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Diachronica: Online-First Articles

Mother left, Father right

Artificial signs and diachronic change in sign language dialects in Belgium and the Netherlands

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| Leiden University

Studies of diachronic change in sign languages are only available for a small number of sign languages, in part due to the scarcity of historical resources for sign languages. This article presents the first study of diachronic change in Nederlandse Gebarentaal ‘Dutch Sign Language’ (NGT) and Vlaamse Gebarentaal ‘Flemish Sign Language’ (VGT). It looks at the impact of an artificial sign system on the lexicons of the Gestel variant of NGT and the Limburg variant of VGT. The recovery of two 19th century manuscripts describing 3,000 signs and 7,000 signs of this system respectively enables us to compare this artificial system with published data for NGT and VGT from the 1950s and the present.

We focus on the resilience of an artificial distinction that is not considered distinctive in other natural sign languages, i.e., an absolute left/right distinction for gender marking in kinship terms. The results show that the NGT and VGT variants have partially changed or replaced all the artificial signs, except UNCLE/AUNT, NEPHEW/NIECE in NGT and PARENTS in VGT. The partial changes shed light on the mechanisms through which artificial elements are nativized to fit the phonological system of these sign languages. The changes observed in the left/right paradigm have implications for our understanding of the distribution of laterality in sign language phonology in general.

Finally, the impact of the highly restricted access to language models that were part of the strict oralist approaches in these school, and the consequent impoverished language input on diachronic change and lexical innovation are discussed.

Keywords: naturalization of artificial form-meaning units, methodic signs, historical linguistics of Nederlandse Gebarentaal, historical linguistics of Vlaamse Gebarentaal, laterality and diachronic change, dominance shift and diachronic change
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Diachronic change in signs
    • 1.2Nativization of artificial (“methodical”) signs
    • 1.3Phonological conditions regarding laterality in SLs
      • Laterality contrast in handedness
      • Laterality contrast in locations
      • A gender paradigm based on contrast in laterality
    • 1.4NGT-Gestel & VGT-Limburg: The van Beek-lineage
      • The impact of deaf education on the emergence of SLs and deaf communities
      • Linguistic research on NGT-Gestel & VGT-Maaseik
      • Van Beek’s system
      • Laterality in NGT-Gestel & VGT-Limburg
  • 2.Data sets
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Laterality in the van Beek sign system
    • 3.2Laterality for Gender in NGT-Gestel and VGT-Limburg dialects
      • 3.2.1Unchanged: Uncle & aunt and nephew & niece
      • 3.2.2Partially changed
        • Replacement of the left-right distinction by a laterality distinction: VADER and MOEDER (& OUDERS)
        • Female signs on the forehead move to the right and become initialized
          • Son and daughter
          • King and queen
      • 3.2.3Reduction of compound signs
        • Brother and sister
      • 3.2.4Completely replaced
        • Boy & girl
        • Grandfather & grandmother
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Tendencies in diachronic sign change
    • 4.2Maintenance and modification of the “female left, male right” paradigm
      • Dominance Reversal replaced by laterality or annulled (resulting in manual polysemy)
    • 4.3Demise of a non-compliant paradigm in favor of a compliant one
    • 4.4Impoverished language input: Oralism, teaching trends and lexical variability
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 13 June 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.21052.nys
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