Emerging ASL Distinctions in Sign-Speech Bilinguals' Signs and Co-speech Gestures in Placement Descriptions.

ABSTRACT: Previous work on placement expressions (e.g., "she put the cup on the table") has demonstrated cross-linguistic differences in the specificity of placement expressions in the native language (L1), with some languages preferring more general, widely applicable expressions and others preferring more specific expressions based on more fine-grained distinctions. Research on second language (L2) acquisition of an additional spoken language has shown that learning the appropriate L2 placement distinctions poses a challenge for adult learners whose L2 semantic representations can be non-target like and have fuzzy boundaries. Unknown is whether similar effects apply to learners acquiring a L2 in a different sensory-motor modality, e.g., hearing learners of a sign language. Placement verbs in signe

SUBMITTER: Frederiksen AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8369348 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature