Constructing Simultaneous Communication:
The Contributions of Natural Sign Language
C. Tane Akamatsu
Toronto Board of Education
David A. Stewart
Michigan State University
This article examines simultaneous communication (SC) by
analyzing the changes in productions of teachers who underwent a program specifically designed to address improvements in the signed modality by working with both Englishbased signing and American Sign Language (ASL). Based on
theoretical concepts found in bilingualism, language contact
situations, and conversational analysis, we focus on the process of constructing utterances by examining the teachers'
spontaneous repair sequences as evidence of an active productive system. Two teachers received special instruction in
SC that included both ASL and English-based signing systems as separate but equal systems. Videotapes of their use of
SC, collected over four years, were analyzed for sign/speech
ratio and repair sequences. Repairs were classified as repetitions, replacements, or synchronization. We found that the
sign/speech ratio of both teachers increased over time. Examination of repair sequences showed that repetitions tended
to occur in speech with the sign channel more completely
encoded in the repair. Changes in speech tended to be accompanied by changes in sign. Errors in synchrony were relatively rare. We conclude that the simultaneous communication of both teachers was speech-driven, but error detection
was largely sign-driven. The greater the automaticity of both
languages, the more attention could be devoted to monitoring
the coordination of the two modalities. The amount and qualThis work was sponsored in put by the Institute for Research on Teaching, College of Education, Michigan State University, and through Reicarch Implementation Grant No. GOO873O145 from the U S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, to David
Stewart. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the position, policy, or endorsement of the funding agencies. We thank William
Edmondson, Desmond Power, Sandra K. Wood, Ronnie Wilbur, and an
anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments. Errors of interpretation,
of course, remain our own. An earlier version of this article was presented
at the Fifth International Symposium on Sign Language Research, Salamanca, Spain, May 1992. Correspondence should be sent to C Tane
Akamatsu, 6 Wildwood Crescent, Toronto, Ontario M4L 2K7, Canada
(e-mail: [email protected]).
O1998 Oxford University Press
ity of monitoring that actually occurred, however, were subject to individual differences.
In the past decade, a number of articles have spoken to
the nature of "effective" and "ineffective" simultaneous
communication (SC).1 Much of the debate has centered around what the nature of the sign channel
should be, primarily for educational use. The underlying assumptions about SC are (1) English is manually
representable, (2) it is important to manually represent
English so that deaf students will be able to acquire English, (3) English thus acquired will be useable for literacy acquisition, and (4) increasing fluency and comprehensibility of SC will provide better English models to
deaf students than has been observed to date. From a
psycholinguistic standpoint, it has been assumed that
SC is learnable and a signer/speaker's underlying proficiency in the two languages affects the production of
SC.
Heretofore, SC has largely been analyzed in terms
of what was left out of the signing channel. The purpose
of this article is to examine the processes of constructing utterances by analyzing repair sequences—
utterances that the teachers spontaneously repaired, as
evidence of an active productive system. We are interested in repair sequences because they suggest that the
speaker/signer is responding to the need to be comprehensible at both a general communicative and a specifically linguistic level. Repair sequences may occur
because the speaker has detected an error or because
the speaker is responding to some cue from the listener
Constructing Simultaneous Communication
that comprehension has not occurred or that what has
been said is somehow not accepted by the listener.
By using concepts from bilingualism and conversational analysis, we continue the examination of SC by
analyzing the changes in productions of teachers who
underwent a program specifically designed to address
improvements in the signed modality by working with
both English-based signing and ASL. We describe how
teachers' SC changed over time in terms of rate of sign
and speech, number and type of deletions, and kinds of
repair sequences and discuss the influence that the visual and auditory modalities exert on the production of
SC We hope that this information will further elucidate the relationship between signing and speaking
when dealing simultaneously with two languages in
two modalities.
303
Bernstein, 1985; Maxwell & Doyle, 1996; Stewart,
Akamatsu, & Bonkowski, 1990).
Judgments about the nature and quality of the
signed channel in SC is influenced by situation (Stewart, Akamatsu, & Bonkowski, 1988, 1990), teachers'
general facility with sign (Kluwin, 1981; Newell, Stinson, Castle, Mallery-Ruganis, & Holcomb, 1990), the
extent to which the teacher is trying to match the sign
code to the speech code (Baker, 1978; Marmor & Petitto, 1979; Maxwell & Bernstein, 1985; Mayer & Lowenbraun, 1990), whether the teachers think they are
signing a given sign system (Woodward & Allen, 1987,
1988), and the extent to which implementation of communication policies is monitored (Mayer & Lowenbraun, 1990).
Languages in Contact
Theoretical Framework
The Social Context of Simultaneous Communication
Deaf children must learn to make sense out of two languages and three modalities (Maxwell & Doyle, 1996).
Most deaf children must do this within the context of
school, where the adult language models vary in sign
language proficiency, and where peer interaction is often the primary locus on language acquisition. Also,
deaf children themselves differ in their relative abilities
to acquire language, the level of language they bring
from home (indeed, their home languages may differ),
the degree to which they can use their hearing and
speechreading skills, and other non-language-specific
influences (e.g., native intelligence, personality, amount
of support in the home).
Simultaneous communication is fundamentally an
educational phenomenon, the goals of which are to enhance deaf children's ability to understand and produce
English. What is unique about SC as a communication
method is that the extent to which the auditory and
visual modalities are used to encode and decode SC
vary as a function of communicative situation and interlocutors. Interactions between (mostly) hearing
teachers and deaf students involves language mixing,
code switching, adapting linguistic resources to communication needs of the moment, all done in unique
ways (Lucas & Valli, 1992; Maxwell, 1990; Maxwell &
At this point, a word about the use of ASL in SC is
needed. It is generally agreed that because ASL is a
visual-gestural language it cannot be conveyed simultaneously with spoken English. There are, however, aspects of ASL that are a part of SC In particular, ASL
lexicon figures heavily in the use of SC The ASL
grammatical markers such as facial expressions, eyegazing, and body movements are also found in SC expressions articulated by those people who are proficient in ASL (Newell et al., 1990). There may be times
when a signer might briefly incorporate ASL syntax
when using SC. However, such an occurrence is infrequent and rarely the target language of the SC user.
Moreover, Maxwell and Doyle (1996), in their detailed
analysis of the communication in one school, found
that the mixing of ASL and English served to meet the
communication goals of the interlocutors.
How Do We Label the Signing Commonly Used
With English in SC?
The terms Pidgin Sign English (PSE) or Sign English
(Woodward, 1990) are widely used. Most define PSE
as a mixture of ASL and English, offering neither a
complete representation of ASL nor of English. Because it is a pidgin, one would expect to see a drastic
reduction of both ASL and English lexical and grammatical features. For the purposes of defining the sign
304 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 3:4 Fall 1998
channel within SC, PSE may not be accurate, because
in defining what people are saying in SC, we must look
at the message being conveyed in both the signed and
spoken modalities. That is, the signs alone in an SC
expression are not the sole carriers of the message;
therefore, studying only the signs may offer a distorted
view of what a person is in fact using to express language (Maxwell, Bernstein, and Maer, 1991).
Lucas and Valli (1992) describe in some detail the
nature of a particular form of signing they call contact
signing. They found that deaf people use contact signing with hearing people, but, more important, they use
it among themselves, when particular social markers
are important. That is, for example, if a situation is
perceived to be more formal, or if an interlocutor is
perceived to prefer English, contact signing (which
is perceived to be more English-like) may be used.
What is very interesting is that deaf viewers who were
"blind" to the social context and hearing status of signers in conversation often could not differentiate between ASL and contact signing, suggesting that ASL
and contact signing are not easily distinguishable from
each other.
However, Lucas and Valli (1992) delineate specific
features of contact signing that differentiate it linguistically from ASL. These features include English
whispering and mouthing, single spoken words, lexical
functions and meanings that drew from both ASL and
English as well as idiosyncratic meanings, reduced
forms of both English and ASL morphology, reduced
used of English embedding, constructions with prepositions and some idiosyncratic constructions as well as
ASL use of space, eye gaze, pronouns, determiners,
discourse markers, and reduced use of classifier predicates. Interestingly, with the exception of actual voicing, these features are similar to those used in "effective" simultaneous communication (described in
greater detail later).
We do not profess to have a solution to the question
we have asked. Consequendy, for the purpose of this
article, we will refer to the kind of signing that occurs
when one is speaking while signing (or signing while
speaking, depending on one's point of view) as "English-based signing." This is in contrast to signsupported speech (SSS: Johnson, Liddell, & Erting,
1989) in that SSS does not assume any form of rulegoverned behavior, particularly with respect to the
signed channel. English-based signing as we use it refers to semantically correct signs, in English word order, using (among other gestural features) spatially inflected syntax, classifiers, congruent nonmanual
markers, and fingerspelling. We hope that the findings
of this paper in conjunction with the work of others
(e.g., Lucas, 1989; Lucas & Valli, 1990; Lucas & Valli,
1992) will lead to a greater understanding of the theoretical and pragmatic aspects of communicating in
signs and speech simultaneously.
The Language Monitor
We speak our first languages unconsciously. Krashen
(1981) suggested that in second-language learners, a
language "monitor" operates to enable the speaker to
detect and correct errors of production. This monitor
has varying degrees of strength. For some, it is relatively weak, where a person appears not to detect errors. For others, it is relatively strong, where such extreme editing of one's speech occurs as to render the
individual dysfluent or unwilling to say anything unless
it is sure to be perfect. The monitor concept is useful
because it enables us to discuss what motivates changes
in either the speech or the signed channel.
Because the learning of SC for hearing people involves (to some extent) learning of vocabulary and
grammar of ASL, the notion of the monitor is applicable here. What complicates matters is that SC users
must not only use elements from a second language,
they must coordinate lexicon and morphology from
two languages simultaneously so as to render a message
sensibly in both the spoken and gestural modalities.
This requires a tremendous amount of attention, suggesting that the greater the automaticity of both languages, the more attention can be devoted to monitoring the coordination and comprehensibility of the two
modalities.
Modality Constraints
The major complicating factor of SC, and the unique
bilingual problem that it creates, is that one must use
the linguistic resources of two languages, one visual
and one auditory, to produce comprehensible messages
in two modalities, the spoken and the gestural. Of the
two, the constraints of visual/gestural modalities must
Constructing Simultaneous Communication
be observed, while assuming (but not knowing to what
extent) the auditory/spoken modality of the deaf person is limited. Anecdotally, we have also observed
people "speaking signs,", when they use spoken glosses
for ASL signs (e.g., "me finish sign-up, finish" to mean
"I've already signed up"). Lucas and Valli (1992) report on a similar phenomenon with "spoken contact
sign." Typically, however, SC consists of grammatically
correct spoken English, with signs used in varying degrees of visual comprehensibility, and coding English
with varying degrees of completeness.
It would not be unreasonable to expect, therefore,
that certain universal features of signed languages (e.g.,
verb directionality, spatial grammar, nonmanuals)
should appear in "effective" SC (or contact signing, for
that matter), while maintaining the sequential order of
English. In fact, this is what has been found.
Conversational Analysis
The analysis presented in this article also draws on the
findings from research in conversational analysis, particularly with regard to repair sequences. Two concepts
are important for the work here. First, discourse, and
conversation in particular, is more than people taking
turns talking. The talk is highly organized, with rules
for who may have or maintain the floor, how the next
speaker is selected, how turns are relinquished, and
such (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). Following
on their work, others have found that the organization
of turns is dependent to some extent on both verbal
and nonverbal cues such as eye gaze, breath intake (for
speech), arm-raising (for sign), and other nonverbal
cues (e.g., Kleinke, 1977; Swisher, 1991).
Second, there is the pragmatic motivation for repair to ameliorate problems in speaking/signing, hearing/watching, and understanding. Schegloff, Jefferson,
and Sacks (1977) noted that in conversations there is a
strong preference for a speaker (and presumably a
signer) to respond to the need to repair one's own utterances before someone else calls attention to a need
for repair. By this, they refer to the preponderance of
repairs that occur within a speaker's turn, at turn junctures where the speaker self-selects for the next turn,
or in the turn subsequent to the one after the one in
which the error was detected. These self-initiated repairs are successfully completed within one turn. Their
305
data suggest that speakers monitor lexical choice and
organizational aspects of conversation to achieve
smooth repair sequences.
These two general concepts probably apply to
signed discourse, as well. What is challenging in the
study of SC is the extent to which modality influences
the specific organizational features of conversation. For
example, if a speaker/signer is hearing but the recipient is deaf, is the organization of conversation different
than if the hearing statuses are reversed?
Some Psycholinguistic Characteristics
of Simultaneous Communication
It has been suggested that SC is an extremely complex
communication behavior (Maxwell, 1990; Maxwell,
Bernstein, & Maer, 1991, Maxwell & Doyle, 1996),
which others have used as an indictment against the
use of signing for conveying spoken languages, particularly for deaf students (e.g., Cokely, 1990; Johnson,
Liddell, & Erring, 1989; Supalla, 1991). More recently,
researchers have begun to describe the SC of individuals who have been using it for many years. These studies suggest that signing used while speaking English
does not have to be the unnatural, stilted phenomenon
that was described in the 1970s and early 1980s (Baker,
1978; Marmor & Petitto, 1979).
In a comprehensive review of SC, Maxwell pointed
out that many studies of SC have "presupposed that
the 'correct' form of bimodality is the exact manual
representation of all English morphemes presented simultaneously in sign and in speech" (1990, p. 339).
Studies examining the use of SC by hearing teachers
of deaf children have consequently focused on English
grammaticality in the sign channel, using the speech
channel as the target for comparison. At this point in
the history of the educational use of sign, it appears
that, even when they are not trying to achieve a perfect
sign/speech match, SC users can achieve over 75%
match syntactically, and nearly 100% match semantically (Luetke-Stahlman, 1988; Maxwell & Bernstein,
1985; Mayer & Lowenbraun, 1990; Stewart, Akamatsu, & Becker, 1995). Conscientious users of English-based signing in SC (i.e., forms of signing in
English word order with varying amounts of English
morphology presented manually and/or nonmanually,
not sign language as it is used in England, i.e., British
306 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 3:4 Fall 1998
Sign Language, or BSL) can achieve an over-90%
match. However, individual studies may or may not
specify the sign systems to which they refer, which
muddies the theoretical waters.
In a study of teachers using Australasian Signed
English, Hyde and Power (1991) found a sign/speech
morpheme correspondence of more than 90%, with no
deletions of bound morphemes. They suggest that this
high correspondence was possible because of the nature of Australasian Signed English. Fingerspelling
was minimal, less than 2%, and was typically names of
people, places, and days of the week. They also found
that teachers talked more slowly with deaf children
through SC than with hearing children through speech
alone (2.86 syllables/sec vs. 4.38 syllables/sec, respectively). At this slower pace, they found that the speech
channel suffered changes in prosody and vowel elongation (cf. Fischer, Metz, Brown, & Caccamise, 1991).
Hyde and Power suggest that SC is affected by three
major factors: (1) the degree of training that teachers
receive in SC, (2) teachers' commitment to the use of
SC, and (3) the specific design features of the English
signing system.
Wodlinger-Cohen (1991) found that teachers were
able to produce grammaticaUy correct English in the
signing channel and to adjust the patterns of simultaneity. In addition, while parents were more varied in
their use of SC, the deaf children were able to learn to
use English-based sign and to adjust their modality use
based on the abilities or preferences of their communication partners.
One important internal factor in producing comprehensible SC is the SC user's expertise in using ASL
and English characteristics while signing. Fischer et al.
(1991) found that differences between bimodal (SC)
and unimodal communication (UC) for deaf people
varied. Some were unaffected by the demands of SC.
Others demonstrated depressed speech when their
performance in speaking alone vs. speaking while using
SC was compared. In other cases, the converse was
true; their SC signing deteriorated relative to signing
alone. In only one case was the SC actually better than
the UC. They suggest that those individuals who were
least affected by the demands of SC were the most
completely bilingual and bimodal, and therefore had
the most automatization of their language systems.
These ideas suggest that for teachers who are
learning to use SC effectively, increased awareness
about, and proficiency in, both natural signed language
and sign systems will lead to an increased proficiency
in SC. The extent to which they become proficient (as
judged by criteria proposed in Newell et al., 1990)
would depend on the teachers' commitment to using
SC Furthermore, increases in proficiency will be evidenced by changes in the teachers' productions that
will include, among other design features, maintenance
of the sense of the voiced message through ASLsemantically based signing, greater use of space, appropriate use of facial expression, adequate fingerspelling,
and better coordination between sign and speech modalities.
Deaf people have characterized some people as
effective users of SC (Mallery-Ruganis & Fischer,
1991; Newell et al., 1990). Forty-one characteristics of
"good SC" were delineated by Newell et al. MalleryRuganis and Fischer used these characteristics to
differentiate effective from ineffective users of SC, as
judged by deaf professionals. It is important to note
that the signers in their study (one Deaf, two hearing)
were not trying to adhere to any particular form of
signing, other than conveying the same semantic content of the message in both channels. The signers in
their study achieved a sign/speech word correspondence of 70%-76%, at the rate of between 1.28 and
2.22 words/sec No measures were taken of these individuals' speech without sign, and no mention was made
of changes in the prosodic features of their speech.
What is interesting about this study is that two signers
whose pace was virtually identical (2.2 words/sec) were
perceived as having very different paces—one too fast,
the other just right.
With regard to the sign/voice ratio, what appeared
to be an important difference between the signing
channels of these signers was not the number of deletions, but rather the kinds of deletions that occurred.
Mallery-Ruganis and Fischer (1991) characterized deletions that do not detract from the meaning of the
message as "permissible" deletions. Clearly, certain
kinds of deletions, regardless of system, do not detract
from meaning. Whether they can be said to accurately
represent English is open to debate, and may depend
on why the speaker is trying to represent English. Per-
Constructing Simultaneous Communication
missible deletions might, indeed, not even be considered deletions in ASL (e.g., / in declaratives, YOU in
questions, the copula). Other deletions, such as omitting the main verb or verbal auxiliaries, were "impermissible" deletions. Closer examination of the signing
revealed that the signer who was perceived as going too
fast also had the greatest number of impermissible deletions. These impermissible deletions may have increased the difficulty in processing the communication,
giving the impression that the signer was going too fast.
The inappropriate use of nonmanual signals also served
to confuse the message. Mallery-Ruganis and Fischer
(1991) concluded that semantically based signing, supported adequately with fingerspelling, and containing
only permissible deletions was necessary to maintain
the sense of the voiced message. Facial expression,
other nonmanual behaviors, and spatial grammatical
features that occur in the natural signed language of
the community should also be utilized. Finally, pace
should be regulated so that both the speaker and listener can process the message without detriment to either signal.
Method
Subjects. Two teachers who participated in a four-year
training program in the use of English-based signing
and ASL were the subjects of this study. The school at
which these teachers worked had adopted a policy by
which English (in all its modalities) was to be used as
the classroom language, and ASL as an intervention
language when demanded by instructional and communication considerations. The teachers, to whom we
will refer as A and B, were hearing women who had
received special training as teachers of deaf children at
the university level.
Teacher A taught at the middle school during the
first year of the project, Grades 4—5 during Year 2, and
at the preschool-kindergarten level during Years 3 and
4. She had taken several courses on ASL and sign vocabulary over the years prior to this study and had eight
years of experience teaching deaf children. Although
she had received training in SC, she felt that "signed
English was impossible to use comfortably." The sign
channel of her SC at the beginning of the project is best
described as inconsistent contact signing.
307
Teacher B taught at the elementary level throughout the project and had the same students for the last
three years of the study. At the beginning of the study,
she had 14 years of experience teaching deaf children
in TC programs. She had taken one ASL and one sign
vocabulary course, and several "sign language" workshops prior to the study. It is unclear whether these
were through ASL or some form of signed English.
Her ASL skills were minimal, however, and she did not
use it for communication in the classroom. Teacher B
had always attempted to model English in her signing
and speech, relying on Signing Exact English (Gustason,
Pfetzing, & Zawalkow, 1980) for some sign vocabulary
and English affixes, as well as the American Sign Language Dictionary for ASL sign vocabulary (Sternberg,
1981).
Data collection and corpus. The teachers were videotaped
annually over a four-year span while delivering instruction to deaf cnildren in their classrooms. Instructional
situations varied across the teachers and times, and included mathematics, reading and writing, geography,
storytelling, and snack time.
The videotapes were transcribed by the researchers
and trained graduate assistants. Each transcription was
checked and corrected by three different people. Following this, a reliability check was conducted on all
utterances. Reliability agreement for each of the
transcriptions ranged from 97.1% to 100.0%. All inconsistencies uncovered during the reliability check
were corrected and rechecked so that the final transcription reflected as accurately as possible the signed
and spoken utterances on the videotape.
The resulting data corpus contained approximately
2000 utterances, identified by teacher, project year, and
communication situation.
Calculation ofrate. Afive-minutesample was taken from
each year's sample, and the number of words and signs
were counted. From this, we calculated the rate of
speech and sign for each teacher, for each year, in terms
of syllables per second, and words per minute.
Permissible vs. impermissible deletions. Using the guide-
lines suggested by Mallery-Ruganis and Fischer
(1991), we did an initial check on the quality of the
308 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 3:4 Fall 1998
samples by selecting a sample of 10 utterances from
each teacher's annual corpus and counting the number
and kinds of deletions that occurred. This subsample
contained the first 10 utterances of more than one
word, beginning with utterance 20 in the corpus.
Mallery-Ruganis and Fischer (1991) defined permissible deletions as follows:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
discourse topic
/ in declarative sentences
you in questions
expletive it
copula as main verb (to be)
auxiliary forms of to be
infinitive to
articles
Impermissible deletions were defined as:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
other auxiliaries
main verb
other pronouns
relational prepositions
content prepositions
conjunctions other than and
negation
morphemes causing change in word class
In addition to the forms specified by Mallery-Ruganis
and Fischer (1991), we also added the following impermissible deletions:
• subject/object noun without previously established discourse topic
• adjectives and adverbs without appropriate facial
expression elsewhere
We counted the number of each type of deletion in the
subsample and calculated the proportion of permissible and impermissible deletions for each year for each
teacher.
Analysis of Repair Sequences
Each utterance from the entire original corpus was initially coded as fluent or nonfluent. "Fluent" utterances
were those in which the teacher continued her flow of
signing and speech without internipting herself, and
with only natural pauses. "Nonfluent" utterances contained instances of the teacher interrupting herself, re-
peating herself, and/or with unusually long pauses.
Length of pause was a subjective judgment, but the
data coders generally agreed on when pauses were "too
long" and the resulting utterance was nonfluent.
The errors were divided into two major types:
those from fluent utterances and those from nonfluent
utterances. Errors from fluent utterances typically
demonstrate errors in synchronizing speech and sign.
Errors from nonfluent utterances include repetitions of
sign or speech, lexical and/or grammatical changes in
signed or spoken form, and elongations of spoken
sounds. Errors from nonfluent utterances were further
categorized according to the following scheme.
Repetitions: same thought-same approach. These consisted
of repetitions of a previous word, words, or phrase.
"Approach" in this sense refers to the speaker's using
the same lexical item(s) in either modality, but not
both. That is, exact repetitions of both sign and speech
were not counted as "repairs," because nothing was
"repaired." The repetition could occur either in sign
(with a change in speech), or in speech (with a change
in sign), or in speech with a change from sign to fingerspelh'ng or vice versa. An example of a repetition
where a change in sign occurred is (see coding conventions in the Appendix):
(1)
I GIVE Y O U . . .
I gave you . . .
(la) I GIVE + PAST YOU
I gave
you
"I give you . . . I gave your
In this example, the spoken form "I gave you" is repeated, with a change in the signed channel. In this
context, the original signed form GIVE would have
been understood as having happened in the past because the teacher was reminding the student about
some other actions that had happened the previous
week.
Sometimes, the sign channel was repeated, and
speech was added:
(2)
WATT YOUR
wait
(2a) WAIT YOUR TURN PLEASE
wait your turn please
"wait your . . . wait your turn please"
Constructing Simultaneous Communication
or deleted:
WHAT HAPPEN
what happens
(3a)
HAPPEN + S TO LAND
to the land
"What happen . . . happens to the land"
(7a)
(3)
Replacements: same thought-different approach.
placements occurred when some portion of what was
just said was repeated, but with some kind of change
(lexical, syntactic, insertion or deletion of new words).
An example of a replacement is:
(4)
WORK
You worked
(4a)
DO SOME
WORK
You did some of the work
"You work(ed). . . You did some ofthe workV
In this case, although the words "WORK/work" are
repeated in the second utterance, there is an addition
that changes the word class of WORK/work as well as
adds other semantic information.
In examples 5 and 5a, the word "one" was replaced
by the word "problem," and the word "ice/ICE" was
replaces by "plates/PLATE++," respectively.
(5)
GO
NEXT ONE
go to the next one
(5a)
NEXT PROBLEM
the next problem
"Go (to the) next one . . .the next problem]''
"Come together/COME TOGETHER" was then replaced by the classifiers for two flat surfaces approaching each other and touching in 6b.
(8)
WE ARE TALK YESTERDAY HOW
We
talked yesterday
about
(8a)
HOW
/h/
(8b)
ABOUT HOW EARTH .. .
about
how the earth
"We are talked yesterday how/about... [h] . . .
about how the earth .. ."
The next utterance is an example of ASL negative
incorporation. The teacher could conceivably have
signed "NOT WANT," but chose to use the sign
"DONT-WANT"
(9)
(7)
YOU-PLURAL WRITE NUMBER
You
write
NOT
I
(6)
Example 7 shows the adjectival phrase "(the)
house" added to modify "number."
HOUSE NUMBER FIRST
the house number
first
"You write number . . . the house number first."
Morphological and/or syntactic level changes could be
made to approximate either English or ASL more
closely.
Example 8 shows an English morpheme in the
Resigned channel (ARE) that is not in the spoken channel, and an absence of the past-tense marker (+PAST)
in the signed channel. This might be a case of encoding
something, even if that something is wrong. Further on
in the sentence, however, this teacher also encodes both
"about" and "HOW" simultaneously and then orders
them appropriately with the missing channels added.
First she realizes that she signed the wrong word (she
said "about" and signed HOW), which she begins to
correct in the speech channel (8a), but then has to account for "about" in the signed channel (8b).
(9a)
THE AND ICE START
and the
ice start
(6a)
PL ATE++START COME TOGETHER
plates
start to come together
(6b)
CL:BB-TOGETHER
"and the (and) ice start . . . plates start to come
together . . . come together"
309
DON'T-WANT HEAR THOSE NOISES
don't
want to hear
those noises
"I not. . . don't want to hear those noises."
In the next example, the teacher was discussing the
role of tectonic plate movement in mountain formation. The changes from 10 to lOe appear to be a series
of false starts, as she tries to speak English and show
the idea through classifier use.
(10)
THINK
think
(10a)
EARTH
the earth
310 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 3:4 Fall 1998
(10b) FLAT PLATE
like the
(10c)
AREA
they're the areas
(lOd)
P-A-T-E-S
the plates
(lOe) PLATE++
CL.BB-COME+TOGETHER
are coming together
"Think . . . the earth . . . like the flat plate . . .
they're the areas . . . the plates . . . plates are coming together."
Synchronization. Errors of synchronization were categorized as anticipations, perseverations, or errors of
synchronicity. Anticipations and perseverations usually occurred in the signing channel. Errors of synchronicity refer to cases where much of what is spoken
is also signed but not simultaneously. For example:
(11) THIS. . . IS OLD PAPER
This. . .your old paper
ARE FUTURE BE IMPORTANT
will be important
"This is your old paper are will be important." (?)
In the next example, the teacher was discussing
weather, why animals hibernate, and what happens to
them during hibernation. Here, she signs "SEEM"
without saying "seem" and continues with "makes
steam . . ./MAKE S-T-E-A-M." In this case, SEEM
might be an auditory anticipation for S-T-E-A-M, because the sign STEAM or fingerspelled S-T-E-A-M is
quite different from the sign SEEM.
(12)
IT SEEM
so it
(12a)
MAKE S-T-E-A-M OR FOG
makes steam
or fog
"So it seem . . . makes steam or fog."
What is even more interesting is what happens later in
the discussion. In this case, it appears that there is a
manual perseveration of FOG from utterance 12a in
utterances 13 and 14 that is influenced auditorially by
the spoken words "frog" and "forests." This teacher
catches herself both times and signs the correct sign.
The teacher must be monitoring her sign channel for
her to be able to detect and correct the error, yet it is
clear that the auditory channel is driving the production of the signs.
(13)
TALK ABOUT FOG
Well, let's talk
about a frog
(13a)
FROG IN WATER
a frog in the water
"Well, let's talk about a fog/frog . . . a frog in
the water."
(14) AND WE HAVE OTHER ANIMAL IN
and we have other
animals in the
FOG
forests
(14a)
FOREST+STOO
in the forests
too
"And we have other animals in the fog/forests
. . . in the forests too."
Instances in which the speech and sign channels
lost their synchronicity were more common for
Teacher A than Teacher B. For example:
(15)
GOOD SUBSTITUTE FOR
A good substitute
another
(15a)
OTHER
word
(15b)
WORD MEAN
DIFFERENT
that
means
"A good substitute for/another . . . otiier/word
. . . word/that means different."
In this example, we find two instances of a sign repetition of a previous word while speaking the next word,
followed by the coordination of sign and voice. In 15a
the sign "OTHER" means "another," which was just
spoken. That utterance was followed immediately by
the following repair, in which the signs and speech
were synchronized.
(16)
GOOD SUBSTITUTE FOR ANOTHER
A good substitute
another
WORD MEAN DIFFERENT
word that means
"a good substitute for another word that means
different"
This repair contains exactly the same words in the
same modalities, but without the mistiming between
Constructing Simultaneous Communication
the two modalities. Note that both the speech and signing channels are ungrammatical.
Table 1 Sign/speech morpheme ratio for teachers A and
B, years 1 through 4
In the following utterance, first the speech, then
the sign, and then the two together are produced.
(17)
This
311
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Teacher A
Teacher B
59.8%
90.0%
92.1%
98.9%
66.2%
73.3%
80.2%
89.7%
(17a)
This
(17b)
made. However, we calculated both the rates for sylla-
EASY
(17c)
IS EASY AND FAST
is easy
and
fast
"This . . . This . . . easy . . . is easy and fast."
Prosody. Finally, we looked for instances when the
speech signal was disrupted by the sign signal and vice
versa. Typically this consisted of elongation of vowels
and exaggerated prosody in speech, or lack of syntactic
and/or emotive facial expression in the sign channel.
bles/second and words/second so that comparisons
with both studies are possible.
During Year 1, Teacher A spoke at the rate of 1.15
words/second, and 1.79 syllables/second. At the same
time, she produced 1.1 signs/second (sps). By Year 4,
she had slowed down both her signing and speaking
rate. She spoke at the rate of 1.06 words/second, 1.28
syllables/second, and .84 signs/second. The change in
the rate of syllables/second occurred probably because
she was using simpler vocabulary because of the ages
of the children she was teaching. During Year 1, she
Limits of the Data in This Study
The data presented here were collected as part of a longitudinal study on change in teachers' signing. As such,
videotaping of the teachers, but not the children, was
the primary consideration in data collection. Therefore, the teachers' faces are clearly visible, but the children's contributions are not always on videotape. It is
occasionally possible to catch what a child says. Conversational analysis became relevant after data had
been collected. Therefore, we must infer some of the
interaction by what we can hear, what the teacher's response was, and our fieldnotes and memories.
taught grades 6-8, whereas during Year 4, she taught
in the preschool and kindergarten programs.
By contrast, during Year 1 Teacher B spoke at the
rate of 2.04 words/second, 2.84 syllables/second, and
1.40 signs/second. By Year 4, she, too, had slowed her
speech production down somewhat. She spoke at 1.86
words/second and 2.28 syllables/second. Her sign rate
was relatively stable, at 1.42 signs/second. This teacher's changes were not as pronounced as those of
Teacher A.
Table 1 indicates sign/speech morpheme ratio
from each corpus. We found that in the Year 1 subsample, Teacher A signed only 59.8% of the morphemes
she spoke, whereas Teacher B signed 66.2% of what
Results
Rates of Speech and Signing
she said. These proportions are similar to those for the
overall corpus, suggesting that the subsample is representative of the larger corpus.
For these teachers, having to monitor two modalities,
Occurrences of permissible and impermissible de-
one that is automatic and one that is not, created
letions are tabulated and presented in Table 2. As can
difficulties in coordinating the two. It should not be
be seen in Table 2, during Year 1, both teachers had
surprising that the rate of speaking and signing should
the same percentages of permissible deletions: 24%
be a little slower than speaking alone, as was found in
and 2 3 % (see Table 2). However, Teacher A had twice
Hyde and Power (1991). Unfortunately, a direct com-
the percentage of impermissible deletions to number of
parison between the rate of SC addressed to deaf chil-
words as Teacher B: 2 1 % vs. 10%. The analysis of sim-
dren (Hyde & Power, 1991) and SC addressed to deaf
ilar samples from Years 2-4 revealed that both Teacher
adults (Mallery-Ruganis & Fischer, 1991) cannot be
A and Teacher B deleted very few words from the sign-
318 Joumalof Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 3:4 Fall 1998
each other (particularly with respect to English morphology), may be too narrow for practical use. Indeed,
the scrutiny that SC has received over the past two decades suggests that the role of SC as a nonviable means
of communication needs to be revisited. The notion
that signs must correspond as precisely as possible with
speech in order to provide a model for English fails to
take into account the characteristics of the participants
in a discourse situation.
Perhaps as people gain experience with SC, and as
they become more bilingually and bimodally fluent,
they are increasingly able to detect when the signals are
different and do something about it. Even when the
signals are not completely redundant with each other,
the communication situation may not demand repair.
The result is not the adult form of the community's
natural language (i.e., ASL), but has a strong ASL-like
flavor and can look remarkably like contact signing
with voice. The use of spatial mechanisms and nonmanual markers does not logically exclude or preclude
SC. The work on contact signing should also shed
some light on the relationship between contact signing
and effective SC Perhaps effective SC is simply contact signing with voice. In any event, it is probably true
that the greater the automaticity of all these processes,
the more effective an SC user one is likely to be, which
will in turn lead to greater utility of SC as a stable form
of face-to-face bimodal English.
Appendix
Coding Conventions
Signs are represented in CAPITALS; spoken words in
lower case. The meaning is presented within double
quotation marks.
Simultaneously signed and spoken utterances are vertically aligned such that the following utterance represents three signs (I, GIVE, YOU) in sequence, with the
spoken words (I, gave, you) in the same sequence.
(1)
I GIVE YOU
I gave you
"I gave you."
Bound English morphemes that are signed are indicated with a +. In the following example, two signs are
intended to represent the concept of "give" and "past
tense" for the English word "gave." The signs I and
YOU are signed simultaneously with the spoken words
"I" and "you."
(2)
I GIVE+PAST YOU
I gave
you
"I gave you."
Reduplication of signs is indicated with + + . This utterance shows that the sign PLATE was signed more
than once, indicating the plural form.
(3)
PLATE+ +
plates
"plates"
Repetitions of all or part of an utterance are vertically
aligned to indicate where the repetition occurred. The
trouble-source part of the utterance is indicated by a
number in parentheses. The repair attempts are indicated by the same number plus a lower case letter.
(4)
WORK
You worked
(4a)
DO
SOME
WORK
You did
some of the
work
"You worked . . . . You did some ofthe work."
Notes
1. For the purpose of this article, English is used as the spoken language and American Sign Language (ASL) as the signed
language. However, in keeping with the international nature of
this journal, and recognizing that the psycholinguistic basis of
the relationship between spoken and signed language in SC is
obscure, we recognize that SC as it is used in countries other
than the United States and English-speaking Canada may differ
from the description contained here.
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