Cover not available

In:Historical Linguistics 2015: Selected papers from the 22nd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Naples, 27-31 July 2015
Edited by Michela Cennamo and Claudia Fabrizio
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 348] 2019
► pp. 519–560

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 25
Grammaticalizing the face in a first generation sign language

The case of “Z”

 | UC San Diego
Published online: 10 September 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.348.25hav
Abstract
Zincantec Family Homesign (or “Z”) is a first generation sign-language emerging in a single family in Chiapas, Mexico. Despite its very short history Z demonstrates how speakers’ gestures can “jump” into the lexicon of a newly created sign language and become further specialized via processes of grammaticalization. This paper moves beyond the grammaticalization of manual signs to consider how facial expressions can similarly be incorporated into the emerging lexicon and morphosyntax of even a very young sign language, contributing to the systematic expression of such grammatical categories as affective and epistemic stance.
Article outline
  • 1.Z: A first generation sign language
  • 2.A brief typology of Z signs
  • 3.An instance of grammaticalization in Z
  • 4.Affect and attention on the face
  • 5.Grammars of the face
  • 6.The frown: Critical uncertainty
  • 7.Conclusion and summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (68)
References
Aissen, Judith. 1992. Topic and focus in Mayan. Language 61:1. 43–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. 2016. Depicting as a method of communication. Psychological Review123. 324–347. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dachkovsky, Svetlana. 2004. Facial expression as intonation in Israeli Sign Language: the case of neutral and counterfactual conditionals. Signs of the time. Selected papers from TISLR. 61–82.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles 1872. The expression of the emotions in man and animals. London: J. Murray. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Jorio, Andrea & Adam Kendon. 2000. Gesture in Naples and gesture in classical antiquity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Vos, Connie. 2012. Sign-spatiality in Kata Kolok. Ph.D. dissertation. Nijmegen: Radboud University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dingemanse Mark, Seán G. Roberts, Julija Baranova, Joe Blythe, Paul Drew, Simeon Floyd, et al.. 2015. Universal principles in the repair of communication problems. PLoS ONE 10(9): e0136100. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Du Bois, John W. 2007. The stance triangle. In Robert Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenaus. 1972. Similarities and differences between cultures in expressive movements. In Robert A. Hinde (ed.), Non-verbal Communication, 297–313. Oxford, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ekman, Paul & Wallace V. Friesen. 1971. Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of personality and social psychology 17:2. 124–129. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. Unmasking the face: A guide to recognizing emotions from facial clues. Los Altos: Malor.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ekman, Paul, 1993. Facial expression and emotion. American psychologist 48:4. 384–392. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ekman, Paul & Wallace V. Friesen, et al.. 1987. Universals and cultural differences in the judgments of facial expressions of emotion. Journal of personality and social psychology 53:4. 712–717. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Feldman, Heidi, Susan Goldin-Meadow & Leila Gleitman. 1978. Beyond Herodotus: The creation of language by linguistically deprived deaf children. In Andrew Lock (ed.), Action, symbol, and gesture: The emergence of language, 351–414. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frith, Chris. 2009. Role of facial expressions in social interactions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 364. 3453–3458. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frishberg, Nancy. 1987. Home sign. In John Van Cleve (ed.), Gallaudet encyclopedia of deaf people and deafness, 3. 128–131. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fusellier-Souza, Ivani. 2004. Sémiogenèse des langues des signes, Étude de langues des signes emergentes (LS ÉMG) pratiquées par des sourds brésiliens. Doctoral thesis, Sciences du Langage, Université Paris 8.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. Emergence and development of sign languages: from a semiogenetic point of view. Sign Language Studies 7. 30–56. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, Susan. 1993. When does gesture become language? A study of gesture used as a primary communication system by deaf children of hearing parents. In Kathleen. R. Gibson & Tim Ingold (eds.), Talk, language, and cognition in human language, 63–85. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. The resilience of language: What gesture creation in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Homesign: gesture to language. In Roland Pfau, Marcus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language. An international handbook, 601–625. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, Susan, Cynthia Butcher, Carolyn Mylander & Mark Dodge. 1994. Nouns and verbs in a self-styled gesture system: What’s in a name? Cognitive Psychology 27. 259–319. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grammer, Karl, Wulf Schiefenhövel, Margret Schleidt, Beatrice Lorenz & Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1988. Patterns on the face: the eyebrow flash in crosscultural comparison. Ethology 77. 279–299. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haviland, John B. 1977. Gossip, Reputation, and Knowledge in Zinacantan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1981. Sk’op Sotz’leb; El Tzotzil de San Lorenzo Zinacantán. México, D.F.: Centro de Estudios Mayas, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2011. Nouns, verbs, and constituents in an emerging ‘Tzotzil’ sign language. In Rodrigo Gutiérrez-Bravo, Line Mikkelsen & Eric Potsdam (eds.), Representing Language: Essays in Honor of Judith Aissen, 151–171. Santa Cruz, CA.: California Digital Library eScholarship Repository, Linguistic Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2013a. Xi to vi: “Over that way, look!” (Meta)spatial representation in an emerging (Mayan?) sign language. In Peter Auer, Martin Hilpert, Anja Stukenbrock & Benedikt Szmerecsanyi (eds.), Space in Language and Linguistics, 334–400. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2013b. (Mis)understanding and obtuseness: “ethnolinguistic borders” in a miniscule speech community. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 23:3. 160–191. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2013c. The emerging grammar of nouns in a first generation sign language: Specification, iconicity, and syntax. Gesture 13:3. 309–353.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2014. Different strokes: gesture phrases and gesture units in a family homesign from Chiapas, Mexico. In Mandana Seyfeddinipur & Marianne Gulberg (eds.), From Gesture in Conversation to Visible Action as Utterance, 245–288. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2015. “Hey!” Topics in Cognitive Science 7. 124–149. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2016. “But you said ‘four sheep’!”: (sign) language, ideology, and self (esteem) across generations in a Mayan family. Language & Communication 46. 62–94. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd. 1997. Possession: cognitive sources, forces, and grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Elisabeth C. Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1957. Shifters, verbal categories and the Russian verb. Harvard University, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Russian Language Project.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Janzen, Terry. 2012. Lexicalization and grammaticalization. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach, & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language: An international handbook, 816–841. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Janzen, Terry & Barbara Shaffer. 2002. Gesture as the substrate in the process of ASL grammaticization. In Richard P. Meier et al.. (eds.), Modality and Structure in Signed and Spoken Languages, 199–223. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Janzen, Terry, Barbara Shaffer & Sherman Wilcox. 2011 [1999]. Signed language pragmatics. In Jan-Ola Östman & Jef Verschueren (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics, 1–20. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kendon, Adam. 2004. Gesture, Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kockelman, Paul 2016. The chicken and the quetzal. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laughlin, Robert M. 1975. The Great Tzotzil Dictionary of San Lorenzo Zinacantan. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, No. 19. Washington. D.C.: Smithsonian. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Le Guen, Olivier. 2012. An exploration in the domain of time: from Yucatec Maya time gestures to Yucatec Maya Sign Language time signs. In Ulrike Zeshan & Connie de Vos (eds.), Endangered sign languages in village communities: anthropological and linguistic insights, 209–250. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter & Ishara Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McKee, Rache. L. & Sophia Wallingford. 2011. ‘So, well, whatever’: Discourse functions of palm-up in New Zealand Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics 14:2. 213–247. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McNeill, David. 1992. Hand and mind: what gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meir, Irit, Carol Padden, Mark Aronoff, & Wendy Sandler. 2007. Body as subject. Journal of Linguistics 43. 531–563. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nonaka, Angela M. 2004. The forgotten endangered languages: lessons on the importance of remembering from Thailand’s Ban Khor Sign Language. Language in Society 33:5. 737–767. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2009. Estimating size, scope, and membership of the speech/sign communities of undocumented indigenous/village sign languages: The Ban Khor case study. Language & Communication 29:3. 210–229. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
, 2011. Language Socialization and Language Endangerment. In Alessandro Duranti, Elinor Ochs & Bambi Schieffelin (eds.), The Handbook of Language Socialization, 610–630. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perniss, Pamela & Ulrike Zeshan. 2008. Possessive and existential constructions in Kata Kolok (Bali). In Ulrike Zeshan & Pamela Perniss (eds.), Possessive and existential constructions in sign languages, 125–150. Nijmegen: Ishara Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pfau, Roland & Marcus Steinbach. 2006. Modality-independent and modality-specific aspects of grammaticalization in sign Languages. Linguistics in Potsdam 24. 5–98.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. Grammaticalization in sign languages. In Heiko Narrog & Bernd Heine (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization, 683–695. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff & Gail Jefferson,. 1974. A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50:4. 696–735. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sandler, Wendy, Irit Meir, Carol Padden, & Mark Aronoff. 2005. The emergence of a grammar: Systematic structure in a new language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102:7. 2661–2665. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shaffer, Barbara. 2012. Reported speech as an evidentiality strategy in American Sign Language. In Barbara Dancygier & Eve Sweetser (eds.), Viewpoint in language, 139–155. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. Information ordering and speaker subjectivity: modality in ASL. Cognitive Linguistics 15:2. 175–195. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1989. On the rise of epistemic meanings in English: an example of subjectification in semantic change. Language 57. 33–65.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1995. Subjectification in grammaticalization. In Dieter Stein & Susan Wright (eds.), Subjectivity and subjectivisation, 31–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1977. The ignorative: The semantics of speech acts. International Review of Slavic Linguistics, 2:2–3. 251–312.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. 2000. “Phonological and prosodic layering of nonmanuals in American Sign Language.” In Karen Emmorey, Harlan L. Lane (eds.), The signs of language revisited: An anthology to honor Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima, 190–215. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. Routes from gesture to language. In Elena Pizzuto, Paola Pietrandrea, & Raffaele Simone. (eds.), Verbal and signed languages: Comparing structures, constructs and methodologies, 107–131. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilcox, Phyllis & Sherman Wilcox 1995. The gestural expression of modality in American Sign Language. In Joan Bybee & Suzanne Fleischman (eds.), Modality in Grammar and Discourse, 135–162. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zeshan, Ulrike. 2003. Classificatory constructions in Indo-Pakistani sign language: Grammaticalization and lexicalization processes. In Karen Emmorey (ed.), Perspectives on Classifier Constructions in Sign Languages, 113–141. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. Negative and interrogative constructions in sign languages: A case study in sign language typology. In Ulrike Zeshan (ed.), Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages, 28–68. Nijmegen: Ishara Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004a. Interrogative constructions in signed languages: crosslinguistic perspectives. Language 80:1. 7–39.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004b. Hand, head, and face: Negative constructions in sign languages. Linguistic Typology 8. 1–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zeshan, Ulrike & Connie De Vos (eds.) 2012. Sign Languages in Village Communities: Anthropological and Linguistic Insights. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. 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.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue