gesture system in the form of noun phrases (NPs). An NP consists of a noun head with one or more dependents. An NP performs the same function as a noun in a clause or sentence, and can take on the role of subject or object. An NP can be a noun alone, or a noun with dependents, such as adjectives or determiners. In English, the dependent is an obligatory determiner (Huddleston and Pullum 2002). Determiners are a class of words that includes articles (such as the and a) and demonstratives (such as this and that). Not all languages have articles, but most have demonstratives. Demonstratives either indicate location as related to the speaker, or draw the hearer’s attention to something in the physical environment. Demonstratives can be used alone or to modify a noun (Dryer 2005). Given that point gestures indicate location, and that they have been found to serve as demonstratives in conventional sign langages (Sandler and Lillo-Martin 2006), point gestures have the potential to function like demonstratives, and thus determiners, in homesign.

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Typically developing children acquiring spoken English demonstrate the productive use of NPs by the age of 2;6 (years;months) around the time that they produce sentences containing 3 to 4 words (Valian 1986). Similarly, children acquiring Modern Greek begin to use definite articles productively after 2;0, and produce them in obligatory contexts 90% of the time after 2;6 (Marinis 2003). If a homesigner were to develop NP’s in his gesture system, we might expect to see the onset of such constructions at 2;6 at the earliest, possibly later given the need to invent rather than learn the structure.

Methods

The child in our study is an American homesigner called David. He has profound hearing loss (≥90 decibels) and was educated in the oral method (e.g., he was given intensive instruction in lip-reading). At the time of our observations, David had made little progress in acquiring English, occasionally producing single words but never combining those words into sentences. In addition, at the time of our observations, David had not yet been exposed to a conventional sign language. He was videotaped in his home interacting with experimenters and his family members between the ages of 2;10 and 3;10. The experimenters brought books, toys, and puzzles to elicit communication, and each session typically lasted two hours. All of the gestures that the child produced were coded for form and meaning. Hand movements were considered gestures if they were communicative in intent (i.e., if they were produced when the child had another’s attention) and if they were not functional acts (picking up a toy or directly manipulating an object or person would not be considered a gesture) or part of a ritual act (such as blowing a kiss). Further details on coding can be found in Goldin-Meadow and Mylander (1984). Homesigners use deictic and iconic gestures to refer to objects, people, and places, that is, to entities routinely referred to with nouns. Deictic gestures are typically points directed at entities in the immediate context. For example, David produced a deictic point at a toy drum followed by a GIVE gesture to communicate ‘give that (to me).’ Iconic gestures can also be used to represent objects by evoking a property of the object. For example, David moved his hands as though beating a drum to refer to a toy drum (DRUM). Note that iconic gestures can be used to refer to both non-present as well as present objects.1 Previous work has shown that David used both pointing and iconic gestures in noun-like ways (Feldman, Goldin-Meadow and Gleitman 1978; Goldin-Meadow et al. 1994). We ask here whether David ever combined point and iconic gestures in the same sentence to refer to an object (e.g., point at drum DRUM GIVE) and, if so, whether those point+iconic gesture combinations functioned like Noun Phrases, with the point gesture playing the role of demonstrative (that) and the iconic gesture playing the role of noun (drum).

3 3.1

Results

Does David Use Point + Iconic Gesture Combinations to Refer to Objects?

We included in our analyses all of the point and iconic gestures that David used to refer to entities when communicating about actions, attributes, and locations; for example, a point at a penny or an iconic gesture for PENNY (a ring formed by the thumb and index finger) used to request that the penny be moved; a point at a bird or an iconic gesture for BIRD (two flat palms flapping at sides) used to comment on that the bird is riding a bicycle; a point at a drum or an iconic gesture for DRUM (two hands beating in the air) used to comment on the fact that the drum belongs on the toy soldier. We excluded from this analysis and those presented in sections 3.2 and 3.3 points and iconic gestures used to identify an object as a member of a category; for example, a point at a drum in response to the experimenter’s DRUM gesture; or an iconic gesture for BIRD, alone or in combination with a point at 1 Points can also be used to refer to non-present objects by, for example, pointing at the drum in the room to refer to another drum in a different room, see Butcher and Goldin-Meadow 1991; these types of gestures are relatively infrequent and will not be considered here.

Dea Hunsicker, Carolyn Mylander and Susan Goldin-Meadow: Are There Noun Phrases in Homesign?

the bird, produced to identify the picture as a bird. Combinations of points and iconic gestures that were used to label an entity or identify it as a member of a category function like sentences (that is a bird), rather than phrases (that bird is riding a bike). They are included as a separate category in the word order analyses presented in section 3.4. Table 1 presents the number of times David used deictic point gestures on their own and iconic gestures on their own to refer to an object at each age. The table also presents the number of times David used a point + iconic gesture combination in the same sentence to refer to a single object. As the table indicates, David does indeed use point + iconic gesture combinations to refer to an object. However, he does not begin to produce these combinations until age 3;05. On the assumption that David did not produce point+iconic gesture combinations as a cohesive unit but rather as a randomly occurring concatenation of a point gesture with an iconic gesture, we can estimate how often David ought to produce point+iconic combinations by multiplying his probability of producing a point gesture at a given age times his likelihood of producing an iconic gesture at that same age. The Expected column in Table 1 displays these expected values and indicates that, under the assumption that point gestures and iconic gestures are independently produced, David ought to have produced these combinations at ages 2;10, 2;11, 3;0 and 3;3. The fact that he produced none at these ages suggests that point+iconic gesture combinations were not random occurrences but were instead produced as a single unit. After David began producing point+iconic combinations to refer to a single entity, he continued to do so at every subsequent session and, moreover, continued to produce them significantly less often than would be expected by chance (again on the assumption that the combinations were a randomly occurring concatenation of point gestures with iconic gestures), X2(3)=21.54, p<.0001. Table 1. The number of point + iconic gesture combinations that David was expected to produce and that he actually produced over development. Age

Session length (h=hour, m=min)

Point Gestures

Iconic Gestures

Point + Iconic Gesture Combinations

2;10 2;11 3;00 3;03 3;05 3;08 3;10 3;11

2h 1h, 40m 1h, 35m 2h 2h, 10m 1h, 50m 1h, 50m 2h, 10m

156 173 84 225 528 518 571 217

1 2 1 9 13 9 23 23

Expected* 1 2 1 9 13 9 22 21

Observed

6 5 7 10

* Expected values for combinations were calculated by multiplying the likelihood of producing a point gesture at a given age times the likelihood of producing an iconic gesture at that same age.

We hypothesized that the point+iconic gesture combinations that David produced were indeed a cohesive unit serving as an NP, with the point gesture playing the role of determiner, and the iconic gesture playing the role of noun. To test this hypothesis, we asked whether point+iconic gesture combinations served the same semantic and syntactic functions as points and iconic gestures when they occur on their own; in other words, whether the larger unit could substitute semantically and syntactically for the smaller unit.

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3.2

Semantic Substitutability

We examined the types of semantic roles that David expressed with point gestures, iconic gestures, and point+iconic gesture combinations, and found that he expressed precisely the same types of roles with all three gesture types: patients, actors, recipients, entities, and locations. Examples are shown in Table 2. The fact that point+iconic gesture combinations served precisely the same semantic functions as point gestures and iconic gestures when used on their own suggests that the larger unit is used to substitute for the smaller units. In this sense, the combinations function like NP’s in David’s homesign system. Table 2. Examples of the semantic roles conveyed by point gestures, iconic gestures, and point+iconic gesture combinations produced by David. Semantic Role Patient Gloss Context

Point Gesture

Iconic Gesture

Point at bubble jar (2;10) Give me the bubble jar. Requesting the bubble jar.

SOLDIER (3;11) Give me the soldier. Requesting the toy soldier.

Patient Gloss Context

Endpoint

Point at shirt (3;11) Take off cowboy’s shirt. Requesting the experimenter to take the shirt off the cowboy doll. Point at fox (3;10) Fox drive jeep. Describing a picture of a fox driving a jeep. Point at napkin (2;10)

BUS (3;10) Push down on the bus. Requesting the experimenter to push down on the toy bus so it will go forward. SANTA (3;10) Santa swings on trapeze. Describing a toy Santa who swings on a trapeze. TRAIN-TRACK (3;05)

Gloss

Put the cookie on the napkin

Context

Requesting that the cookie be put on the napkin.

The block tower fell to the train track. Commenting on the fact that the tower fell to the track.

Entity

Point at bird puzzle piece (3;10) The bird puzzle piece belongs in empty puzzle spot. Commenting on the puzzle piece that goes in a particular spot. Point at puzzle spot (3;10)

HAIR (3;10)

Paddle ball––PADDLE BALL (3;10)

Hair goes on forehead.

Paddle ball is downstairs.

Commenting on hair that goes on the forehead.

Commenting on a paddle ball that is downstairs.

SCHOOL (3;03)

The elephant puzzle piece belongs in this puzzle spot. Commenting on the spot where the elephant puzzle piece goes.

Rich (brother) is at school.

Point at puzzle spot–– PUZZLE SPOT The clown puzzle piece belongs in this puzzle spot. Commenting on the spot where the clown puzzle piece goes.

Actor Gloss Context

Gloss Context

Location Gloss Context

Commenting on where Rich is while looking at family photos.

Point + Iconic Gesture Combination COIN––point at coins (3;11) Give me the coins. Requesting pennies to put in a bank toy. Point at gun––GUN (3;10) Cock the gun. Describing the action done on a toy gun to make a penny fly into a bottle. BIRD––point at bird (3;05) Bird eats. Describing a picture of a bird eating. Point at puzzle board–– BOARD (3;08) Move the puzzle bag to the puzzle board Requesting that the bag of puzzle pieces be put on the board.

Dea Hunsicker, Carolyn Mylander and Susan Goldin-Meadow: Are There Noun Phrases in Homesign?

3.3

Syntactic Substitutability

Prior research has shown that David’s gesture sentences can be characterized by consistent word orders (Goldin-Meadow and Mylander 1984; Goldin-Meadow 2003). The question is whether David’s point+iconic gesture combinations followed the same ordering patterns. We found that they did. As an example, point gestures representing the entity role tend to occur before gestures conveying locations (e.g., point at apple puzzle piece, followed by a point at the spot on the puzzle board where the apple piece goes). We found the same pattern when David used a point+iconic gesture combination to represent the entity role (e.g., point at balloon puzzle piece + iconic gesture for BALLOON, followed by a point at the spot on the puzzle board where the balloon piece goes). Indeed, we found that sentences containing point+iconic gesture combinations were just as likely to follow the dominant ordering patterns found in David’s homesign system as sentences containing either a point gesture or an iconic gesture (Figure 2). The fact that point+iconic gesture combinations occupied the same syntactic positions as point gestures and iconic gestures when used on their own suggests, once again, that the larger unit is used to substitute for the smaller units and thus functions like NP’s in David’s homesign system.

Figure 2. The proportion of sentences with single gestures (left bars) vs. sentences with gesture combinations (right bars) categorized according to whether the sentences adhered to (black bars) or violated (gray bars) David’s typical word order.

3.4

Internal Structure of the NP

We have been describing point+iconic gesture combinations that David uses to refer to an object when making a request involving the object, describing the actions that the object does or has done to it, or describing the object’s attributes or locations. But David also combined points with iconic gestures to identify an object as a member of a particular category. For example, after being shown a picture of a drum, David responded by pointing at the drum picture and producing a DRUM gesture, glossed as that is a drum. Combinations of this sort are sentences, rather than phrases, and thus might be structured differently from the point+iconic gesture combinations serving as NP’s. To test this hypothesis, we examined the order of the point and the iconic gesture in David’s point+iconic gestures

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combinations serving as sentences vs. those serving as NP’s. The data are presented in Figure 3. Note that David tended to produce the point gesture before the iconic gesture when he used the two together as a sentence (left bars). However, when he used the two together as an NP, he showed no consistent pattern (right bars): he was equally likely to produce the point gesture after the iconic gesture as before it. While it is unusual for NP’s to be characterized by free word order, there are conventional languages in which the demonstrative can both precede and follow the noun in a noun phrase (Dryer 2005). The difference in word order patterns between point+iconic gestures used as NP’s vs. those used as sentences lends weight to the hypothesis that there is a level of structure at the NP level in David’s homesign system that is distinct from his sentence level structure.

Figure 3. The proportion of point+iconic combinations used as a sentence (left bars) vs. point+iconic gesture combinations used as a noun phrase (right bars) categorized according to whether the point gesture was produced before (black bars) or after (gray bars) the iconic gesture.

Conclusions

Early in development David was able to refer to entities either by pointing at the entity or by producing an iconic gesture that captured salient aspects of the entity. Over time, David developed a new way of referring to entities––he produced a point gesture in combination with an iconic gesture to refer to a single entity (e.g., point at penny+iconic gesture for PENNY). Importantly, these point+iconic gesture combinations played the same semantic and syntactic roles that point gestures and iconic gestures played when produced on their own. For example, David might request the penny by pointing at the penny followed by a GIVE gesture (patient-act where the patient was conveyed by a point gesture); or by producing an iconic gesture for PENNY followed by a GIVE gesture (patient-act where the patient was conveyed by an iconic gesture); or by pointing at the penny, producing an iconic gesture for PENNY, and finally producing a GIVE gesture (patient-act where the patient was conveyed a point gesture combined with an iconic gesture). Interestingly, the order in which the point gesture was produced relative to the iconic gesture was different when the point+iconic gesture combination was used as an NP in an action or descriptive sentence than when the point+iconic gesture combination was used as an entire sentence designed to identify an entity as a member of a category. Thus, when David combined a point with an iconic

Dea Hunsicker, Carolyn Mylander and Susan Goldin-Meadow: Are There Noun Phrases in Homesign?

gesture to refer to an entity in an action or descriptive proposition (that bird eats), that combination was structurally distinct from the point plus iconic gesture combination that David used as a sentence to identify or label the entity (that is a bird). David had developed a structure akin to NP structure and thus was able to incorporate hierarchical structure into his homesign system. Our findings suggest that children are able to refer to entities using phrase-like units that embed within them nouns and demonstratives even when they do not have a conventional language to provide a model for hierarchical structure of this type. Bibliography Butcher, C., Mylander, C. & Goldin-Meadow, S. Displaced communication in a self-styled gesture system: Pointing at the non-present. Cognitive Development, 1991, 6, 315-342. Dryer, M. S. (2005). Order of Demonstrative and Noun. The World Atlas of Language Structure. M. Haspelmath, M. S. Dryer, D. Gil and B. Comrie. New York, Oxford University Press: 358-359. Feldman, H., Goldin-Meadow, S., and Gleitman, L. Beyond Herodotus: The creation of a language by linguistically deprived deaf children. In A. Lock (Ed.), Action, symbol, and gesture: The emergence of language. New York: Academic Press, 1978. Goldin-Meadow, S. (2003). The Resilience of Language: what gesture creating in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language. New York, Psychology Press. Goldin-Meadow, S., C. Butcher, C. Mylander, and M. Dodge. (1994). "Nouns and Verbs in a Self-Styled Gestures System: What's in a Name?" Cognitive Psychology 27: 259-319. Goldin-Meadow, S. & Feldman, H. The development of language-like communication without a language model. Science, 1977, 197, 401-403. Goldin-Meadow, S. and C. Mylander (1984). "Gestural Communication in Deaf Children: The effect and noneffects of parental input on early language development." Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Develpment 49: 1-121. Goldin-Meadow, S. and C. Mylander. Spontaneous sign systems created by deaf children in two cultures. Nature, 1998, 391, 279-281. Huddleston, R. and G. K. Pullum (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Marinis, T. (2003). The Acquisition of the DP in Modern Greek. Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company. Sandler, W. and D. Lillo-Martin (2006). Sign Language and Linguistic Universals. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Valian, V. (1986). "Syntactic Categories in the Speech of Young Children." Developmental Psychology 22(4): 562579.