Blending languages in bimodal bilinguals

Our research advances scientific understanding of bilingualism by examining in detail a special case of bilingualism: that which occurs when a person knows both a spoken language and a natural sign language. This type of bilingualism is known as bimodal bilingualism, and the existing research in this area has shown that bimodal bilinguals display many of the same bilingual properties of unimodal bilinguals, but also some unique forms. We focus attention on these unique forms as a way of studying one extreme in the range of ways that language can be produced. This tells us about the boundaries on linguistic behavior that should be included in any theory of language. Our study is both empirical, collecting and analyzing new data from bimodal bilinguals, and theoretical, aiming to understand how postulated mental linguistic mechanisms can generate such forms. Our project also touches on the situational aspects of bimodal bilingualism, by considering ways that our participants behave like other heritage language users whose home language is different from that of the broader community. Our research focuses on the linguistic characteristics of participants by analyzing their language in three modes: speech, sign, and a combination of speech and sign known as code-blending. Although Codas grow up in a home where a sign language is used, they vary considerably in their skills with that language, typically having dominance in their spoken language (Preston 1995; Bishop & Hicks 2005). We will measure aspects of Codas’ sign and speech to determine whether they present similar characteristics as heritage speakers due to their similar situational circumstances. We will further compare their use of sign language to the responses on the same measures produced by native Deaf signers. Ours will be the first study to systematically compare sign and speech fluency in bimodal bilinguals as heritage language users.