Charlotte HAUSER

SIGN LANGAGE’ SYNTAX AND ACQUISITION (SILSA) ANR – AAPG 2023

Rôle : PI

A 4-year project aimed at completing the syntactic description of complex sentences in LSF and then studying their acquisition by Deaf signing children according to their linguistic profile. This project aims to fill the gaps in the description of the syntax and acquisition of French Sign Language (SiLSA). A necessary first step in this direction will be description, as the syntax of French Sign Language (LSF) is still largely unknown, especially when it comes to complex sentences. At the end of our research, we'll be able to determine whether cases of subordination appear in LSF for adverbial clauses, for which and in what forms. This will enable us to identify any patterns common to adverbial clauses for marking subordination, but also to subordinate clause types, which will help us to complete the grammar of complex sentences in LSF. The completion of the description of the adult grammar will then enable us to begin studying the acquisition pathway of complex sentences by children using a battery of behavioral tests. This ANR project will fund the hiring of two post-doctoral researchers, Deaf collaborators, and two colloquia dedicated to i) subordination in signed languages, ii) signed language acquisition.

THE PROCESSING OF RELATIVE CLAUSES IN LIS AND ITALIAN:

In collaboration with Elena Fornasiero (Post-doc, University of Venice) Study of the comprehension of relative sentences in Italian and Italian Sign Language (LIS), two languages that are very different in terms of their relativization strategy. Italian features post-nominal external-head relatives, while LIS features internal-head relatives. We replicate the eyetracking paradigm used in Hauser & Pozniak (2019) to investigate the presence or absence of asymmetry between subject and object relative propositions. To this end, we compare the performance of monolinguals (Italian, LIS) with that of CODA (Child Of Deaf Adults) individuals, bimodal bilinguals. 
The aim of this study is twofold: (i) to assess SRC and ORC comprehension in two typologically different languages, namely LIS (SOV displaying IHRCs) and Italian (SVO displaying EHRCs) using a time-sensitive method: Hauser &Pozniak's (2019) eye-tracking Visual-only World Paradigm, adapted to sign languages; (ii) compare the performances of L1, L2 deaf participants and hearing Italian/LIS bimodal bilinguals, to see whether these populations vary in their processing of LIS IHRCs and whether the performance of the latter population may be influenced by their bilingualism. 
 

QUESTION-ANSWER PAIRS IN SIGN LANGUAGE:

In collaboration with Caterina Donati (Professor, Université Paris Cité) We propose to reinterpret the typology of pseudo-clivatives in terms of a process of grammaticalization ranging from questions/answers (QAPs) to free relatives used in predicative propositions. We show that, along this process, what was a question gradually loses its clausal properties to acquire nominal properties such as phi-features and referentiality. Our arguments will draw on the rich pre-existing literature but also on recent work, including our own on LSF, on question-answer pairs in sign language.

ADAPTATION OF PCA/SFA THERAPY IN LSF:

Co-supervision of Anna Pietrzak's speech therapy dissertation, in which she developed an adaptation of PCA (phonological components analysis) and SFA (Semantic Features Analysis) protocols in LSF, to treat anomia in Deaf aphasic patients.