2nd IPSL Workshop @ EOC

The IPSL blog is back to reporting on Sign Language, this time with embedded videos as well! The videos are without sound, if anyone know of compressing software that can create smaller files with sound, please let me know.

The second IPSL Workshop at the EOC was held on 30th October 2009 at the DU-NTPC ICT Centre. It is clear from the large number of participation that it is becoming an important event in the calendar for the deaf in the capital. In this workshop, there were two presentation and very lively discussion from the deaf participants. There were a total of 35 participants, out of which 24 were deaf, including students from China, Nepal, Burundi and Uganda.

Audience at the 2nd IPSL Workshop at the EOC, DU

First, it was Prof Rama Kant Agnihotri, Co-ordinator of the EOC and Professor of Linguistics at the Department of Linguistics who gave a highly germane talk on the issue of “Standardization” as it is understood for spoken languages. He further compared it and drew parallel with the situation in Sign Language Standardization.

Rama Kant Agnihotri at the 2nd IPSL Workshop at EOC, DU

Here is a video clip:

It was pointed out that there are four stages in the Process of standardization in natural languages (including of course, Signed languages) as follows:
1. Selection
2. Codification
3. Elaboration
4. Dissemination

As a part of the process of Selection, one variety is chosen to represent the language. Agnihotri pointed out that this is also point where the “Politics of standardization” enters into the picture. It is the powerful who are in a position to select a particular variety. This is obviously not the ideal situation because as linguists and human beings, we would like to believe that all languages or all varieties are equal.

The second stage of codification involves the process of writing up dictionaries and grammars of the variety chosen as the standard. It is important to understand that codification implies bringing into existence real objects like dictionaries and grammars although – and this is the important part – all languages and varieties have ‘dictionaries’ and ‘grammars’ since lexicon (or a list of words) and syntax (knowledge of making sentences in a language) are part of knowing a language, thus, knowing a language means knowing the dictionary and grammar of that language. It was further emphasized that language comes first and dictionaries and grammars later. At this point, Kakooza Muhammes from Uganda pointed out that in Africa (Kenya) there were attempts to first write the grammar and they propagate the language but that experiment, apparently, failed. It was pointed out by Agnihotri that there are certain languages which are not natural languages, foremost being computer languages, that are planned languages. Also, among the spoken languages, Esperanto is one language that is a planned languages but of course there are now 2nd, 3rd generation natural speakers of Esperanto.

The third stage of the process of “Elaboration” involves producing various texts and corpuses in the chosen variety. This is also a stage where discrimination on the basis of the variety one speaks (or signs) may be associated, where the chosen variety (and therefore its users) attains a certain amount of power. Questions raised at this stage by Vishi from Kerala and Upendra from Nepal about this situation being less than ideal.

The fourth stage of “Dissemination” involves spreading the chosen variety among the masses through education and other means. It was very poignantly pointed by Prof. Agnihotri that actually there is in fact sometimes a conscious effort to in fact to not disseminate it to the masses by changing the variety in such a way that the masses will never be able to catch up with the so-called standard variety. At this point, I clarified it for myself that this is something that is more likely to happen within a chosen variety, that is, class-based differences start creeping (and designed) once the variety has been chosen as a standard.

The impression given is that it “unifies” but actually it separates people. In addition, it also produces “attitudes”, where one starts ‘loving’ the standard (and by now ‘high’) variety and ‘hating’ the non-standard (by now ‘low’) variety.

At this point there were many objections and questions from Bablu Kumar (from Delhi), Robindranath Sarkar (from Kolkata), Upendra Khanal (from Nepal), Guan Xuesong (from China) and Njejimana Charles (from Burundi) about their varieties and their place in their lives.

 

Rabindranath Sarkar at the 2nd IPSL Workshop at EOC, DU

Njejimana Charles at the 2nd IPSL Workshop at EOC, DU

Prof Agnihotri concluded by saying that language is a continuum and there is a model which helps make standardization inclusive and not exclusive and this is the model of multilingualism which has been successfully employed in many countries.

However, many questions remained and the audience was invited for another round of discussion on this topic during the 3rd workshop on 27th November, 2009. Here is a handout of the talk that was distributed during the talk.

The second presentation was by Hidam Gaurshyam on “Adpositions as Classifiers in IPSL”. Hidam started by reporting that many native signers of IPSL when asked about separate signs for Adpositions (prepositions or postpositions like in, on, under, across, etc.) usually deny their existence. However, in ASL (American Sign Language) is claimed to have separate sings for Adpositons. Hidam claimed that in fact, IPSL also has Adpositions but that it’s incorporated into the verb in the same way that a Classifier (like HAND-SHAPE) incorporates features of the noun it classifies.

Hidam presenting at the 2nd IPSL Workshop at EOC, DU

Here is a preliminary version of the talk.

Geetnajali again did a marvelous job of interpreting both the talks in IPSL and interpreting questions back to English:

Geetanjali Nair at the 2nd IPSL Workshop at EOC, DU

1st IPSL-List Workshop

IPSL-List Workshop at EOC

Finally, the first IPSL workshop was held today (1^st October 2009) at the DU-NTPC Centre of the Equal Opportunity Cell (EOC) of the University of Delhi. I was apprehensive whether we will have enough to occupy the students and faculty members who had come all the way from IGNOU (as a part of the B.A. in Sign Language 4 year integrated course) for two hours. As it turned out, not only did we have enough material, we went beyond 2 hours and we wanted some more. The interest and the enthusiasm that the students (almost all of them deaf) showed made it worth our while to initiate this event. Like most gatherings among the deaf, this too was no exception in terms of the high level of interest and the obvious hunger for knowledge shown by the students. We at the EOC, especially Prof. Agnihotri, Hidam and myself were extremely happy that it has been a successful beginning and it already promises to be an important event every month in the Capital’s calendar of activities centring around the deaf and Sign Language. I was very glad that Sibaji had also brought Dharmesh, Geetanjali and Robindro along with the many students.

We started the proceedings with a short discussion with Sibaji about the feasibility and the need to integrate a component of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) for the deaf in the already successful ICT short-term certificate course that is being run at the Centre since the last year. Sibaji promised to publicise the course and also help us recruit an appropriate instructor for the same. The course will be run from July 2010 at the Centre. We also requested Sibaji and his team to help us run an advanced course on Sign language (Level 2) from the next semester (January-May 2010) at the Centre, as a sequel to the Level 1 course being run at the moment. It was pointed out that there may be other potential students who have completed A-level from other Institutes in Delhi interested in such a course. Sibaji also lent us several copies of Sign Language Studies journal and also a book edited by Ulrike Zeeshan on Negation and Wh in Sign language.

I welcomed the audience and hoped that they will all benefit from the presentations and following discussion. The newcomers to the mailing list we requested to join the list and initiate discussion and even ask for information with regards to deaf issues and IPSL. Joining the list is easy, follow the instruction given at this site. An introduction about the nature of the event to be held every last Friday of the month was outlined and it was emphasised that it remains mainly academic with the social aspect of increased interaction between the deaf and the hearing.

Sibaji at IPSL-LW

Sibaji Panda made a power point presentation on the topic “ISL Standardization: The Current Scenario” and outlined the need for standardization, the past attempts and a model of unforced propagation of one dominant variety out of the several dialects in terms of dissemination through production of materials through that variety in consultation with linguists and sign language teachers. He entertained several questions from the audience about nature of similarity and difference with between the situations in sign and spoken languages, distance between the varieties from a potential standard variety as well as within the varieties, the nature of variation (in terms of vocabulary but not so much in terms of grammar), etc. Very importantly he drew up a chart of ‘gains’ versus ‘losses’ of standardization and posited questions for the audience to pontificate and discuss about whether or not standardisation is a good ting and whether or not we should go for it. One conclusion that I drew from the presentation is the justification for standardisation in sign language arising out of the need of bringing the deaf community together – it’s like demand for recognition of a minority language (and not several varieties within one community); obviously, we need to keep this aspect in mind when we compare the standardisation procedure as practiced for spoken language and sign language.

Hidam and Geetanjali at IPSL-LW

The next presentation was by Hidam Gaurshyam of the University of Delhi on the linguistic notion of “Incorporation in Sign Language”. The presentation brought out clearly the unavoidable consequence of incorporation in SL given one of the main differences between spoken and SL, that is of the distinguishing aspect of the latter to be able to use language through different modality, e.g., non-manual marking or space. As a consequence it is likely that in SL it is possible to incorporate, for example, the adverb to the verb; so, instead of using separate signs for ‘walk’ and ‘slowly’, the latter incorporates into the former producing a “composite” big word like “walk-slowly”, except that the graphics of the writing system does not allow one to view the simultaneity of the two words ‘walk’ and ‘slowly’. In fact, to bring the point home forcefully, one might want to depict it as follows:

Hidam then went on to show that all verbs don’t allow incorporation, it is only when action, undergoer and path are together that a verb is able to incorporate. In this context the model of Ramchand (2008) was recalled. As this was a technical topic, students had some difficulty in understanding the point being made at the beginning but during the question-answer session, the importance of Linguistics in studying SL was brought home and the essence was understood by all.

At the closing session, the audience was invited to make short presentations at the next meeting in addition to presentations by Sibaji, Hidam and others. It was also announced that the next workshop will be held on 30^th October at 3:30 pm and the first presentation will be Prof Rama Kant Agnihotri on “The Linguistics of Standardisation”.

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Finally, the first IPSL workshop was held today (1^st October 2009) at the DU-NTPC Centre of the Equal Opportunity Cell (EOC) of the University of Delhi. I was apprehensive whether we will have enough to occupy the students and faculty members who had come all the way from IGNOU (as a part of the B.A. in Sign Language 4 year integrated course) for two hours. As it turned out, not only did we have enough material, we went beyond 2 hours and we wanted some more. The interest and the enthusiasm that the students (almost all of them deaf) showed made it worth our while to initiate this event. Like most gatherings among the deaf, this too was no exception in terms of the high level of interest and the obvious hunger for knowledge shown by the students. We at the EOC, especially Prof. Agnihotri, Hidam and myself were extremely happy that it has been a successful beginning and it already promises to be an important event every month in the Capital’s calendar of activities centring around the deaf and Sign Language. I was very glad that Sibaji had also brought Dharmesh, Geetanjali and Robindro along with the many students.

We started the proceedings with a short discussion with Sibaji about the feasibility and the need to integrate a component of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) for the deaf in the already successful ICT short-term certificate course that is being run at the Centre since the last year. Sibaji promised to publicise the course and also help us recruit an appropriate instructor for the same. The course will be run from July 2010 at the Centre. We also requested Sibaji and his team to help us run an advanced course on Sign language (Level 2) from the next semester (January-May 2010) at the Centre, as a sequel to the Level 1 course being run at the moment. It was pointed out that there may be other potential students who have completed A-level from other Institutes in Delhi interested in such a course. Sibaji also lent us several copies of Sign Language Studies journal and also a book edited by Ulrike Zeeshan on Negation and Wh in Sign language.

I welcomed the audience and hoped that they will all benefit from the presentations and following discussion. The newcomers to the mailing list we requested to join the list and initiate discussion and even ask for information with regards to deaf issues and IPSL. Joining the list is easy, follow the instruction given at this site. An introduction about the nature of the event to be held every last Friday of the month was outlined and it was emphasised that it remains mainly academic with the social aspect of increased interaction between the deaf and the hearing.

Sibaji Panda made a power point presentation on the topic “ISL Standardization: The Current Scenario” and outlined the need for standardization, the past attempts and a model of unforced propagation of one dominant variety out of the several dialects in terms of dissemination through production of materials through that variety in consultation with linguists and sign language teachers. He entertained several questions from the audience about nature of similarity and difference with between the situations in sign and spoken languages, distance between the varieties from a potential standard variety as well as within the varieties, the nature of variation (in terms of vocabulary but not so much in terms of grammar), etc. Very importantly he drew up a chart of ‘gains’ versus ‘losses’ of standardization and posited questions for the audience to pontificate and discuss about whether or not standardisation is a good ting and whether or not we should go for it. One conclusion that I drew from the presentation is the justification for standardisation in sign language arising out of the need of bringing the deaf community together – it’s like demand for recognition of a minority language (and not several varieties within one community); obviously, we need to keep this aspect in mind when we compare the standardisation procedure as practiced for spoken language and sign language.

The next presentation was by Hidam Gaurshyam of the University of Delhi on the linguistic notion of “Incorporation in Sign Language”. The presentation brought out clearly the unavoidable consequence of incorporation in SL given one of the main differences between spoken and SL, that is of the distinguishing aspect of the latter to be able to use language through different modality, e.g., non-manual marking or space. As a consequence it is likely that in SL it is possible to incorporate, for example, the adverb to the verb; so, instead of using separate signs for ‘walk’ and ‘slowly’, the latter incorporates into the former producing a “composite” big word like “walk-slowly”, except that the graphics of the writing system does not allow one to view the simultaneity of the two words ‘walk’ and ‘slowly’. In fact, to bring the point home forcefully, one might want to depict it as follows:

SLOWLY

WALK

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walk

slowly

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Hidam then went on to show that all verbs don’t allow incorporation, it is only when action, undergoer and path are together that a verb is able to incorporate. In this context the model of Ramchand (2008) was recalled. As this was a technical topic, students had some difficulty in understanding the point being made at the beginning but during the question-answer session, the importance of Linguistics in studying SL was brought home and the essence was understood by all.

At the closing session, the audience was invited to make short presentations at the next meeting in addition to presentations by Sibaji, Hidam and others. It was also announced that the next workshop will be held on 30^th October at 3:30 pm and the first presentation will be Prof Rama Kant Agnihotri on “The Linguistics of Standardisation”.