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. 2020 Oct:203:104332.
doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104332. Epub 2020 Jun 16.

The communicative importance of agent-backgrounding: Evidence from homesign and Nicaraguan Sign Language

Lilia Rissman  1 , Laura Horton  2 , Molly Flaherty  3 , Ann Senghas  4 , Marie Coppola  5 , Diane Brentari  6 , Susan Goldin-Meadow  7
Affiliations

The communicative importance of agent-backgrounding: Evidence from homesign and Nicaraguan Sign Language

Lilia Rissman et al. Cognition. 2020 Oct.

Abstract

Some concepts are more essential for human communication than others. In this paper, we investigate whether the concept of agent-backgrounding is sufficiently important for communication that linguistic structures for encoding this concept are present in young sign languages. Agent-backgrounding constructions serve to reduce the prominence of the agent - the English passive sentence a book was knocked over is an example. Although these constructions are widely attested cross-linguistically, there is little prior research on the emergence of such devices in new languages. Here we studied how agent-backgrounding constructions emerge in Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) and adult homesign systems. We found that NSL signers have innovated both lexical and morphological devices for expressing agent-backgrounding, indicating that conveying a flexible perspective on events has deep communicative value. At the same time, agent-backgrounding devices did not emerge at the same time as agentive devices. This result suggests that agent-backgrounding does not have the same core cognitive status as agency. The emergence of agent-backgrounding morphology appears to depend on receiving a linguistic system as input in which linguistic devices for expressing agency are already well-established.

Keywords: Agency; Gesture; Language emergence; Semantics; Sign languages; Typology.

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Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
NSL signer describing an event of someone tipping over a book. The predicate that encodes the motion of the event has either handling handshape (left panel) or object handshape (right panel).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Still images from videos in each of the four experimental conditions. The black box demarcates the three main conditions of interest. The Event Control condition, which displays a conceptually prominent patient in a Hand-Agent frame (which also highlights the patient), was included to ensure that participants have devices that focus on the patient.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Proportion of trials on which NSL signers (Cohorts 1 and 2&3) produced each type of agent nominal across the three agentive conditions. Circles show the proportion of trials where signers produced at least one agent nominal. Error bars show binomial 95% confidence intervals calculated using the Wilson method.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Average number of non-handling and handling predicates produced per trial in each condition by each group of NSL signers. Error bars show Poisson 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Average proportion of trials containing only handling handshapes, only non-handling handshapes, or both handling and non-handling handshapes produced in each condition by each group of NSL signers. Error bars show binomial 95% confidence intervals calculated using the Wilson method.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Average number of handling and non-handling predicates produced by homesigners per trial in each condition. Error bars show Poisson 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
Average proportion of homesign trials containing only handling handshapes, only non-handling handshapes, or both handling and non-handling handshapes produced in each condition. Error bars show binomial 95% confidence intervals calculated using the Wilson method.
Figure 8.
Figure 8.
Average number of handling and non-handling predicates produced per trial in each condition by each homesigner.
Figure 9.
Figure 9.
Proportion of homesign trials containing only handling handshapes, only non-handling handshapes, or both handling and non-handling handshapes produced in each condition by each homesigner.
Figure 10.
Figure 10.
Average number of handling and non-handling predicates produced by silent gesturers per trial in each condition. Error bars show Poisson 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 11.
Figure 11.
Average proportion of silent gesture trials containing only handling handshapes, only non-handling handshapes, or both handling and non-handling handshapes produced in each condition. Error bars show binomial 95% confidence intervals calculated using the Wilson method.
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