Title: Expressing simultaneity of events in Catalan Sign Language (LSC): forms and age differences given by Jordina Sánchez (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Date: Thursday, June 29th, 2017

Time: 13:00 p.m.

Location: Room 52.735 + 52.737 - 7th floor building 52. Roc Boronat - UPF- Campus del Poblenou

Abstract:  The aim of this research was to explore age differences in the expression of simultaneous events, that is, events that “share a value on the time axis” (Aksu-Koç & Stutterheim, 1994, p. 397). The expression of simultaneous events is a complex structure in the discourse that denotes text cohesion, making it an area of great interest in the field of language development.

Narratives in LSC were elicited from 2 deaf adults and 16 deaf children aged 6 to 13 years old. Participants were asked to tell a story from a wordless picture book (Mayer, 2009), in which we identified 6 scenes with simultaneous events. Narratives were coded using ELAN, and strategies used to express simultaneous events were analyzed and categorized.

As a result, we first identified the forms of expressing simultaneity of two events. Secondly, we analysed age differences in the expression of simultaneous events.

We did not find significant differences in the amount of simultaneous events expressed by adults and children. However, forms used to express simultaneity differ between both age groups. Children do not use simultaneous strategies to express events simultaneity, and their narratives show a lower use of sign space. They rely more on simple consecutive presentation of events and on the use of lexical signs to express simultaneity of events. The results will be discussed in relation to sign language acquisition.