This article explores patterns of co-use of two sign languages in casual conversational data from four deaf bilinguals, who are fluent in Indian Sign Language (ISL) and Burundi Sign Language (BuSL). We investigate the contributions that both sign languages make to these conversations at lexical, clause, and discourse level, including a distinction between signs from closed grammatical classes and open lexical classes. The results show that despite individual differences between signers, there are also striking commonalities. Specifically, we demonstrate the shared characteristics of the signers’ bilingual outputs in the domains of negation, where signers prefer negators found in both sign languages, and wh-questions, where signers choose BuSL for specific question words and ISL for general wh-questions. The article thus makes the argument that these signers have developed a fairly stable bilingual variety that is characteristic of this particular community of practice, and we explore theoretical implications arising from these patterns.
2012Unimodal bilingualism in the Deaf community: Contact between dialects of BSL and ISL in Australia and the United Kingdom. PhD dissertation, University College London.
Adam, Robert
2013Cognate facilitation and switching costs in unimodal bilingualism: British Sign Language and Irish Sign Language. Paper presented at the
9th International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB9)
, June 2013, Singapore.
Auer, Peter
1995The pragmatics of code-switching: A sequential approach. In Lesley Milroy & Peter Muysken (eds.), One speaker, two languages. Cross-disciplinary perspectives on code-switching, 115–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Auer, Peter
1998Code-switching in conversation: Language, interaction and identity. London: Routledge.
(eds.)2014Indian Sign Language(s). People’s linguistic survey of India, Vol. 381. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan Private Limited.
Conlin, Frances, Paul Hagstrom & Carol Neidle
2003A particle of indefiniteness in American Sign Language. Linguistic Discovery 2(1). 1–21.
De Vos, Connie
2012Sign-spatiality in Kata Kolok: How a village sign language of Bali inscribes its signing space. PhD dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen.
Donati, Caterina & Chiara Branchini
2013Challenging linearization: simultaneous mixing in the production of bimodal bilinguals. In Theresa Biberauer & Ian Roberts (eds.), Challenges to linearization, 93–128. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Eckert, Penelope & Sally McConnell-Ginet
1992Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 211. 461–490.
Emmorey, Karen
2009The bimodal bilingual brain: Effects of sign language experience. Brain and Language 109(2–3). 124–132.
Emmorey, Karen
(ed.)2003Perspectives on classifier constructions in sign languages. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Emmorey, Karen, Helsa Borinstein, Robin Thompson & Tamar Gollan
2008Bimodal bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and cognition 11(1). 43–61.
Fischer, Susan
2006Questions and negation in American Sign Language. In Ulrike Zeshan (ed.), Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages, 165–197. Nijmegen: Ishara Press.
Grosjean, François
2008Studying bilinguals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Grosjean, François
2010Bilingual. Life and reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Guerra Currie, Anne-Marie, Richard P. Meier & Keith Walters
2002A cross-linguistic examination of the lexicons of four sign languages. In Richard P. Meier, Kearsy A. Cormier & David G. Quinto-Pozos (eds.), Modality and structure in signed and spoken languages, 224–236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heller, Monica
2007Code-switching and the politics of language. In Li Wei (ed.), The bilingualism reader, 163–176. New York: Routledge.
Knight, Palema & Ruth Swanwick
2013Working with deaf children: Sign bilingual policy into practice. London: Routledge.
Lave, Jean & Etienne Wenger
1991Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lefebvre, Claire
1998Creole genesis and the acquisition of grammar. The case of Haitian creole. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lüpke, Friederike & Mary Chambers
2010Multilingualism and language contact in West Africa: Towards a holistic perspective. Journal of Language ContactTHEMA Series No. 3.
Lutalo-Kiingi, Sam
2013A descriptive grammar of morphosyntactic constructions in Ugandan Sign Language. PhD dissertation, University of Central Lancashire.
Metzger, Melanie
(ed.)2000Bilingualism and identity in deaf communities. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
Muysken, Pieter
2001Bilingual speech. A typology of code-mixing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Muysken, Pieter
2011Bridges over troubled waters: Theoretical linguistics and multilingualism research. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics 401. 20–38.
Muysken, Pieter
2013Two linguistic systems in contact: Grammar, phonology and lexicon. In Tej K. Bhathia & William C. Ritchie (eds.), The handbook of bilingualism and multilingualism (2nd edition), 193–216. London: Blackwell.
Myers-Scotton, Carol
1993Social motivation for codeswitching: Evidence from Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Myers-Scotton, Carol
1997Duelling languages: Grammatical structure in codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Myers-Scotton, Carol
2002Contact linguistics: Bilingual encounters and grammatical outcomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nyst, Victoria
2010Sign languages in West Africa. In Diane Brentari (ed.), Sign languages, 405–432. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Panda, Sibaji & Ulrike Zeshan
2006Professional course in Indian Sign Language. Mumbai: Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped.
2000Contact between Mexican Sign Language and American Sign Language in two Texas border areas. PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.
Quinto-Pozos, David
2007Editor’s introduction: Outlining considerations for the study of signed language contact. In David Quinto-Pozos (ed.), Sign languages in contact, 1–28. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
Quinto-Pozos, David & Robert Adam
2013Sign language contact. In Robert Bailey, Richard Cameron & Ceil Lucas (eds.), The Oxford handbook of sociolinguistics, 379–403. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2009A grammar of Indian Sign Language. PhD dissertation, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
Swanwick, Ruth
2010Policy and practice in sign bilingual education: Development challenges and directions. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 13(2). 147–158.
Wilbur, Ronnie B
2000The use of ASL to support the development of English and literacy. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 5(1). 81–104.
Yoel, Judith
2007First-language attrition of Russian Sign Language. In David Quinto-Pozos (ed.), Sign languages in contact, 153–191. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
2003Indo-Pakistani Sign Language grammar: A typological outline. Sign Language Studies 3(2). 157–212.
Zeshan, Ulrike
2004aHand, head and face – negative constructions in sign languages. Linguistic Typology 8(1). 1–58.
Zeshan, Ulrike
2004bInterrogative constructions in sign languages – cross-linguistic perspectives. Language 80(1). 7–39.
Zeshan, Ulrike
2006Regional variation in Indo-Pakistani Sign Language – evidence from content questions and negatives. In Ulrike Zeshan (ed.), Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages, 303–323. Nijmegen: Ishara Press.
2020. One Village, Two Sign Languages: Qualia, Intergenerational Relationships and the Language Ideological Assemblage in Adamorobe, Ghana. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 30:1 ► pp. 48 ff.
Kusters, Annelies & Ceil Lucas
2022. Emergence and evolutions: Introducing sign language sociolinguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics 26:1 ► pp. 84 ff.
Kusters, Annelies, Massimiliano Spotti, Ruth Swanwick & Elina Tapio
2017. Beyond languages, beyond modalities: transforming the study of semiotic repertoires. International Journal of Multilingualism 14:3 ► pp. 219 ff.
Pichler, Deborah Chen & Elena Koulidobrova
2023. The Role of Modality in L2 Learning: The Importance of Learners Acquiring a Second Sign Language (M2L2 and M1L2 Learners). Language Learning 73:S1 ► pp. 197 ff.
Quinto-Pozos, David & Robert Adam
2022. Multilingualism and Language Contact in Signing Communities. In The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact, ► pp. 172 ff.
Reed, Lauren W.
2020. “Switching caps”. Asia-Pacific Language Variation 6:1 ► pp. 13 ff.
Zeshan, Ulrike
2019. Task-response times, facilitating and inhibiting factors in cross-signing. Applied Linguistics Review 10:1 ► pp. 9 ff.
Zeshan, Ulrike & Sibaji Panda
2018. Sign-speaking: The structure of simultaneous bimodal utterances
. Applied Linguistics Review 9:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
[no author supplied]
2022. Multilingualism. In The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact, ► pp. 27 ff.
[no author supplied]
2022. Bibliography. Journal of Sociolinguistics 26:1 ► pp. 137 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.