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From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod

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Academic Paper


Title: Temporal Reference Marking in Narrative and Expository Text Written by Deaf Children and Adults: A Bimodal Bilingual Perspective
Author: Liesbeth M. van Beijsterveldt
Institution: Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Author: Janet G van Hell
Email: click here to access email
Institution: Pennsylvania State University
Linguistic Field: Language Acquisition; Morphology
Subject Language: Dutch Sign Language
Abstract: This study examined temporal reference marking in texts written by Dutch deaf children and adults who differed in sign language proficiency. The temporal reference marking systems in Dutch and Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) differ substantially, with Dutch having a wide range of lexical and morphological markers of temporal reference, and SLN relying on lexical marking of temporal reference. The results showed that the youngest proficient signers had difficulties with tense morphology: they avoided the marked past tense form in narratives and omitted verbs, but showed no problems with lexical marking of temporal reference. In the older proficient signing writers, verb morphology emerged, and in proficient signing adults temporal reference marking resembled that of the hearing adults. This study shows that in order to gain more insight into deaf people's writing, it is important to adopt a bilingual perspective and take variations in sign language proficiency into account.

CUP at LINGUIST

This article appears in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition Vol. 15, Issue 1, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST .



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