Background

Signs as Support - instead of NVC?Kerstin Nelfelt, Dept. of linguistics, Göteborg UniversityBox 200405 30 GöteborgTel. 031-773 5213, fax 031- 773 4583BackgroundFor persons who have become deaf or gravely hearing impaired at an adult age the acquisition and use of SSL, i.e. the Swedish Sign Language such as it is used by native deaf signers, is not an alternative. The language is too complex to be easily acquired at an often late-adult age, and, besides, it is not the language of the adult-deafened persons' social net work. It is therefore a desideratum that people who become deaf at an adult age can continue to communicate in Swedish. One way to obtain this is by aiding the perception of speech with visually perceivable support. This is in Sweden called TSS (Tecken Som Stöd). The typical characteristics can be summarized as follows (Wolf 1991):•Signs are performed simultaneously with speech•Signs are borrowed from the Swedish Sign Language•No new signs, e.g. grammatical morphemes with no correspondence in SSL, are created•No signs are modulated according to SSL grammar•No inflectional endings are signed•No SSL grammar is used•Not all Swedish words must be rendered in also with a sign•As a rule only content words are signed.Since only single signs are used and none of the spatial grammar typical for signed languages is used, grammatical information is available only in the spoken part, by means of speech reading or as much hearing as one has. The visual part is thus not comprehensible on its own but depends for understanding on the spoken part.The main idea is that speech is primary. The users of sign as support are native fluent speakers of Swedish and therefore prefer to express themselves in Swedish. They should be able to continue to use their native language in supported form rather than learn a new languageThe functional morphemes are, in any language, a restricted class; they appear in specific contexts, often with some redundancy. For example, in the phrase: "den fula ankungen" definite form is signalled both by "den" and "-en". Redundancy generally reduces the risk of misunderstanding.Function morphemes are also more predictable than content morphemes. When speech perception is reduced, one has to make more or less intelligent guesses about part of the content with the help of speech reading, the context and ones encyclopaedic knowledge. With support from the visible renderings of the content words, the guesswork will be more accurate and the task less demanding. One can also feel safer, that is the risk of totally misunderstanding what it is all about is less.In TSS-teaching one aims at complete redundancy between content word and signs and at complementarity with regard to grammatical information.However, in actual use the picture is not always so clear and there are often fluency problems involved in using sign as support in the proper way. That is, to try to sign all content words and no other.An issue so far not addressed is the relation between sign as support and the non-verbal communication naturally present in face-- face spoken interaction. Can there for instance be non-verbal communication besides the signs? The signs are very much like the so-called emblems of non-verbal communication. That is they are clearly referential and have a conventional meaning. In normal speech interaction, i.e. without signs as support, they are very much scarcer than the signs of sign as support, and they typically co-exists with other types of gestures such as illustrators and regulators.In the teaching of sign as support the signs are seen as the complete visual signal. No other types of gestures are included in the video-examples of the textbooks.Contrary to this the impression from tapes of more informal interaction in TSS is, that other gestures than signs are used. There is gestural activity, which cannot be explained as signs, or even as attempts at sign, or missigned signs. In my further analyses of my data I will go on to a classification of this gesturing and its function in the discourse.This is very important. Levelt, Richardson and LaHeij found that suppressing gesticulation during speech impedes the fluency of the speech (as ref. in Fisher et al. 1991). If this is the case, the fact that the gesture modality is completely occupied by the signs of the sign as support, this may affect the fluency of the speech production. On the other hand McNeill (as ref. in Fisher et al. 1991) has found that simultaneous signing and speaking does not affect the fluency in any of the modalities, at least not after sufficient practise.The issue merits further investigation. First of all further analyses is necessary to see whether non-verbal communication is used in sign as support. Secondly, which the relation is between degree of fluency in the simultaneous speaking and signing and absence or presence of non-verbal communication. If there is found to be a positive relation between fluency and presence of non-verbal gesturing in the TSS, this indicates that gesturing plays an important role in speech production. It will of course, also be important for the further developmentTSS-training methods.ReferencesAhlsén, E. 1985 Discourse patterns in aphasia, Gothenburg Monographs in Linguistics 5, Dept, of Linguistics, Göteborg University, SwedenKendon, A. 1980. Gesticulation and speech: Two aspects of the process of utterance in M. R. Key (ed.)The relation between verbal and nonverbal communication, The Hague: Mouton Publ.Kendon, A. 1981. Nonverbal Communication, Interaction and Gesture, (Selections from Semiotica), The Hague: Mouton Publ.Fischer, S., Metz, D.E., Brown, P.M. and Caccamise, F. 1991 in P. Siple and S.D. Fisher (ed.) Theoretical issues in Sign Language Research Volume 2: Psychology, The University of Chigaco press, Chigaco and London Klima, E. and U. Bellugi 1979. The signs of language, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. PressMcNeill, D.1992 Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought, The University of Chicago press Nelfelt, K. 1995. Dövas teckenspråk, in Ahlsén, E. and J. Allwood (ed.) Språk i fokus, Studentlitteratur, Lund Nelfelt, K. 1996, The Semiotics of Swedish Sign Language, SSKKII Report 9604, Center of Language, Cognition, Interaction, Semantics, Communication and Information, Göteborgs UniversitetNelfelt, K. 1998. Simultaneous Sign and Speech - a Multimodal Perspective on the Communication of Hearing-Impaired Children, Gothenburg Monographs in Linguistics 16, Inst. för lingvistik, Göteborgs Universitet Supalla, S.J. 1991 Manually Coded English: The Modality Question in Signed Language Development, in P. Siple and S.D. Fisher (ed.) Theoretical issues in Sign Language Research Volume 2: Psychology, The University of Chigaco press, Chigaco and LondonWolf, M. 1991 Tecken Som Stöd, Projektrapport, Statens skola för vuxna, HärnösandMonica Wolf och Lillian Ström 1988 Slutrapport "Tecken som stöd för tal för vuxendöva" Nov. 85-April 88 Statens skola för vuxna, Härnösnad。