Idioma de Signos Nicaragüense
| Idioma de Signos Nicaragüense | ||
|---|---|---|
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Spoken in |
Nicaragua | |
| speaker | about 3000 | |
| Linguistic classification |
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| Official status | ||
| Official language in | - | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
- |
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| ISO 639 -2 |
so-called |
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| ISO 639-3 | ||
The Idioma de Signos Nicaragüense or (names in es.wikipedia.org ) Lengua de señas nicaragüense or Idioma de señas de Nicaragua (ISN; Spanish for 'Nicaraguan Sign Language') is a sign language used in Nicaragua . It was spontaneously developed there by deaf school children from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s . This language is of particular interest to linguists as it offers the opportunity to study the emergence of a new language.
history
Before the 1970s, deaf people rarely met in Nicaragua. For the most part, they lived in isolation from one another and used simple gestures and gestures to communicate with their families and friends.
It was not until 1977 that conditions emerged that are necessary for the development of a language, when a special school center in San Judas, a district of Managua , initiated a training program in which 50 young deaf people took part. By 1979, when the Sandinistas came to power, the number of students rose to 100. In 1980, a vocational school for the deaf was opened in Villa Libertad, another part of Managua. In 1983 both schools had 400 students together.
Communication was originally based on spoken Spanish and lip reading as well as the use of a finger alphabet . The plan was unsuccessful, however, as most students were unable to form words this way. As this cut them off from their teachers, the students developed a system for communicating with one another during breaks and on the school bus. Through a combination of gestures and signs developed at home, a pidgin language (i.e. a reduced form of language) initially emerged, which quickly evolved into a creole language (i.e. a language that emerged from several languages in a language contact situation ). The first stage of development in the form of a pidgin language was later called Lenguaje de Signos Nicaragüense (LSN) and is still used by the older students at the time who had already finished school at the time of further language development.
The school staff initially missed the fact that a language was developing before their eyes. It only saw facial expressions and the failure to learn Spanish in the students' gestures . Not understanding what the students were saying to each other, they asked for outside help. In June 1986, the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education contacted Judy Kegl , an American linguist who specializes in American Sign Language (ASL). She and other researchers found that the pidginartige language of the older students (LSN) had been brought by the younger students on a more complex level, the congruence of verbs included and a fixed grammatical structure. This complex form of sign language is now called the Idioma de Signos Nicaragüense (ISN).
Articles in Science and other magazines made ISN known beyond specialist circles.
linguistics
For linguists, the history of the development of ISN is unusual, as a language developed here without a community of adult native speakers . Normally, however, Creole languages develop from a pidgin-like mixture of (at least) two languages, which in turn are fluent by numerous speakers. The ISN, however, was developed by a group of young people who had previously only used gestures and not clearly defined signs.
Some linguists consider this to be evidence of the theory of universal grammar that there is a special language acquisition device (LAD ) in the human brain . "The Nicaraguan case is absolutely unique in history," claims Steven Pinker , author of the book The Language Instinct (German: "The language instinct").
“The Nicaraguan case is absolutely unique in history. We've been able to see how it is that children - not adults - generate language, and we have been able to record it happening in great scientific detail. And it's the first and only time that we've actually seen a language being created out of thin air. "
“The Nicaraguan case is absolutely unique in history. We have seen children - not adults - generate language and we have been able to record this with great scientific detail. And it is the first and only time that we have been able to observe how a language emerges from nothing. "
William Stokoe , the founder of ASL's linguistic research, contradicts this . He doubts the claim that ISN was created without any external influence from Spanish or ASL. This is not proven by the available data, but is rather speculation. A lack of access to Spanish or ASL was only proven in the first stage of language development, but in the further course there were numerous opportunities for exchange with other languages. It is also questionable whether the signs and gestures among speaking Nicaraguans are really not clearly defined, and it is unclear how great their influence on ISN is.
Since 1990, the unique language ISN and its speaker community have also been investigated by several other researchers, including Ann and Richard Senghas, Marie Coppola and Laura Polich. Although each of them has their own theory about the origin and development of the ISN, they all agree that this phenomenon is one of the richest sources of data on the development of a language to date.
Controversy
How long has it been a language?
Science is divided as to the stage of development at which the ISN can be described as a fully developed language . According to Marie Coppola, the previously isolated systems of sign communication that flowed into the development of the ISN already contain elements that can be described as language.
Judy Kegl, on the other hand, believes that only the first “generation” of young students learned a full-fledged language after they were confronted with a gestural communication system that had previously been developed by the older students in an intermediate stage and that they mistook the former for a language worth learning. Then they have learned a full language, as rich as any other language; the subsequent changes are the expected course of events.
Ann Senghas thinks that the further complexity of the ISN after its inception came from the contributions of young language learners.
Language Imperialism / Ethical Controversy
From the beginning of her research in Nicaragua in 1986 until the time when the ISN was well established, Judy Kegl avoided introducing elements from other sign languages she was familiar with, particularly from American Sign Language (ASL). This was in contradiction to the not uncommon practice, which she perceived as language imperialist , of introducing ASL in other countries, often suppressing a previously existing sign language. Judy Kegl, on the other hand, wanted to examine and document the ISN without changing or even replacing it. She neither encouraged nor hindered the contact of deaf Nicaraguans with foreign deaf languages. In this way, she was able to document contacts with and influences by speakers of other deaf languages that began in the 1990s and continue to exist - just as other languages that are in contact with one another also influence one another .
Some experts were bothered by what they call the "Ethics of Isolating Nicaraguan Children". Philosophy professor Felicia Ackerman expressed her objections in a letter to The Times ; Regarding Kegl's fear of “destroying a native language”, she writes: “Obviously, she prefers to destroy the life chances of these children by preventing them from communicating with the outside world”.
Judy Kegl, however, in cooperation with her husband and her company Nicaraguan Sign Language Projects, Inc., has also raised money to set up a school for the deaf on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua that only employs deaf teachers. Teachers for other deaf schools in Nicaragua are also trained there. This gave a number of deaf students and teachers the chance to go to the United States to complete further training there; others were given the opportunity to attend conferences such as Theoretical Issues in Linguistic Research Conference in Amsterdam and Deaf Way II in Washington, DC .
Written form
In 1997 Richard Senghas used the description “non-speakable and non-writable” in the title of his dissertation to point out the common, erroneous assumption that languages without written form are not fully-fledged languages. For this reason, sign languages are often denied recognition because they are neither spoken nor written. However, Senghas never claimed that the ISN was not writable, as is often assumed by people who have not dealt with sign languages before. Since 1996, the ISN has been written by Nicaraguans both handwritten and on computers with the help of SignWriting . ISN is currently the sign language with the largest volume of written texts available.
See also
literature
- Laura Gail Polich: The emergence of the deaf community in Nicaragua: with sign language you can learn so much . Gallaudet University Press, Washington (DC) 2005, ISBN 1-56368-324-5 .
- Steven Pinker: Der Sprachinstinkt, Knaur Taschenbuch, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-426-77363-5
- Richard Joseph Senghas, Judy Kegl: Social aspects in the development of the Nicaraguan sign language . In: Daszeichen , No. 29, September 1994. Signum-Verlag, pp. 288-293, ISSN 0932-4747 .
- Ann Senghas: Children's contribution to the birth of Nicaraguan Sign Language . Boston 1995.
- Richard Joseph Senghas: An 'unspeakable, unwriteable' language: deaf identity, language and personhood among the first cohorts of Nicaraguan signers . Ann Arbor 1998.
Web links
- Information about the ISN at www.signwriting.org (engl.)
- A five-minute video on www.pbs.org, the examples of the ISN shows (Engl.)
- An article in the New York Times Magazine about the ISN (Engl.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Copyright by Steven Pinker, 1994; Published by William Morrow & Company, New York
- ↑ Knaur paperback ISBN 3-426-77363-5 , Copyright Kindler Verlag for the German edition: 1996
