Abstract

Language socialisation in Kata Kolok, the sign language of a Balinese village 

Children learn language through social interaction, with conversation being their primary input to make them competent language users.

Often (though not universally), parent-child interactions are characterized by altered input (Bunce et al., 2020): speaking parents may modify pitch or syntax and signing parents may sign slower or on the child’s body (Holzrichter & Meier, 2000; Pizer et al., 2011).

In addition, child signing is often characterised by modifications: handshapes and locations may be substituted, and movements may be altered. Both child-directed signing and child signing has been little studied in non-Western contexts.

In this presentation, I present work on child signing and preliminary insights into work in progress on how deaf children are socialized with the sign language Kata Kolok, a small sign language that is used in rural enclave in Bali, Indonesia.

The sign language Kata Kolok emerged due to sustained congenital deafness and represents an exceptional acquisition setting for deaf children: they receive immediate and rich signing input from many hearing and deaf signers from birth (de Vos, 2012; Marsaja, 2008).

Using longitudinal corpus recordings, I analyse phonological modifications children make to signs and document how child-directed signing shapes early social interactions, focusing on 1) child-directed signing strategies and 2) conversational constellations. 

On Hannah Lutzenberger