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Hard and Hard and Hard: The Same Sign? On the Evolution of Signs in Flemish Sign Language
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HARD and HARD and HARD: The Same Sign? On the Evolution of Signs in Flemish Sign Language Iris Antoons and Diane Boonen This ongoing study is a first exploration of the evolution of signs in Flemish Sign Language, Vlaamse Gebarentaal (VGT). It is inspired by a book titled De Tael der Natuer of de Oorsponkelyke Gebaerdentael der Doofstommen [The Language of Nature or the Original Sign Language of Deaf Mutes]. In that book Q. J. Capron, an employee at the Antwerp Institute of Deaf Mutes, describes different series of signs, including some that are used by the (hearing) members of the ‘‘wilde volksstammen in het Noord-Westen van Amerika’’ [‘‘wild tribes in North-West America’’] (1858, 126). More interesting for our research, however, is the description of signs that Capron noticed in his own institute in Antwerp, signs ‘‘door de doofstommen zelven geschapen, zonder dat de onderwyzer hen ter hulp kome’’ [‘‘created by the deaf-mutes themselves, without any assistance of the teacher’’] (ibid., 131). In this chapter we compare the signs that, according to Capron, were used in Antwerp in 1858 to signs that are now in use (or were used in the recent past) in Antwerp and other regions of Flanders, Belgium. The purpose of this comparison is to learn whether and how signs in Flemish Sign Language have evolved and whether we can discern certain patterns. Parametric evolution studies of American Sign Language signs have established , for example, that when a sign consists of a movement with two contact points with the body, these contact points draw closer together over time (Supalla 1991, 1994). METHODOLOGY Flanders has five regional sign-language variants in West Flanders, East Flanders, Antwerp, Flemish Brabant, and Limburg (De Weerdt et al. 74 2003; Vermeerbergen 1997; Vanhecke and De Weerdt, this volume). These variants were of course taken into consideration in our survey. For each region we filmed and analyzed signs produced by signers from four different age groups: • teenagers between 15 and 19 • young deaf adults between 30 and 35 • adults between 45 and 50 • elderly people (over 65) Four people from each age group in each region were consulted. Since we were taking regional variation into account, we chose informants who had been born, lived, and gone to school in one and the same area in order to avoid interference. Schools for deaf students play an important role in the development and distribution of the variants of Flemish Sign Language (Antoons 2003; Van Herreweghe and Vermeerbergen 1998). In Flanders and in many other regions deaf children acquire sign language at school (Beck and de Jong 1990; Freeman, Carbon, and Boese 1981; Marschark 2001; Matthews 1996). They do not learn it in class, however, because in Flanders VGT was not used as a teaching medium in any school for deaf students until recently (Antoons 2003; Loots and Desloovere 2001). Thus children learned VGT mainly through contact with other deaf children outside the classroom. Each group of four informants consisted of two men and two women. Since the Flemish schools for deaf students did not offer mixed education until the 1970s, boys and girls from the same region had little contact with one another. Therefore we expected to find some differences for the older informants of both sexes at the lexical level (i.e., men and women of the same age and from the same region might use different signs). Initially we set out to work with a sample that consisted of eighty informants (i.e., five regions with four age groups and two gender groups, each consisting of two people). However, we ended up collecting signs from seventy-five people because we were unable to find enough elderly people in Flemish Brabant (only one instead of four) and male teenagers in Antwerp (zero instead of two). In the Flemish Brabant region, people over sixty-five years of age seem to have changed schools several times for various reasons (e.g., the school’s medium of instruction changed from Dutch to French), and these events have influenced their lexicon. Thus for the Flemish Brabant region, for the over-sixty-five age group, we were able to locate only one suitable subject. For the Antwerp region On the Evolution of Signs in Flemish Sign Language : 75 [44.201.24.171] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:01 GMT) we found no male teenagers. This is the result of a policy implemented by the Antwerp school for deaf students that integrated deaf children with...