A broadly usage-based account of British Sign Language syntax

The most important and influential research on human language has traditionally focused only on spoken languages. Sign languages, produced by the hands and body (rather than the speech organs) and perceived by the eyes (not ears) are a unique and therefore important test case for ideas about the way that human languages work, and whether the diverse set of human languages in the world today do or do not share some universal patterns of structural organisation.

The proposed project will conduct the first ever large-scale, detailed investigation of the grammatical system of a sign language, combining the use of converging evidence from both experimental data and spontaneous conversation data with corpus-based, cognitive/functional and sociolinguistic approaches. Corpus-based studies of language are those that rely on large, representative, computerised collections of language recordings (such as the British National Corpus of English). Cognitive/functional theories of grammar assume that our knowledge of language arises out of the many ways we use it, rather than from some innate grammar hard-wired into our brain. Sociolinguistics is the study of how social factors, such as a person's gender or age, are involved in language variation and change. There is growing recognition in the field of linguistics that there is considerable overlap across these three areas of study - all relying on language use. This broadly usage-based approach to studying grammatical structure constitutes the current state-of-the-art in linguistic theory and description for spoken languages and will be applied here to a sign language for the first time, using evidence from a recently collected corpus of British Sign Language (BSL). Other data collected will include both production (i.e. signed responses to stimuli such as cartoons) and judgement data (i.e. asking BSL signers for their intuitions about the acceptability of various grammatical structures).

Overall, this project takes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of sign language grammar across usage-based linguistics and related disciplines, taking advantage of new methods and technologies. Since little is known about how sign languages are structured and used, this project will enable us to study what is possible and impossible in BSL grammar (which is suggested via elicited production and judgement data, on a much larger scale from previous research) and importantly, what is probable and improbable in BSL (which is directly shown via spontaneous corpus data). The use of both types of data, using a broad range of usage-based approaches, is the best way to discover facts about (sign) language structure and use. This will put researchers in a position to make appropriate comparisons between signed and spoken languages, and thus understand language diversity and linguistic universals, a key area of interest within linguistics and cognitive science more generally.

Who will benefit:
-Practitioners: The greater understanding of BSL that will result from our work will lead to improved opportunities for training of sign language teachers, sign language interpreters, and educators of deaf children. This will lead to improved sign language teaching resources, such as textbooks and video/online materials, that accurately describe how the language is used by a range of subgroups within the British deaf community. This will in turn enable us to create more reliable and valid assessment instruments to evaluate deaf children's language development, as well as assess the progress of students in classes teaching BSL as an additional language or in sign language interpreter trainee programs. Thus, our work will benefit professionals in the wider field of deafness generally.
-BSL learners: The benefit of BSL research to practitioners and professionals noted above will have an immediate impact on those who learn BSL from these educators. This includes hearing people who learn BSL formally as adult students (in further/higher education or in third sector adult learning programmes). But there are also many individuals (deaf and hearing, children, teenagers and adults, also some hearing parents of deaf children) who learn BSL informally through friends, family or by other means. The benefits to informal learners are perhaps not as immediate as formal learners but they will be just as powerful, if not more so, considering that most BSL signers have few opportunities to study BSL formally.
-Deaf people in society: A major social benefit will be in relation to equity and the status of deaf people in British society. More appropriate resources for the bilingual education of deaf children and for sign language teaching interpreter training will lead to improved quality of educational and interpreting services for deaf people and provide more opportunities for self-development and employment. Deaf people who can become more highly qualified and trained will be in a better position to contribute to society in different ways, and will be able to achieve greater access, and equity in the wider community.
-Policy-makers: The greater understanding of BSL and improved resources for BSL teaching, learning and research will provide an evidence-base for policy-makers in supporting appropriate education, training and services for deaf children and adults. This will help close the gap in education, employment, and health between deaf people throughout their lifespan and their hearing peers.
- International beneficiaries: Although there is now a large and growing number of sign language corpora worldwide, very little syntactic research has been done with these corpora. Practitioners, learners, deaf communities and policy makers in other countries will benefit from the findings from this project which will serve as a model for corpus-based, data-driven research on the syntax of other sign languages.

How they will benefit from this research:
-Accessible online BSL corpus: The fact that the BSL Corpus (http://www.bslcorpusproject.org/data) is available online to the deaf community and the wider public, alongside publicly available online corpora of spoken languages such as the British National Corpus of English, will help justify and strengthen the linguistic status of BSL which will in turn support full participation of their users in British society.
- New grammar section of BSL SignBank: Inclusion of a grammatical description of BSL in BSL SignBank and regular subsequent publicity of it on social media will ensure that the findings reach the most important stakeholders.
-Knowledge exchange: Workshops and user group meetings for the British deaf community will be held across the UK during the project duration. Moreover, research findings will also be shared via DCAL workshops, short courses and postgraduate degree programmes specifically targeting interpreters, teachers of the deaf, and BSL tutors.