From variant to standard: An overview of the standardization process of
the lexicon of Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) over two decades.
Paper presented at the “Conference Dictionaries and Standardisation of Languages”
on November 7-8 2001, at the Gallaudet University Kellogg Conference Center in Washington,
D.C.
Dr. Trude Schermer
Dutch Sign Language Centre/ University of Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Email: [email protected]
Introduction
A language develops in places where people communicate with each other. New words or signs arise
constantly. When people within a language community use these new words or signs to communicate
they become conventional. In this paper the process of standardization of the lexicon and grammar of
Sign language of the Netherlands (SLN) will be described in relation to the codification of the
language. Two large national projects are important in this respect: the KOMVA project (1982-1990)
and the Stabol project (1999-2002). In this paper I would like to share our experiences with you.
Research into SLN started in the early eighties. The attitude towards signing changed at that time
under the influence of the Total Communication philosophy. In parent guidance programmes in the
Netherlands parents of deaf children were taught sign supported Dutch. The pressure from the Dutch
Parent Organisation (Fodok) to develop materials for parents and deaf children lead to the initiation of
a large project to make an inventory of the signs used by Deaf people in the Netherlands. This project the KOMVA project - was carried out by the University of Amsterdam and the Dutch Foundation for
the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Child (NSDSK). Very little information existed about SLN at that time.
Deaf people were not used to signing openly. In most schools for the Deaf signing had not been
allowed since the beginning of the century. Around the five schools for the Deaf in the Netherlands
signs were originated and used by Deaf people, thus leading to regional variation.
It was not clear whether or not the variation was limited to the lexicon. No information on the
grammar of the language of Deaf people was available at that time.
The KOMVA-project (1982-1990)
Goal of the KOMVA project was to make an inventory of signs used by deaf people in the
Netherlands in order to compile a bilingual - Dutch/SLN - dictionary for parents and teachers of deaf
children. A brief survey of the Sign Dictionaries available at the time revealed that most of them
either:
-
did not provide systematically information about variants (Stokoe et al, 1965);
were based on the information of one informant (Sternberg,1981);
were not accepted by the Deaf community when only so called standard signs were listed
(the first Swedish dictionary produced in 1977).
Or simply ignored de issue of regional variation.
In 1986 Clark Denmark – when asked how the BSL dictionary accounted for regional variation, gave
the following answer:
“We have about fifteen variations, because of 46 deaf schools in Britain. In Britain we have been
trying to make a dictionary for fifteen years! We have been arguing about which signs to use all the
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time” (Tervoort, 1986, 156). It would take another six years for the first BSL dictionary to be
completed and very little regional variation was accounted for in the end ((Brien et al, 1992).
The fact that we live in a very small country has probably contributed to the design of the KOMVA
project.
Almost without realizing the magnitude of the immense task that lay ahead of us, we decided to take
regional variation into consideration. In retrospect our lives as researchers would have been much less
complicated if we had made a different choice. However, we did have a good argument for our
policy: spoken language planning studies in various countries had shown that it is controversial to just
select one dialect to be the standard or official language. As soon as a dialect is chosen at the costs of
others, users of other dialects will not accept the standard language. There are several examples of
deaf communities who never accepted national sign language dictionaries because the regional signs
had not been accounted for.
Furthermore, if we were to select a region, we did not have any proper information. One cannot make
a national dictionary without national data after all.
Data collection
At the start of the project a great number of deaf people suggested to collect our data around the five
schools for the deaf where deaf people had developed their own “sign language” in the course of the
years.
The project team (consisting of two hearing linguists) compiled a list of 2000 Dutch concepts in
different contexts. The list was based on frequency lists of Dutch words and on target wordlists for
preschool children (Kohnstamm en de Vries, 1981). In five regions groups of deaf people were willing
to share their knowledge of SLN with us. The groups usually consisted of fifteen people, varying in
age between 18 and 70 years old. For two years we travelled around the country in the evenings with
heavy video equipment to meet the volunteers in the regions of Groningen (in the North) Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, Voorburg (all three in the West) and Eindhoven (in the South)
2
Results of the KOMVA project
The meetings yielded 15.000 signs on videotapes. All signs were described in a phonetic notation
system that was based on a system that was developed and used by a deaf Sign language teacher and
on the Stokoe system (KOMVA notatiesystem, 1982). All signs for a particular concept were listed,
both variants within the regions and variants across regions.
The data were used two answer two main questions:
- Are all regions equally different from each other?
- What is the nature of the variation between regions compared to the variation within
one region?
Comparison of a subset of the data - the signs for 600 concepts - revealed the following results
(Schermer, 1986,1990):
-
for 166 concepts there were identical or similar signs in all regions;
for 202 concepts there were two different signs;
for 368 concepts there were more than three different signs.
Furthermore the data showed that all regions- except the region Eindhoven (in the South) had
significantly more signs in common with the region of Amsterdam than with any of the other regions.
Regions that are geographically close to each other (Rotterdam and Voorburg) had less signs in
common with each other than with the region of Amsterdam, which indicates that distance had no
influence on the size of lexical variation. We could not apply a rule such as : the further apart, the
more different from each other.
Apart from variation across regions, the data showed variation within regions. This variation is mostly
due to the factor of age of the informants. We did not separate ‘old’ from ‘new’ signs.
So, the answer to our main question was: yes there are lexical differences between five regions,
however, if we excluded the data from one region (in the South), we found that 50% of all signs were
shared between regions. The region of Eindhoven in the South yielded data that seemed to be a little
deviant from the other regions. The most likely explanation for this is the fact that school for the Deaf
in St. Michielsgestel had been using a sign system (Van Beek system) until 1920. A lot of the signs in
Eindhoven were initialised signs very closely related to the signs used in the Van Beek system. An
analysis of handshapes supported this explanation: the region of Eindhoven deviates from the other
regions with respect to the use and frequency distribution of the handshapes.
Historically there has been a lot of interaction between deaf people from the North and the region of
Amsterdam. Several people from the North have moved to Amsterdam in the first part of the 20th
century. This explains probably why so many signs in Amsterdam are clearly influenced by signs used
in the North. The region of Groningen in the North has been influenced by French Sign language,
which is illustrated by the sign for GOOD. The founder of the Royal Institute for the Deaf in
Groningen, Henri Daniel Guyot, went to visit in 1784 the school for the Deaf in Paris. The director of
this school was Charles Michel de L’ Epee. De L’ Epee taught Guyot the basic principles of educating
deaf children, using the sign language of French deaf people. When Guyot returned to Groningen, he
not only took back with him the new ideas on deaf education, but also the French signs (Betten, 1984).
Accounting for lexical variation in the dictionary
The inventory of signs and the subsequent comparison had shed more light on the variation of the
lexicon of SLN. The next issue we had to deal with was the way in which we would account for the
variation in our bilingual dictionary.
Our solution and the choices we made were influenced by the following:
On the one hand there was clearly lexical variation between regions. For deaf users of SLN this lexical
variation seemed to be no problem: signers from different regions understood each other quite well.
On the other hand among hearing people there was a growing demand for standard SLN signs. At first
the ideas for a standard SLN came from hearing parents and teachers of deaf children who had to learn
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SLN. Subsequently deaf teachers of SLN courses came to see the possible advantages of a standard
lexicon of SLN. No one in the Deaf community however was ever in favour of standardising one
region at the cost of others. This was to be expected, but still remarkable, especially since the region of
Amsterdam seemed to be a central region. From experiences and research into the successes and
failures of standardisation of spoken languages, we knew that one has to be very careful not to
interfere with the natural processes of standardisation in a language. What do we mean by that? For
example, the increase of communication trough travelling of deaf people between regions led to an
exchange of signs among deaf people. Because of this increased interaction between signers, resulting
in an increased awareness of their language, a permanent flow of exchange of signs started to function
as a natural force in the unification of different signs. In the eighties and early nineties SLN was
hardly shown on national television. Nowadays, a limited number of daily news broad casts are
translated by SLN interpreters. The signs that are used by the interpreters find their way rapidly among
deaf and hearing signers.
Based on the analysis of KOMVA data we wanted to accomplish two things:
to account for variation as much as possible
and
to try to help the process of unification at the same time
Therefore, we selected signs that were common to all regions and decided to label them “preference
signs”. For the number of concepts we discussed in our comparison study, this means that half of them
have a preference sign.
The decision was made to list the preference signs in first position in the dictionary; any variants
follow in second and third position. We also decided to make the regional variation explicit in the
dictionary: for each sign the regional background was indicated by a letter referring to the name of a
region.
The results can be found in the first national dictionary of SLN that was produced for parents of young
deaf children “Handen uit de Mouwen” (KOMVA, 1988) and subsequently the basic dictionary of
signs “Basisgebarenschat” (KOMVA, 1989).
Figure 1.
•
A
•
E
•
G
•
V
•
R
Fig. 1 shows an example from the dictionary “Handen uit de Mouwen”, 1988.
The sign TO SIT is used in all regions as is indicated by the dot in front of the letters. The letters
stand for the different regiosn Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Groningen, Voorburg and Rotterdam.
A side effect of this way of working in compiling a dictionary, is the fact that users may fill gaps. For
example: four regions used the same sign for a number of different colours terms. The region in the
North however used a range of different signs for different colours. By providing users with this
information, SLN learners in the West and South started to copy the Northern signs. Now, the
Northern signs have become nationally used sign.
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The procedures we followed in selecting preference signs can be summarized as follows. A sign is
chosen as preference sign if:
-
the sign has identical meaning in all regions and is produced in an identical form in all
regions;
the sign has identical meaning in the majority of the regions and is produced in an
identical form in the majority of the regions;
only one region uses a sign for a concept and the other regions do not have a sign.
The first Basic Sign Dictionary shows that for most entries there is a Northern sign and a sign that is
shared by the Western en Southern regions. So in fact we can speak of regional variation between two
major regions: the North and the South-West.
In the second half of the eighties we started to produce a third dictionary, mainly dealing with
concepts of emotions and feelings (KOMVA, 1993). The deaf people who worked at this dictionary
were all also working as communication teachers at schools for the Deaf. It was felt by this group of
people that it would be much easier to have one sign for the concepts and not to take regional variation
into account. The main reason for this view was the negative attitude of hearing parents and teachers
towards having to learn different signs when they really did not need to know about regional variation.
The original criteria for preference signs were extended with the following:
-
signs that are used within the schools (on condition that these signs are real SLN signs) are
preferred;
a more frequently used sign is preferred over a sign that is not used that often;
a sign that is considered to be modern is preferred over a sign that is labelled old
fashioned;
the differences between formal and informal signing should be reckoned with.
Again only deaf people made the decisions about which signs were to be put in the dictionary.
From books to CD-ROM’s
Around 1993 the CD-ROM technology came within our reach. It opened tremendous possibilities.
With additional funding the Dutch Foundation for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Child and the Dutch
Sign Language centre were able to produce a first bilingual CD-ROM for parents and teachers of Deaf
children containing Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) and written Dutch. The first CD-ROM
was produced in 1996; the second in 1997 en the third in 1999. (Schermer, Emmerik and Pauluis,
1996, 1997, Schermer, Geuze and Emmerik, 1999)
The CD-ROM’s draw on the technology that was developed in the TIDE-project1 but is not linked
directly to the Signbase database. A new, simpler database was developed.
Each CD-ROM contains about a 1000 sign movies (citation form, grammatical variations and stories)
and the translation equivalents into written Dutch. The information can be accessed through two
parameters of the sign namely handshape and location and through the written word. All signs are
grouped into certain domains. The user can also search for signs within a particular domain or theme.
The interface is designed for both children and adults: a special font is used that is attractive to
1
Signbase is a British/Dutch project that was funded by the European Community under the TIDE
programme. Its main objective has been to build a sign language database, which can be used to
store linguistic information about a particular sign language. This repository then can be used to
generate different types of signed language applications. The project commenced in March 1994 and
ended in December 1996. The consortium consisted of people from three different places: the Deaf
Research Unit in Durham, UK (DSRU), the Dutch Foundation for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Child
(NSDSK) in Amsterdam and Bright Side of Life computer consultancy (BSL) in Maarssen.
5
children and special attention has been paid to the graphical elements in the interface. The CD-ROM’s
are highly appreciated by deaf children, teachers and parents, and also - since they are available at all
major bookstores- by many people who have an interest in sign language of the Netherlands.
The choice of signs was determined according to the following criteria:
-
signs that clearly differ from each other are preferred over signs that only differ in
mouthing (or spoken component, Schermer 1990);
signs that are related in form and meaning should be considered together, not separate
from each other. For example the signs for GISTEREN (YESTERDAY) and MORGEN
(TOMORROW) are clearly related to each other; this applies to signs for days of the
week, antonyms (uncle/aunt, nephew/niece, father/mother, brother/sister) and compound
signs.
At first the cd-rom’s contained only signs from the region South/West. The reason for this was that the
cd-rom’s were not intended to be used nationally. At that time computers and cd-rom’s were not
widely available. However, we were surprised by the success of the cd-rom’s and it became evident
that we should have taken the signs from the North into account as well. Teacher and parents as well
as Deaf people in the North felt very much neglected. The next series of cd-rom’s that were produced
did contain both regional variants (GIDS, 1998). By clicking on a button the user may choose to see
the signs that all regions have in common (the national signs), the signs that are typical for the North
or South/West.
Recognition of SLN
Since the beginning a the 1980’s the organisation for the Deaf (Dutch Deaf Council) has fought for
recognition of SLN as the official language of Deaf people and the fourth language of the Netherlands
(after Dutch, Frysian and Neder-Saksisch). Around 1995 the lobby for recognition became stronger.
The idea was supported by a wide group of organisations and institutions: the Dutch Deaf Council, the
organisation for Parents of Deaf children (Fodok), all schools for the Deaf, the University of
Amsterdam and the Dutch Sign Language centre. All forces worked together and finally in 1996 the
Dutch government (Department of Education and Department of Health and Welfare) installed a
commission “Commission Dutch Sign Language” to investigate all aspects of an official recognition
of SLN and to make recommendations with respect to the way in which offcial recognition of SLN
can and should be implemented. The report that came out in 1997 contained a great number of
recommendations to the government ( Meer dan een gebaar, 1997) to improve the situation of Deaf
people in different areas of society such as education, work, situation at home, access to media
(television, newspapers, internet), mobility, interpreters.
Not surprisingly the commission (chaired by Prof. Anne Baker, University of Amsterdam) strongly
advised the government to recognize SLN as an official language. One of the arguments the report
mentions is the fact that Deaf children are entitled to bilingual education: that is education in
spoken/written Dutch and SLN. I will not go into the arguments for bilingual education in this paper.
The fact that all schools for the Deaf in the Netherlands decided to provide Deaf children with
education in both SLN and Dutch was a major force in convincing the government that funds should
be allocated to develop educational materials.
Following the recommendations in the report, the Dutch Government funded for three year a steering
committee in which among others the Dutch Deaf Council, the Parent organisation, all schools for the
Deaf, the University of Amsterdam and the Dutch Sign language Centre are represented, chaired by an
independent chairman Prof. Dr. van London. This committee (Stuurgroep NGT2) was assigned to
carry out three major projects:
-
Standardisation of Basic Lexicon of SLN and to develop new signs to be used in schools
for the Deaf (Stabol- project);
Standardization of the Basic Grammar of SLN;
6
-
To design a curriculum for SLN as a second language and the subject of Deaf Culture.
Even though all projects are very exciting, I will only discuss the Stabol project in this paper. The
Dutch Sign Language Centre is involved in all three projects, the Grammar project is carried out by
the University of Amsterdam. In the spring of 2002 the results of all projects will be available (for
Stabol and the Grammar project the results will be CD-ROM’s).
Stabol-project (1999-2002)2
The standardisation of the lexicon of SLN has been (and still is) a very controversial issue. It has
become a conditio sine qua non for the Dutch Government: without a standard no legal recognition of
SLN. The idea of standardisation has met with strong opposition in the Deaf community and from
researchers. We tried to convince civil servants at the Department of Education, politicians and
secretaries of State. All in vain. How could a language be recognized if there was no official standard
was their permanent answer. A major problem for the government is the fact that there is no written
form of SLN. There is no standard spoken Dutch, only a standard written form of Dutch.
Therefore we decided to be practical and to propose a compromise: only the basic lexicon to be used at
schools for the Deaf and new signs were to be standardised up to about 5000 signs.
In order to carry out the task of standardising signs, a working group was established:
Linguists, native deaf signers, native hearing signers drew up a set of guidelines based on the
experiences within the KOMVA project.
A major concern was the reaction of the Deaf community to this project. We wanted the Deaf
community to be involved in the process, to make everyone part of the project, so that everyone could
understand the issues. We have set up a network of Deaf people: the working group consists of Deaf
people from different regions and they keep in touch with larger groups of deaf people. They bring in
the ideas from other people. However, the working group takes the decisions.
Starting points
We have made a distinction between guidelines and starting points in the Stabol project. The premises
are:
a. A standard sign means that this sign will be used nationally in schools and pre-school
programmes for deaf children and their parents. It does not mean that other variants are no
longer ‘proper signs’ that can no longer be used within the Deaf community;
b. The choices that were made for the dictionaries on CD-ROM will be taken over. Often choices
have been made already with respect to regional variation within regions;
c. SLN rather than Dutch is the starting point for the list of concepts;
d. Fingerspelled words and Signs based on sounds (used in speech therapy) are not considered
SLN signs. Exception to this are fingerspelled words that have become signs, such as the sign
for BLAUW (BLUE) and SAAI (BORING).
e. We try to incorporate as many different (with respect to form) signs for different concepts;
f.
We will reckon with Deaf Culture and the etymology of signs;
g. If we can really not come to a reasonable solution which will counteract the whole process of
standardization, we will accept freedom of choice and we will include two variants
2
Many people are involved in the Stabol project: Corine den Besten, Bea Bouwmeester, Ellen Buisman, Wim Emmerik,
Jacobien Geuze, Rita Harder, Ilse Jobse, Geert de Jong, Corline Koolhof, Beppy Maljers, Elly Meijer, Sarah Muller,Trude
Schermer, Arie Terpstra, Maarten Vreugdenhil, Yfke van der Woude.
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Method of standardisation
The Stabol working group met a great number of times in the past year for two consecutive days in the
inspiring environment of a cloister. Discussion session were chaired by different people; the
participants prepared their contribution beforehand and there was a balance between work and play.
Between two to three hundred signs were discussed each time the group met. Needless to say, this type
of work was done in the right environment: in Dutch we have a metaphor that more than adequately
describes the nature of the work : Monnikenwerk (literally the work of monks, meaning tedious
drudgery).
In preparation of the meetings lists of concepts and proposals for signs were compiled by the project
members of Dutch Sign Language Centre. The following set of guidelines was developed:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
A sign is considered a standard sign if it has identical form and meaning in all regions;
If only one region uses a sign for a concept and the other regions do not have a sign, this sign
becomes a standard sign;
More frequently used signs are preferred over relatively rare signs;
Differences between formal and informal signing, adult signing and children’s signing should
be accounted for;
Signs that differ from each other in the manual part of the sign are preferred over signs that
only differ from each other in mouthing or signs that are based on fingerspelling or sounds;
If a choice has to be made between a sign with a spoken component (mouthing) and a sign that
has a nonmanual part that is not related to spoken language, that latter sign will be preferred;
The coherence of morphologically related signs should be respected;
The lost iconic relationship between a sign and a referent is no reason to choose a different
sign (for example the iconic relation in the sign for KOFFIE (COFFEE) is no longer evident to
young people.
Results
At this moment almost 2000 signs have been discussed in the working group. For 750 signs the
national signs that were available already on CD-RROM have been approved of. For all other signs
choices were made between two or more regional variants. In some occasions, such as the signs for
father, mother we have included both variants and labelled them synonyms. We have decided not to
make the regional background explicit on the CD-ROM that will be produced of this Standard lexicon.
For research purposes we do keep track of the regional variants in the database. However in the user
interface the regional information will be hidden. A problem which is specific for sign language
dictionaries is the choice of models: the person who performs the citation form of the sign. Since we
live in a small country, everyone knows everyone else. In order to make the standard signs acceptable
to all regions, we have to select our models very carefully. They have to be respected by everyone.
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Finally I will discuss a few examples of choices that were made. For the concept of LAMP two
regional variants were available as is shown in the following drawings:
The first sign comes from the Northern region (Groningen), the second sign is used in the rest of the
country. The first sign is made on the chin and cannot be localised. The second sign can be localised
depending on the context. It was decided that both signs should be incorporated in the standard
lexicon: a general sign for lamp (LAMP 1) and a more specific sign (LAMP 2) that can also be used
in compound signs such as bicycle (head)lamp.
One of the guidelines is that the coherence of morphologically related signs should not be disrupted.
An example of this is the discussion around the colour signs. There are three very similar signs for
RED, ORANGE and PINK.
RED
PINK
ORANGE
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The signs RED and PINK were already nationally used signs. There were different signs for
ORANGE available. The Northern sign was selected because it is morphologically related to the other
signs: it is also made with the ring finger on the lower lip.
Another example of coherence of form and meaning are the signs ELECTRICITY, BATTERY ,
PLUG , SOCKET and POWER all of which are made with a V-handshape.
ELECTRICITY
BATTERY
PLUG
SOCKET
POWER
Conclusion
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The process of standardisation of Sign Language of the Netherlands started in the early eighties with
the production of dictionaries. The process began slowly, unifying signs at first by selecting those that
were identical in all regions.
The discussions in the working group of the Stabol project revealed that the way in which we have
selected preference signs and made those available through dictionaries, video materials and other
media to large groups of people, has actually worked quite well. The fact that the government
demands a standard lexicon in order to officially recognize has accelerated the process. It’s not sure
whether this acceleration turns out to be an advantage in light of acceptance of the signs by the users.
As we all know it takes time to loose one habits, especially if language is concerned. One aspect that
has not been mentioned so far, is the fact that most of the variation occurs in the basic lexicon. For
more specific concepts such as lexicon for subjects taught in schools, like geography, linguistics,
history, math and so on, there is not as much regional variation and often new signs have to be
developed. That would mean that once the basic lexicon has become standardised by selection, the rest
of the lexicon will become standard in a more natural way provided that people have adequate access
to the information. That is why we will set up a national database of SLN lexicon, accessible to
everyone, but maintained by one centre, the Dutch Sign language centre.
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Brien, D. (ed) (1992) Dictionary of British Sign Language/English. Faber and Faber, London.
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