Chapter published in:
Three Streams of Generative Language Acquisition Research: Selected papers from the 7th Meeting of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition – North America, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Edited by Tania Ionin and Matthew Rispoli
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 63] 2019
► pp. 297–318

Argument omission in SignL2 acquisition by deaf learners

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| Central Connecticut State University
We examine subject omission in American Sign Language (ASL) as a second sign language (SignL2) by deaf and hard-of-hearing users of Emirati Sign Language (EmiratiSL) with variable ages of exposure to SignL1. Results indicate that during a narrative, similarly to unimodal speech bilinguals, SignL2 learners of low ASL proficiency oversupply overt subject arguments – both NPs and pronouns (IX). In this, SignL2 learners behave differently from other ASL bilinguals described in the literature. We interpret the findings as offering support to the line of research arguing that certain atypicalities in multilingual production are best explained as resulting from the interaction between linguistic and general cognitive control mechanisms – i.e. that bilinguals oversupply arguments due to processing reasons. This phenomenon is modality independent.
Keywords: null subject, sign language, deaf, narrative
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Detour: Modality issues
  • 3.Study goals and predictions
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Tasks
    • 4.3Transcription and coding
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Limitations and directions
  • Acknowledgment
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 April 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.63.15kou
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