Second language acquisition of American Sign Language influences co-speech gesture production. 2020

Jill Weisberg, and Shannon Casey, and Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, and Karen Emmorey
Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience, San Diego State University 6495 Alvarado Rd., Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92120 USA.

Previous work indicates that 1) adults with native sign language experience produce more manual co-speech gestures than monolingual non-signers, and 2) one year of ASL instruction increases gesture production in adults, but not enough to differentiate them from non-signers. To elucidate these effects, we asked early ASL-English bilinguals, fluent late second language (L2) signers (≥ 10 years of experience signing), and monolingual non-signers to retell a story depicted in cartoon clips to a monolingual partner. Early and L2 signers produced manual gestures at higher rates compared to non-signers, particularly iconic gestures, and used a greater variety of handshapes. These results indicate susceptibility of the co-speech gesture system to modification by extensive sign language experience, regardless of the age of acquisition. L2 signers produced more ASL signs and more handshape varieties than early signers, suggesting less separation between the ASL lexicon and the co-speech gesture system for L2 signers.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries

Related Publications

Jill Weisberg, and Shannon Casey, and Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, and Karen Emmorey
October 2012, Bilingualism (Cambridge, England),
Jill Weisberg, and Shannon Casey, and Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, and Karen Emmorey
December 1993, Journal of speech and hearing research,
Jill Weisberg, and Shannon Casey, and Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, and Karen Emmorey
October 1987, Cognition,
Jill Weisberg, and Shannon Casey, and Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, and Karen Emmorey
January 2015, Journal of child language,
Jill Weisberg, and Shannon Casey, and Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, and Karen Emmorey
September 2018, Applied psycholinguistics,
Jill Weisberg, and Shannon Casey, and Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, and Karen Emmorey
July 2001, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
Jill Weisberg, and Shannon Casey, and Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, and Karen Emmorey
April 2024, Developmental science,
Jill Weisberg, and Shannon Casey, and Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, and Karen Emmorey
January 2017, The Behavioral and brain sciences,
Jill Weisberg, and Shannon Casey, and Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, and Karen Emmorey
April 2018, Cognitive science,
Jill Weisberg, and Shannon Casey, and Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, and Karen Emmorey
August 1980, The Maryland nurse,
Copied contents to your clipboard!