Charlotte HAUSER

SIGN LANGAGE’ SYNTAX AND ACQUISITION (SILSA) ANR – AAPG 2023

Rôle : PI

The SiLSA project aims to address three major gaps in research and clinical practice in French Sign Language (LSF): the absence of diagnostic tools to detect signed aphasias; the lack of knowledge on typical syntax acquisition; and the absence of assessment tools to identify syntactic delays or atypicalities in deaf children.

Signers, whether deaf or hearing, can develop acquired language disorders following a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or neurodegenerative disease. Unlike spoken languages, no standardized tools yet exist to diagnose these disorders in LSF, leading to delayed diagnoses, inadequate care, and a deterioration in quality of life. The development of reliable, culturally adapted assessment tools is therefore essential to ensure equal access to healthcare.

Objective 1 – Detection and remediation of aphasia in LSF SiLSA is designing field-based clinical tools to identify aphasias in LSF and is developing remediation strategies, in particular to treat anomia, a frequent symptom of aphasic disorders.

Objective 2 – Typical acquisition of LSF Studying language acquisition in neurotypical deaf children is complex. As with hearing children, comprehension of complex sentences remains difficult around ages 6–7, and only 5 to 10% of deaf people are native signers exposed to LSF from birth. SiLSA therefore analyzes LSF acquisition across a range of linguistic profiles (native, early, and late signers) reflecting the true diversity of the deaf community. Since deaf children are often simultaneously exposed to spoken language (via hearing aids, lip reading, or cued speech systems), their development is studied within the broader framework of minority language bilingualism. In parallel, the project assesses written French proficiency, in order to avoid any oralist bias and to focus on authentic linguistic competencies.

Objective 3 – Creation of standardized assessment tools The final objective is to design and validate a standardized assessment battery enabling clinicians and educators to analyze linguistic development in LSF, identify potential delays, and propose appropriate interventions.

THE PROCESSING OF RELATIVE CLAUSES IN LIS AND ITALIAN:

In collaboration with Elena Fornasiero (Post-doc, University of Venice) Study of the comprehension of relative sentences in Italian and Italian Sign Language (LIS), two languages that are very different in terms of their relativization strategy. Italian features post-nominal external-head relatives, while LIS features internal-head relatives. We replicate the eyetracking paradigm used in Hauser & Pozniak (2019) to investigate the presence or absence of asymmetry between subject and object relative propositions. To this end, we compare the performance of monolinguals (Italian, LIS) with that of CODA (Child Of Deaf Adults) individuals, bimodal bilinguals. 
The aim of this study is twofold: (i) to assess SRC and ORC comprehension in two typologically different languages, namely LIS (SOV displaying IHRCs) and Italian (SVO displaying EHRCs) using a time-sensitive method: Hauser &Pozniak's (2019) eye-tracking Visual-only World Paradigm, adapted to sign languages; (ii) compare the performances of L1, L2 deaf participants and hearing Italian/LIS bimodal bilinguals, to see whether these populations vary in their processing of LIS IHRCs and whether the performance of the latter population may be influenced by their bilingualism. 
 

QUESTION-ANSWER PAIRS IN SIGN LANGUAGE:

In collaboration with Caterina Donati (Professor, Université Paris Cité) We propose to reinterpret the typology of pseudo-clivatives in terms of a process of grammaticalization ranging from questions/answers (QAPs) to free relatives used in predicative propositions. We show that, along this process, what was a question gradually loses its clausal properties to acquire nominal properties such as phi-features and referentiality. Our arguments will draw on the rich pre-existing literature but also on recent work, including our own on LSF, on question-answer pairs in sign language.

ADAPTATION OF PCA/SFA THERAPY IN LSF:

Co-supervision of Anna Pietrzak's speech therapy dissertation, in which she developed an adaptation of PCA (phonological components analysis) and SFA (Semantic Features Analysis) protocols in LSF, to treat anomia in Deaf aphasic patients.