Abstract here: https://ai.vub.ac.be/sites/default/files/WilsonandLittle%20Protolang%20abstract_0.pdf

1. Emerging languages in Esoteric
and Exoteric Niches: Evidence
from Rural Sign Languages
Jack J. Wilson
The University of Leeds, Linguistics and Phonetics
Hannah Little
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

2. Jack J. Wilson
Linguistics and Phonetics department at the University of
Leeds, England.
His PhD project explores the impact gestural contributions
may have at the level of discourse and comprehension.
Interests: Semantics/Pragmatics, linguistics of sign
languages, multimodality, and interactional sociolinguistics.
Hannah Little
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium in the Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory.
Her PhD topic is looking at the evolution of speech using
cultural learning experiments.
Interests: Linguistic structure, Evolutionary Linguistics,
Evolution of Speech, Linguistic niche hypothesis
The Authors

3. ● Why Sign Languages
● Linguistic Niche hypothesis and USLs and RSLs
● Pragmatic hypotheses of language change
● Kata Kolok
● Data
● Theory
● Conclusions
Talk outline

4. ● They're understudied in the current
literature
● As sign languages are more
transparent/iconic, it is easier to make
good guesses about origins.
● New sign languages not born from other
languages.
Why Sign Languages?

5. Who knows?
Population dynamics were a lot different back
then.
Our prehistoric ancestors existed without
recourse to writing, telephone, television,
computers etc. and within a single, relatively
stable socio-cultural space.
Wray and Grace (2007)
ARE ANY PRESENT-DAY
LANGUAGES LIKE THE FIRST
HUMAN LANGUAGE?

6. Social structure can affect linguistic structures
Populations/languages adapt to environmental
niches
Most existing literature looks at trends in
morphological and syntactic features as the result
of second language learning etc.
(e.g. Lupyan & Dale, 2010; Bentz & Winter, 2012).
The Linguistic Niche Hypothesis
(Lupyan & Dale, 2010)

7. Languages in Exoteric Niches:
● larger speaker populations
● greater geographical coverage
● greater degree of contact with other languages
● intergroup communication - use the language
to speak to outsiders (individuals from different
ethnic and/or linguistic backgrounds)
● more non-native speakers
Exoteric Niches
Wray and Grace (2007)

8. Used in exoteric niches
Used by the majority of signers within a country
Embedded within the larger spoken community
Established public services e.g.
● media services such as sign interpreted
television
● deaf clubs, which provide deaf specific events
● deaf education systems
Johnston & Schembri (2007), Jepson (1991), Sutton-Spence & Woll, 1999;
Urban Sign Languages (USLs)

9. ● large lexicons
● phonologically complex elements
● syntactically complex expressions
USLs

10. Languages in Esoteric Niches:
● smaller speaker populations
● smaller geographical coverage
● less contact with other languages
● intra-group communication
● Share:
○ a culture and environment
○ general knowledge of the community and its
activities
○ have a unified identity.
Esoteric Niches

11. Used in Esoteric Niches
Found in small villages of the developing world
Have been compared to home-sign systems
(Washabaugh, Woodward, & DeSantis, 1978)
Rural Sign Languages (RSLs)

12. no access to media services
social events such as religious ceremonies
are not translated into sign
no access to any form of formal education
no finger spelling
RSLs

13. Pragmatic Processes in
Language Change
Pragmatic processes = the inferential processes
that interlocutors make during interaction
Sperber & Wilson, Levinson, Grice etc. etc.
Scott-Phillips (2010): communicative systems
require pragmatic principles at their core.
Traugott and Dasher (2002) - language change
must begin with the speaker (i.e. production)

14. Pragmatic Processes in
Esoteric niches
Wray & Grace: "[languages in esoteric niches
have] huge reliance on shared knowledge,
pragmatics and common practice."

15. Rural Indian Sign Language
Uses pointing to refer to:
bed, people, clothes, shoes, stone
(Jespon, 1991)
Most common use of deictic gestures in
referring to body parts (de Vos, 2011)
Pointing in RSLs

16. Providence Island Sign Language

17. based on the non-linguistic
environment/context
Jepson's continuum
Purely arbitrary, indecipherable
from context or iconicity
(Jespon, 1991)

18. Kata Kolok
Only twelve generations old
50 deaf individuals in a population of 2200
Two general strategies for naming colours:
“naming an object that typically has the color”
“pointing at an object within the vicinity that is
colored in the same way”
(: 71)

19. Colour Terms
● Do not require a technologically advanced culture
● All known languages possess at least two colour terms
● They are abstract
○ This results interesting dilemma in terms of
lexicalisation

20. The use and lexicalisation of colour terms
The Munsell Colour chart
From work on the organisation of the colour lexicon
(for a review, see Kay and Maffi, 1999)
Data

21. Signing videos
de Vos, 2011

22. Language change is cyclical and parasitic upon itself.
Traugott and Dasher’s (2002)
Invited Inference Theory of Semantic Change

23. Conclusions
Environmental niches affect individual pragmatic
processes
Individual level processes can explain the shape
of population wide trends
RSLs are useful to make inferences about
protolanguage
RSLs are useful for observing why semantic
change might happen

24. Questions?

25. References
Bentz, C. & Winter, B. (2012). The impact of L2 speakers on the evolution of case marking. In:
Scott-Phillips, T. C., Tamariz, M., Cartmill, E. A., & Hurford, J. R. (Eds.), Proceedings of
the 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (pp. 58-63). New Jersey:
World Scientific.
de Vos, C. (2011). Kata Kolok color terms and the emergence of lexical signs and rural signing
communities. Senses & Society 6 (1): 68-76.
Jepson, J. 1991. Urban and Rural Sign Language in India. Language and Society, 20:1, 37-57.
Lupyan, G. & Dale, R. (2010). Language is Partly Determined by Social Structure. PLoS ONE:
5(1): e8559.
Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. 1986 [1995]. Relevance: Communication and Cognition 2ed. Blackwell
Publishing, Oxford: UK.
Traugott, E. C., & Dasher, R. B. 2002. Regularity in semantic change. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Washabaugh, W., Woodward, J. C., & DeSantis, S. (1978). Providence Island Sign: A
contextdependent language. Anthropological Linguistics, 20 (3): 95-109.
Wray, A. & Grace, G. (2007). The consequences of talking to strangers: Evolutionary corollaries
of sociocultural influences on linguistic form. Lingua 117 (3): 543-578.
Further questions? mljjw@leeds.ac.uk or hannah@ai.vub.ac.be

26. Emerging languages in Esoteric
and Exoteric Niches: Evidence
from Rural Sign Languages
Jack J. Wilson
The University of Leeds, Linguistics and Phonetics
Hannah Little
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory