Two modes—two languages?
Two modes—two languages?
This chapter discusses the behaviour of people who know both a spoken and a signed language. The behaviour of this population will be contrasted with that of bilinguals knowing two spoken languages. In principle, the actions of dual modality bilinguals while speaking can be broken into two categories: the bilinguals can use their hands and faces in a non-linguistic manner to gesture, or they can use them to communicate linguistically in a natural signed language, in a manual code of a spoken language or in a variety of contact signing. In practice, the boundary between these two categories is fuzzy at best, and can disappear entirely in some circumstances.
Keywords: signed language, bilinguals, spoken language, contact signing, monolingual language acquisition, phonetics
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