(Salle F05)

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Coppola, Marie (University of Chicago, Chicago)

Conventionalized gestures of hearing Nicaraguans

Socially constituted gestures embody form-meaning mappings that have been conventionalized within a community, nation, or region (Perez, 2000 ; Müller & Posner 2004 ; Kendon/Di Jorio 2000). Many signs in sign languages are derived from such socially constituted gestures (Newport & Supalla, 2000). The current study systematically examines the gestures used by the Spanish-speaking Nicaraguan community in order to understand the origins of lexical items in Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). NSL is a new, indigenous sign language that has emerged from the Nicaraguan Deaf community (Senghas & Kegl 1994 ; Senghas 1995 ; Polich 1998 ; Senghas & Coppola 2001). I developed a list of Spanish words and phrases to elicit conventional gestures from hearing, native speakers of Nicaraguan Spanish (3 women and 2 men) who had no contact with deaf people. The list included states, acts, commands, and temporal relations (e.g., afraid, pay, come here, and after). Forty items showed substantial overlap in gesture form across informants. About half of these common gesture forms are very similar to lexical items in NSL (López Gómez et al. 1997). In accord with historical changes observed in American Sign Language (Frishberg 1975), some forms change as a consequence of their adoption into NSL. Further, some forms show a more restricted meaning as lexical items in NSL.