Menendez Corpus

Bruno Menéndez Pompeu Fabra University bruno.mdez@gmail.com

Browsable transcripts

Download transcripts

Citation information

Menéndez, B. (2010). Cross-modal bilingualism: Language contact as evidence of linguistic transfer in sign bilingual education. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13(2), 201-223. Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group.

Menéndez, B. (2012). Caracterización psicolingüística de la interlengua de alumnos sordos multilingües/multimodales en su acceso al castellano (l2/3)
como lengua escrita. Monografías MarcoELE Issue 15: Estudios sobre el aprendizaje y adquisición de lenguas en sus contextos.

In accordance with TalkBank rules, any use of data from this corpus must be accompanied by at least one of the above references.

Project Description

Cross-modal multilingualism is here portrayed as a highly sophisticated multilingual acquisition process involving a set of deaf students simultaneously acquiring multiple languages. Two language modalities are implied in the process: audio-oral (English, Spanish and Catalan) and visual-gestural (Catalan Sign Language). This corpus includes the analysis of the English, Spanish and Catalan writings of 13 deaf participants whose first language was Catalan Sign Language (LSC). The intention was to categorize divergences and establish their possible origin in cross-linguistic association, developmental reasons or a combination of both. CHILDES analysis was here used for computing divergences. The measure used to analyze performance was divergences per 100 words , which accounted for length difference in writings. Participants, as summarized in this table had writing divergences which were classified according to their possible origin using this coding system. The following hypothesis were being tested:

1. Cross-modal language contact or cross-linguistic transfer is possible. To what extent? What is the measure of the potential importance of this cognitive process relying on association?
2. Language transfer decreases over time: Is transfer less present in the English writings (L3) than in Spanish and Catalan (L2.2/L2.2)?
3. Language is sensitive to atmospheric circumstantial variables and initial conditions, being an emergent bottom-up complex dynamic system rising out of socio-cultural interactions rather than an innate top-down static universal process.
4. The following atmospheric circumstances and/or initial conditions are relevant for linguistic development: L2, relevant hearing rests, deaf parenting, deafness type (severe/profound), years of Catalan Sign Language pre-high-schooling, motivation, sex, age of exposure to any L1.

• A text grammar or pragmatic interpretation principle, meaning texts were interpreted and analyzed at a textual and paragraph level, following theme/rheme topic development and cohesion, coherence and adequacy standards at both micro and macro structural levels.
• A story grammar principle, where texts were interpreted separated into at least three main paragraphs (beginning, middle, end) –even if unlike students productions.
• Both text and story grammar principles were applied for analyzing inter- and intra-sentence connection. Analysis regarding information structure, syntactic complexity and content synthesis took into account participants’ punctuation and lack thereof for utterance and paragraph separation.
• A text restoration principle, meaning where more than one interpretation was possible at an equally reliable level, the one adding less divergence marks was chosen.
• A divergence perceptional principle, meaning when more than one divergence was present, all of them were marked in a cumulative manner, except for complex verb structures which were interpreted as a whole regarding inflectional morphemes or omission thereof, verb replacements whereby morphemes of the mistargeted verb were considered, and also in the case of adequate code switches.