The Manu-Facturing of a Language

William Washabaugh

Sign Language Studies, Volume 29, Winter 1980, pp. 291-330 (Article)

Published by Gallaudet University Press

DOI: 10.1353/sls.1980.0002

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sls/summary/v1029/29.washabaugh.html

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SLS 29 (1980), 291-330
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THE MANU-FACTURING OF A LANGUAGE

William Washabaugh

Introduction. Languages change but they do not grow;

they develop but they do not evolve. That,
at least, is what most linguists believe. And that will account
for my hesitancy to discuss the "manu-facturing of a language."
But I will maintain this heterodox title because the words are
doubly appropriate for this description of the manual language of
the deaf inhabitants of Providence Island, Colombia.
The fact is that Providence Island Sign Language (henceforth
PSL) is a nascent and evolving language.' Its native signers are
few in number, about twenty, and cannot trace any linguistic
tradition beyond their tiny island or further back in time than
two generations. PSL is autochthonous and relatively immature
as a language [for an account of other somewhat similar autoch-
thonous languages, see Goldin-Meadow & Feldman in SLS 8,
19751. These extraordinary characteristics point the direction
to the theoretical lode to be mined from a description of PSL.
Briefly, a dynamic description of PSL will also be an explication
of the phylogeny of a linguistic system. For those who believe
with C. S. Peirce that "symbols grow" (Derrida 1967:70), or
for those who argue with Eco (1976) that any system of Ssign
production2 has a history, PSL offers a unique opportunity. In
PSL one can investigate the development of a linguistic sys-
tem, the sort of semiotic system that has been most widely
studied but whose dynamics are least understood.

The people of Providence Island, Colombia is a

Providence Island. volcanic, mountainous island of
15 square miles located 150 miles
east of Nicaragua in the Caribbean. The 2,500 people of Pro-

291

0302-1475/80/29-291$2.00
 Sign Language Studies 29

vidence Island live in fourteen villages, which are scattered

around the island's perimeter; they speak English and English
Creole (Washabaugh 1977), but are governed by Spanish-
speaking Colombia (Wilson 1973).
The island is isolated economically and geographically.
The people of Providence fish, raise cattle, garden, and other-
wise make use of the edible natural resources of the island.
In recent years the government has been hiring more and more
islanders to labor on government construction projects on the
island such as roads, schools, and health clinics. This
government work is about the only source of cash on the island.
As a result, it has become traditional for young men to go off
to work in the merchant marine, often for many years at a
time, and to send money back to the island.

Sana Ctalt
Tol..

Old Tow., o outi

Lazy Mil.
SOld Rocky Point

Frehwater
Providence Is. Ly . oothwater Bay

ottomhouse
Soutoest
Buy

Figure 1. Map of Providence Island

The appearance of deafness on Providence Island is

probably related to the small size and isolation of the popu-
lation. Deafness seems to have resulted from an inbreeding
through which the genetic traits for deafness become expressed.
This suggestion is reinforced by a number of facts: (1) Deaf-
ness often appears within certain families: five siblings in
Old Town are deaf; three siblings in Southwest Bay are deaf,
together with two of their hearing sister's children; two sib-
lings in Lazy Hill are deaf; two in Rocky Point; and three in
Town. (2) The fact that all the aforementioned persons, except
for one male, are profoundly deaf, suggests a pre-natal
etiology for deafness. (3) Finally, deafness due to inbreeding
has been documented for other small isolated communities
(Cavalli-Sforza & Bodmer 1971:372, Dorian 1952, Kakamasu 1968)
Washabaugh

One additional comment on the relationship between the

deaf and hearing people on Providence Island will complete
this short profile of the community. The deaf on Providence
Island are integrated to a very large extent into the normal
daily activities of the larger population. As a result of this
integration, the hearing members of the community associate
regularly with the deaf, and so they have come to acquire
PSL as a second language for interacting with the deaf. Due
no doubt to their regularity of association with deaf persons
and to their ability to communicate with them, the hearing on
Providence Island have much more favorable attitudes toward
the deaf and their capabilities than do hearing persons in
societies like the United States, where the deaf are socially
separated from the hearing (Woodward 1978). In addition, the
deaf of Providence Island are not offered any schooling, and
as a result they have not been made to believe that their signed
language is inferior to some spoken standard language. Conse-
quently the deaf, for their part, have a much more positive
attitude toward themselves than do the deaf in societies where
the deaf are subjected to an oppressive literacy.

Lexical and formational It will come as no surprise

characteristics of PSL. to students of sign languages
to find that a great number
of PSL signs are "iconic. " That is, such signs seem to be natural
representatives of their referents. So, for example, MAN, WOMAN,
CHILD, BOAT, BUY, WEIGH, CANE-GRIND, COFFEE, OATH,
CONCHS, MANGO may all be called "iconic. "

COPPEE

Figure 2.
 Sign Language Studies 29

Though no one is surprised by the claim that PSL signs

are "iconic, " that claim still requires additional discussion.
The fact is that the so-called iconic manual signs, like those
shown and listed above, should not be called "naturally
representative of their referents. " In these examples there is
not so much a relationship between the Ssign and the referent
as between the Ssign and the culturally conventionalized
image of the referent (Eco 1976:204). [Here and throughout
this paper Ssign will be used to refer to the semiotic sign as
opposed to the manual sign.] In COFFEE there is a relation-
ship between the manual sign for 'coffee' and the customary
process of parching the coffee in an oven. Likewise there is
a relationship between the manual sign for 'conchs' and the
customary process of extracting the animal from its shell.
Without a knowledge of the customary actions and the cultural
context, these signs are uninterpretable.
The same can be said of the "iconic" signs MAN, WOMAN,
and OLD. Again, the forms of these signs are related to the
culturally conventionalized perceptions of their referents, rather
than to the referents themselves. Admittedly, the cultural con-
ventions that are salient for the interpretation of these signs
may be more widespread, or even universal, compared with
those requisite for interpretation of MANGO, COFFEE, CONCHS,
etc. But still a sign like WOMAN refers to the conventionalized
image of woman rather than to any objectively perceptible
female characteristic. This can be made clear by contrasting
the signs for GIRL, YOUNG-WOMAN, and WOMAN. Each of
these three signs might, in isolation, seem to be a natural
representative of its referent; but when taken together, they
trace a culturally perceived development rather than a purely
physical development from youth to maturity. The PSL sign
WOMAN does not merely refer to a biological and objective
characteristic but to a cultural categorization of 'woman' (see
Figure 3).

GIRL

Figure 3.
Washabaugh

The preceeding discussion will have clarified the claim

that PSL signs are "iconic." The following discussion will
rely on that clarification. I mean to argue, again following
Eco (1976:214), that there are in sign languages degrees of
explicitness according to which culturally categorized refer-
ents are specified. Briefly, the Ssigns of any language may
be either "strongly" or "weakly coded. " Strongly coded Ssigns
are those Ssigns in which the salient features of the conven-
tionalized referents are explicitly and distinctly represented
in the Ssign expressions. For example, the American Sign
Language (henceforth ASL) signs for TREE and NOON are
"iconic, " in the sense defined above, and are strongly
coded, because the single feature of movement is sufficient
to distinguish the two. Where a sign language is replete with
such strongly coded Ssigns, as ASL may well be (Frishberg
1975), the freedom of variation in signing is restricted. For
example, NOON can be signed with the hands in a variety of
orientations, but it cannot be signed with movement. Con-
versely, TREE may be signed in a variety of ways, but it
must involve movement. Strongly coded Ssigns are explicit
in their reference and constrained in their formation.
Weakly coded Ssigns, for their part, are those in which
the salient features of the conventionalized referent are
diffused in the Ssign and not given a clear and distinct, nor
an economical specification. For example, there are one
thousand different ways of drawing a horse (Eco 1976:214),
each of which may succeed because each conveys in its total-
ity some subset of an indefinitely large set of expressive
features that are relatable to the cultural category 'horse.'
So it is that a drawn horse is a weakly coded Ssign. Such
weakly coded Ssigns have in different contexts been called
"condensed" Ssigns (Turner 1973) and "context-dependent"
Signs (Eco 1976:215).
The signs of PSL are weakly coded insofar as they, like
the drawing of a horse, can be formed in a variety of ways
and still succeed in having their referents understood. So it
is that the PSL signs for MAN, WOMAN, FOWL, MANGO,
WATER, FAMILY, and BOAT are all weakly coded. These signs
may vary not only in specific and predictable formational
parameters (Woodward, DeSantis, & Washabaugh 1978), but
may also vary in their total configuration. 'Man' can be
signed with an erect index finger at the waist (MAN ) or with
an index finger brushed under the nose (MAN.). These are
not synonyms like man and adult-male-human, but are
 Sign Language Studies 29

variations on a theme, much as the thousands of drawn horses

are variations on a theme. Similarly, 'mango' can be signed
with a fist rubbed aganist the cheek (MANGO ), or with a fist
squeezing at the mouth (MANGO 2). A truly synonymous version
of 'mango' would be that exclusively non-manual sign derived
from the spoken language (MANGOs). 'Buy' can be signed with
a dominant F-handshape moving outward (BUY ) or with a supine
B-handshape brushing outward (BUY2 ). 'Drink' is signed in (1)
below first with an A-handshape (DRINK1 ) and the second time
with G-handshape and a different movement (DRINK). In short,

(1) MOTHER FATHER DRINK. COW MILK PAPA YES. MAMA

DRINK NO. 'Papa drinks cow's milk, but mama does not.'
(003,F21,9)3

many PSL signs seem "weakly coded" in that they allow a

good deal of freedom in their formation and in their selection
of features of the conventionalized referent for expression.

MANGO
2
MANGO
1
Figure 4.

Figure 5.
Washabaugh

On a second count also signs of PSL are "weakly coded;"

they are ambiguous as isolates; they acquire determinate
meaning only when set into a context. Signs of PSL are not
units of information that are strung together and then trans-
ported from the producer to the interpreter. They do not begin
as units that are "determined in their abstract signification,
but they have meaning only with relation to a man's body,
and to its interaction with its surroundings" (see Ong 1977:56).
The meaning of an individual sign is not established prior to
and independently of the utterance of the sign, but is estab-
lished in the utterance. The theoretical significance of such a
characteristic should not be overlooked. The semantic consti-
tution of PSL signs is in part a product of their syntactic
collection. Such a state of affairs is inconsistent with the
orthodox "semantic theory of meaning" that underlies most of
Western linguistic thought (Dewart 1971).
The ambiguity of isolated signs is evident in the interrog-
ative signs of PSL: they are completely indeterminate outside of
a signed utterance. There is in fact just one interrogative sign,
WH-QUESTION, which when placed in different utterances will
mean either 'who' 'what' 'when' or 'why' (Washabaugh,
Woodward, & DeSantis 1978). Again, in (2) the sign DESCEND-
INTO-WATER is used without precedent or preface to refer to
0. H., captain of the ill-fated Betty Bee.' Only the sentence
context and socio-historical context of this sign render it
interpretable.

(2) DESCEND-INTO-WATER GRAB RADIO. YOU COME.

(003,P21,2)
'0.H. grabbed the radio and told them to come.'

On a third count, PSL signs are weakly coded in that

they are multi-modal: they may be constituted of non-manual
as well as of manual actions. Such composite or multi-modal
signs probably antedate unimodal signs and are certainly
more complex in their signification. With such composite
signs it is not easy to distinguish the linguistic value from
the paralinguistic force of the expressions. Semantic deno-
tation and connotation flow into one another. In such multi-
modal signs the sense runs together with the "force, tone,
pronunciation, dress, manner, gesture, and movement, all
to convey information providing a context for interpreting
talk" (Gouldner 1976:41). With such signs it is not possible
 Sign Language Studies 29

to distinguish the producer's information from the producer's

evaluation. And indeed, the evaluation seems regularly to be
a more significant part of the whole signing effort than does
the information (see Ong 1977:112).
By way of hypothesis regarding the semantic functions of
components of such composite signs, I suggest that nonmanual
expressions in multimodal signs may sometimes distinguish
manually identical signs, and sometimes classify manually
distinct signs. First, facial and oral expressions can classify
or relate manually distinct signs. In such cases, the facial
or oral component serves as a marker of a semantic class, of
which distinct manual signs are members. For example, JOKE,
CLEAN, FULL (of fruit), FLOWERS (flower), and SWEET all
share the common semantic feature of (SWEET), which is
marked on all these manually distinct signs by the Southwest
Bay signers by a rapid and horizbntal wagging of the tongue
accompanying each manual sign. Similarly PAIN, HUNGRY,
LIKE, ILL, FEEL-SORRY all seem to be marked as having a
common feature (FEELING), since each is accompanied by a
restrained inspiration of air through slightly rounded lips.
LIGHT (electricity), LIGHT (e.g. sunlight), FIRE, SMOKE,
STOVE, OVEN, KITCHEN, COOK, ROAST, FRY, and WARM are
all marked as sharing the semantic feature (HEAT), since each
manually distinct sign is accompanied by the same mouth
action, a forced expiration through rounded lips with slightly
puffed cheeks. (See Figures 6, 7, & 8)
(HEAT) is a nonmanual expression with a classificatory
function, but (HEAT) performs other functions as well. It not
only links KITCHEN to other (+HEAT) signs; it also distinguishes
KITCHEN from manually similar signs for other (-HEAT) buil-
dings. Most interesting is the fact that (HEAT) may completely
lose its semantic classificatory function and take on a syntactic
function. In (3) (HEAT) accompanies a manual sign, but here
it does not redundantly specify the semantic class of that
sign. Instead, HEAT in (3) performs a propositional function:

(3) (manual) ME BREAD. (006)

(facial) HEAT.

'I bake bread.'

Second, a nonmanual expression may be the only distin-

guisher of manually identical signs. The following signs illus-
trate the distinguishing function of nonmanual expressions (p.
300)
 Washabaugh

Figure 6.

Figure 7.

FIRE

Figure 8.
Nonmanual Bilabial Alveolar
activity NONE plosive# [ps ]# click# Sucking Eyes wide Eyes squinted

Manual acts
(implosive)# PUSS
1 DOG (CAT) SMALL PIG

2 MAN FATHERa

3 WOMAN MOTHER

4 PRIEST FATHERb

5 PLUM GUINEP

6 Blowing LIGHT DARK

:J
7 HOUSE KITCHEN

Tab I e 1 . Nonmanual differentiation of identical manual actions into distinct signs

of Providence Island Sign Language.
4
Notes: rapidly repeated
aa
a observed on all of island except southwest

b this distinction made by signers on southwest of island only

Washabaugh

It is extremely rare to find any minimal pair of native signs in

other sign languages based solely on a difference in nonmanual
expression. Only two such pairs in American Sign Language
have been described: LATE (with neutral expression) and NOT-
YET (with marked facial expression), and WRONG and SUR-
PRISINGLY, each with the same manual but different nonmanual
expression. It is also not clear that all signers make these
distinctions in ASL (Washabaugh, Woodward, & DeSantis 1978).
Unimodal signs, whether manual or nonmanual, probably
derive from multimodal signs. In the case of the purely non-
manual signs of PSL this derivational process is still apparent.
The signs OLD, MANY, DEAD, FIRE, PAIN, ANGRY, FAT, and
THANK-YOU all have both a manual and a nonmanual component
in citation form. However, in rapid conversation the manual
component tends to be deleted. With such deletions, sentences
often become intricate combinations of manual and nonmanual
signs as shown in (4):

(4) (nonmanual) FOWL FOWL DOG

(manual) BITE GRAB (007,V3,3)

'The fowl pecks the dog.'

From these data we can infer that the regularization of a sign

language does not involve, in the first instance, a replace-
ment of nonmanual expression by manual expression, as is
implied by Frishberg (1975). Instead, the first step in sign
language regularization involves a replacement of a multi-
modal expression by a unimodal expression. The resulting
unimodal signs may be either manual or nonmanual.
The multimodal signs of PSL are paradigmatic examples
of "weakly coded" signs. For each signing channel used in
such a sign there are separate conditions for the successful
creation of a meaning distinction. The more channels, the
more different sets of conditions for a meaning distinction.
In such signs meaning contrasts are signalled simultaneously
in different channels and with different features. Each of the
channels acts relatively independently of the others to cre-
ate more or less complete meaning distinctions. While each
channel functions independently, still all channels function
simultaneously. Thus distinctions that create meaning are
diffused throughout the channels rather than being compacted
into a single, linear, rigorously structured channel.
 Sign Language Studies 29

The salient features of such "weakly coded" signs may

be hard to define. The constituents of such signs are not
distinct and do not correspond to linguistic phonemes, be-
cause they lack oppositional value. Unlike phonemes, which
under alteration produce a meaning change, an alteration in
an expressive feature in one channel of a multimodal "weakly
coded" sign can be rendered insignificant by an expression
feature in another channel.
If multimodal signs may not be further analyzed into
phoneme-like constituents, then such multimodal signs lack
duality of patterning or double articulation (Voegelin 1958).
Instead these signs are gestalt-like units, structured at a
single level, no element of which can easily be identified
as essential, but no element of which can easily be regarded
as nonessential. Such signs are not interpreted by an analytic
process such as is used in deciphering a Morse code message.
Rather they are comprehended by a synthetic process in which
the interpreter simultaneously considers each of the expression
components and weighs those against his knowledge of the
idiosyncrasies of the signer and against his knowledge of
the cultural context. In short, such multimodal "weakly
coded" signs are furnished directly by the culture context
and so may properly be said to be highly context-dependent
signs.

Time reference . The weakly coded, context-dependent

nature of PSL is apparent not only in
the constitution of lexical items, but also in the regularities
of time reference in PSL.
PSL signers employ a number of distinct lexical units to
indicate time of an action or event. One unit is general and
abstract and may be likened to a tense marker. The other
markers refer to specific units of time and correspond to tem-
poral adverbs. Both the general and the specific time referen-
cing devices are subject to modulations by which quantity of
time and manner of action may be specified.
The abstract and most frequently used time sign involves
a flat ('B') hand arcing laterally into zero signing space; it
might be glossed OTHER-TIME. This sign, according to folk
etymology, derives from OTHER-DAY and ultimately from the
compound SLEEP+FINISH. The extant varieties of the specific
time sign OTHER-DAY confirm the plausibility of this etymology.
For example, informant 003 signs OTHER-DAY with a B-hand
moving outward from the cheek. So signed, OTHER-DAY is a
Washabaugh

short and logical extension of the SLEEP+FINISH compound.

OTHER-DAY , as signed by 006, is further removed from its
etymological source; it is formed with an index finger ('G')
moving outward from the cheek. Finally, 027 signs OTHER-
DAY, with a B-hand making a lateral movement, from the
central or zero to the peripheral signing space. So signed,
OTHER-DAY is "homophonous" with OTHER-TIME. The for-
mationally distinct varieties of OTHER-DAY (1,2,0) may well
represent stages through which SLEEP+FINISH has been
semantically extended to OTHER-TIME. Each of these stages
involves a gradual loss of iconicity, so that OTHER-DAY.
has completely lost all expression of features of the constit-
uent SLEEP; but also each stage involves a gradual gain in
conventionality and semantic generality.

OTHER-DAYI OTHER-DAY2 OTHER-DAY 3

= OTHER-TIME

Figure 9.

Whatever the etymology of OTHER-TIME, one thing is

clear: the sign does not include a distinction between past
and future time. It it true that a variety of motions may be
employed in enacting OTHER-TIME. For example, the motion
of the arcing B-hand may be ipsilateral (from the center to
the hand-s own side of the signing space), or contralateral
(from the periphery to the center of the signing space), or
even outward from the body. But the selection of one or
another vector does not influence the meaning of the sign.
Thus, for example, sentence (5) is signed with a repeated
OTHER-TIME sign made with an outward motion to indicate
past tense; in (6) OTHER-TIME is signed with a similar out-
ward motion, which now indicates future time. In the same
way, all the specific time signs discussed below are
 Sign Language Studies 29

ambiguous: OTHER-DAY, OTHER-WEEK, OTHER-YEAR may

refer to a day, week, or year in either the past or the future.

(5) OTHER-TIME OTHER-TIME WORK ALL-ABOUT ME

TELL-HIM. (003,V2a,3)

'I told Bill that long ago you used to work all about.'

(6) BOAT COME WH-? 'When is the boat coming?' (011,

OTHER-TIME SATURDAY MAYBE. 'Maybe next

Saturday.' 003,F2,7)

The specific time signs refer to 'time-within-a-day' to

'day' (which is discussed above), to 'week' and to 'year.'
'Times-within-a-day' are referred to by a gesture toward some
position of the sun in the sky. MORNING is signed with a
prone B-hand toward the eastern horizon; EVENING is signed
toward the western horizon. NOON is signed with B-hand
held overhead.
Reference to 'week' is accomplished by a semantic exten-
sion of SUNDAY; i.e. to sign 'other-week' one signs SUNDAY
+ OTHER-TIME. This sign's metonymical extension occurs also
in the sign for 'other-year', which is signed by compounding
CHRISTMAS and OTHER-TIME. [The etymology of CHRISTMAS
is clear enough: a major part of the Christmas festivity is the
killing and eating of pigs, and pigs are regularly killed with
a blow of a machete at the neck. J

CHRISTMAS

Figure 10.
Washabaugh

We have seen that PSL contains a general time-referencing

device, OTHER-TIME, which has probably derived from the
specific time sign OTHER-DAY (1,a, & 3). In addition, PSL con-
tains specific signs that refer to 'time-within-a-day' 'day'
'week' and 'year'. None of the general or specific time
referencing devices includes a distinction between past and
future.
Regarding their distribution, both general and specific
time signs are optional constituents and appear initially or
nearly initially in PSL sentences. Many PSL sentences com-
pletely lack a time sign, in which case the interpreter must
reconstruct the time of events described from the context of
signing. Texts may lack an explicit time sign even when they
involve a shift in time reference. For example, sentence (7)
begins with OTHER-TIME, which context shows must refer to the
future. Here informant 003 is describing a recently repaired
cistern situated in the hills some distance from her house.
She is indicating that on some Sunday (or week) she will
personally inspect the cistern. In the midst of this series of
sentences she signs SEE NO, bracketed by pauses, by which
she indicates that she has not yet seen the cistern. Here,
then, is a past tense sentence placed parenthetically in a
future tense discourse, but without an explicit time marking.
The interpreter is forced by the apparent anomaly of SEE and
SEE NO to infer that the two actions are set in different times
relative to the time of the utterance.

(7) OTHER-TIME ME GO WAIT SUNDAY SEE GO SEE WAIT.

SEE NO. THERE SEE THERE. (003,F3,9)

'Soon I will go see (the cistern). Wait I will go.

I haven't seen it yet.'

PSL time signs may be modulated in form to establish

quantity of time, or manner of action relative to a period of
time. First, the time signs may be modulated to indicate,
more or less precisely, the amount of past or future time
separating an action or event from the time of the utterance.
An imprecise indication of quantity of time may be expressed
by a greater or lesser number of repetitions of a sign. Sen-
tence (5) above and (8 and 9) below all illustrate the use of
repetitions to indicate time in the relatively remote past. By
contrast sentence (6) above and (10) below contain unrepeated
 Sign Language Studies 29

instances of the general time sign, which refer to the next

immediate Saturday in the future.

(8) SUNDAY OTHER OTHER OTHER HIM KILL EAT HIM

(004,F21,12)
'Some week soon, I will kill that cow for food.'

(9) OTHER-TIME OTHER-TIME ME SEE HIM TALK HIM ME.

OTHER-TIME OTHER-TIME WOMAN KNOW NO.
NO
ME NO. HIM (003,V2a,19)
YES.
'A long time ago I saw Bill and talked to him. At
that time I didn't know his wife, just him.'

(10) OTHER-TIME SATURDAY BOAT COME. (004, F3,1)

'Next Saturday maybe the boat will come.'

Quantity of time is indicated more precisely by a numerical

specification accompanying or incorporated into the time sign.
The simplest sort of numerical specification involves the juxta-
position of a time sign expression with a numeral. For example,
003 expressed 'three days' by signing ONE DAY, TWO DAY,
THREE DAY. Similarly in (11), 001 signed 'three years' by
combining THREE and YEAR.

(11) WAIT THREE YEAR. (001,Fl ,3)

'I waited three years.I

A much more complex sort of numerical specification of the

quantity of time involves number incorporation. Number incor-
poration may be of two sorts. First, the hand configuration
used in signing the general sign OTHER-TIME may be trans-
formed into a number. Thus for example, 012 signs Wednesday,
Thursday, and Friday in the following ways:

'Wednesday' SUNDAY OTHER-TIME (with W-hand)

'Thursday' SUNDAY OTHER-TIME (with 4-hand)
'Friday' SUNDAY OTHER-TIME (with 5-hand, thumb to
[i.e. three, four, and 5 days after Sunday] cheek)
Washabaugh

Similarly, 027 signs 'two years ago' with the compound YEAR
OTHER-TIME, making the latter sign with a V-hand (two fingers).
A second sort of number incorporation has the time sign
repeated a specified number of times with an alteration of the
handshape on each repetition. For example, 006 indicates
'three days from now' with the sign OTHER-DAY. enacted three
times. On the first, the index finger touches the cheek; on
the second, the middle finger touches the cheek; and on the
third, the ring finger touches the cheek. Similarly 001 signs
'four years' by enacting the sign YEAR (=CHRISTMAS) four
times. On the first signing the index finger touches the throat,
and on the first, second, and third repetitions the middle,
ring, and pinkie finger touches the throat. This second form
of number incorporation is actually a double time specification,
because both the hand configuration and the number of times
the action is done indicate the units of time.
Time signs may be modulated to indicate quantity of time;
they may also be modulated to indicate manner of action relative
to a period of time. Duration of action may, for example, be
indicated by a rather slow and deliberate juxtaposition of two
time specifications. In (12) 011 indicated that her neighbor
washes clothes all day long, from morning till evening.

(12) MORNING EVENING WASH THERE. (011,F4,10)

'She washes all day long.'

Where the general sign OTHER-TIME is involved, duration is

indicated by a continuous and circular motion either laterally
or outward. For example, I observed 004 complaining about the
eating habits of his son's horse. He conveyed the fact that a
horse never stops eating day or night by signing OTHER-TIME
with two outward circling G-hands. The hands circled at mod-
erated speed about four times and then reversed their direction
to circle inward and then again outward. The signer 011 inter-
preted the change of motion as indicating that as soon as the
horse stops eating it starts right in again.
Habitual or customary action is also signalled by a repe-
tition of a time sign, but with fast and restrained motions
instead of slow and continuous motions. So in (13a) 003
indicates that her nephew goes out and about every morning
and every evening. The single difference between the signing
of MORNING EVENING in (12) and (13a) is that the time signs
 Sign Language Studies 29

are produced rapidly and discontinuously in (13a) and slowly

and smoothly in (12). In (13b) 003 indicates that her nephew
goes out at all times of the day, morning, noon, and night.
Again the time signs are signed rapidly and discontinuously.
In the same way, 003's sign for 'everyday' involves the rapid
repeated touching of an index finger to the cheek: OTHER-DAY
+ OTHER-DAY+ OTHER-DAY.

(13a) HARD. GO COME TWO. MORNING EVENING TWO.

TIRED COME. (003,P3,5)

'They are hard kids. The two of them are always

going and coming all the time. When they are
tired they come home.'

(13b) MORNING+NOON+EVENING MORNING+NOON+EVENING

GONE THIS-WAY THAT-WAY. (ibid.)

'All day long they go about, this way and that way.'

The foregoing discussion of time signs of PSL is far from

complete. Yet it is sufficiently elaborate to exemplify yet
another difference between "weakly" and "strongly" coded
Signs and to justify the claim that the signs of PSL are
rather weakly coded.
Weakly coded Ssigns tax the abilities of the sign inter-
preter; whereas strongly coded Ssigns tax the abilities of the
sign producer. Weakly coded Ssigns flow directly from a tacit
cultural knowledge; they are not mediated by a conventionalized
linguistic code as are strongly coded Ssigns. Because weakly
coded Ssigns are produced immediately from cultural knowledge
rather than mediately through a conventional grammar, the pro-
duction of such Ssigns is a much less complicated affair than
is the production of strongly coded Ssigns. Conventional cul-
tural knowledge is encoded directly, precisely, and "natur-
ally" without necessity of a linguistic restructuring.
Such weakly coded Ssigns succeed well enough, providing
that there is a near perfect match between the cultural compe-
tence of the interpreter and the producer. If the interpreter can
match weaklycoded expressions directly to his cultural knowl-
edge, identical to that of the producer, then he will decode
the producer's message successfully.
But, aside from soliloquy, such perfect matches do not
Washabaugh

usually occur. Within any community there are always degrees

of mismatch between the cultural knowledges of producers and
interpreters. That mismatch creates the pressure responsible
for the development of strongly coded Ssigns out of weakly
coded signs. That is to say that clarity, precision, and
conventionality in the form of linguistic structure must be
imposed upon weakly coded Ssigns in order to make them
available for interpretation. Moreover, as the degree of mis-
match between cultural knowledges within a community
increases, the interpreter's need for strongly coded Ssigns
increases. Weakly coded Ssigns and strongly coded Ssigns
are in actuality not sign types, not categorically different,
but Ssign tendencies. Those Ssigns within small and homo-
geneous communities may tend towards weak coding. The
signs within large and diverse communities must tend towards
strong coding.
The weakly coded character of PSL signs, in comparison
to those of ASL, now begins to make sense. The PSL community
is a small and young community. The signers, just now putting
together their language, begin with the most easily and most
"naturally" produced signs, i.e. weakly coded signs. It is
no longer startling that PSL contains fewer strongly coded time
distinctions than does the older ASL. In ASL past and future
time signs are distinguished along a time line, which Frishberg
and Gough (1973) hypothesized to be universal. But in PSL,
past and future time signs are not distinguished, and there
exists no time line comparable to that found in ASL. In PSL
the task of distinguishing past and future is left to the inter-
preter.
With time, the comprehension tasks placed on the inter-
preter by weakly coded signs become excessive, and the
signers must consequently construct conventional, strongly
coded Ssigns to ease the interpreter's task. That this has
already begun in PSL is apparent in the time signs. In PSL,
as in ASL, continued action is signalled by a slow and smooth
reduplication of the time sign (Frishberg & Gough 1973,
Fischer 1973); habitual action is signalled by a rapid and
restrained reduplication of the time sign. Such clear and
precise distinctions, built as they are out of ambiguous
expressive devices like speed and manner of signing, are
indications that strongly coded Ssigns evolve after and out
of weakly coded Ssigns.
The theoretical upshot of the observation that weakly
 Sign Language Studies 29

coded Ssigns are replaced gradually by strongly coded Ssigns

is that linguistic structure is not a substance but a process.
Structure is not a static condition of an abstract human know-
ledge. Rather it is the dynamic condition of a real world
knowledge, the function of which is to distribute communi-
cative burdens between producer and interpreter.

Establishing dis- Strongly coded Ssigns are

course topic in PSL. constructed out of weakly
coded Ssigns as the signer
takes over some of the interpreter's communicative burden.
Such a development is not abrupt but gradual and, at the
outset, tentative. By tentative I mean that the signer goes
about the task of constructing strongly coded signs experi-
mentally, in discourse. The signer and the interpreter
arrive at communicative conventions by trial, error, and
eventual success. The signer, recoginzing a breach in com-
prehension, draws from a variety of strategies, which repair
the breach of comprehension but do not carry the signer more
than a few steps from his "natural" weakly coded signing.
Structure is established when those few steps are piled upon
a previous few steps, and upon an earlier few steps. Con-
ventional linguistic structure is built gradually, with each
small incremental development relying on, and implying,
some earlier incremental development.
The incremental development of linguistic structure is
most clearly apparent in the patterns of PSL sentence organi-
zation. The following description of PSL sentence organization
is, like any other syntactic description, a complex hypothesis, 5
the object of which is to account for as much variation in
sentence form as possible. Again, following the guidelines
for an orthodox syntactic description, I will propose that
certain sentence types are fundamental, and that other sen-
tence types are derived. The point of this description will
be to demonstrate that the derivation of a variety of different
sentence types from a few fundamental sentence types repli-
cates precisely the construction of strongly coded, interpre-
ter-oriented conventional structures out of weakly coded
producer-oriented signing.
To begin, I can state three syntactic regularities evident
in my recorded corpus of PSL signing. First, as shown in (14),
signers tend to construct simplex sentences of single noun
signs and one or more sentence-final verb signs. The noun signs
Washabaugh

in such sentences may be either semantic agents or objects.

Second, as one might predict from (14), adjectives follow
nouns (15). Third, negative particles follow verbs (16).

(14a) HIM TAKE, WATER TAKE GIVE GIVE (011,F3,11)

'He gave the water away to different people.'

(14b) TOM GO. SWEETHEART HAVE-INTERCOURSE.

GO EAT THERE (index). (006,V2,6)

'Tom has gone to have intercourse with his girl-

friend and will eat there.'

(15a) PENIS LONG. HIM (index) LONG. (006,V2a,31)

'His penis is long.'

(15b) WOMAN SMALL SICK WORK. JANE LIKE, WH-?

(003,F2,3)
'The small sick woman works. Jane likes it,
but I don't know why.'

(16a) COW BRING HERE NO. (003,F3,4)

'He didn't bring the cows home.'

(16b) SWEAR GOD, ME LIKE NO. (003,F4,8)

'I swore to God I didn't like him.'

The first regularity, the one referring to the organization

of simplex sentence, is theoretically interesting for a number
of reasons. For one thing, this regularity hardly seems suffic-
ient and adequate for the formation of clear and unambiguous
sentences. Sentence (17) illustrates the ambiguity that can
result from failing to specify and distinguish agent-noun signs
from object-noun signs.

(17) HIM (index) SEE. ME NO. (003, VT2a,20)

'I didn't see Bill.'

 Sign Language Studies 29

But despite the serious ambiguities that are created by a lack

of agent/object specification, this regularity is a signal
advance in expressing meanings clearly. Sentence (18) illus-
trates the even greater obfuscation that can result when
necessary noun signs, whether object or agent, are deleted.

(18) PEOPLE FOUR GO SALT FLOUR. BAGS-GOODS.

TALK NO. (006,F12,6)

'Four people went to the shop. Jane bagged the

goods. I didn't talk.'

In short, PSL grammar displays a certain ambivalent quality.

Sentences are constructed in such a way that the noun-signs
which enter into a sentential predication are usually expressed.
However, the semantic relations between noun signs are left
unmarked.
Semantic relations between noun signs are unexpressed
and gramatically unmarked, but that is not to say that they are
not specified. In fact, the ambiguity of sentences like (17)
and (18) disappears once one enters completely into the social
life of Providence Island. In this small closed community,
everyone shares a knowledge of the topics of most conver-
sations and knows, in advance, who has done what to whom
long before a conversant brings up the topic. The noun signs
in a sentence cue an observer's knowledge of the social con-
text, and that tacit knowledge of the social context is what
specifies the semantic relations between noun signs. Provi-
dence Island Sign Language is a context-dependent language
and by reason of that, its grammar can be rather drastically
reduced in structure.
We can now state the ambivalent characteristics of PSL
sentence organization in a more precise way. In all discourse
-whether spoken or signed-speakers must specify for their
listeners-interpreters the discourse topics of their utterances.
By discourse topic I mean a "proposition about which the
speaker is either providing or requesting new information"
(Keenan & Schieffelin 1976:338). The discourse topic as a
proposition includes both elements which constitute the topic
and semantic relations between those topic elements. Speci-
fying the discourse topic may be accomplished by grammatical
devices, as in all context-independent codes, or by use of
both grammatical and extra-grammatical devices as in context-
Washabaugh

dependent codes. In PSL, elements of the discourse topic are

expressed,but relations between those elements are generally
recovered from the social context.
Since even on Providence Island there is never a perfect
match between producers' knowledge of the social context and
the receivers' knowledge, there must exist devices for bridging
the gaps. Those bridging devices will be uncovered by asking
what sorts of variations in sentence organization appear when
signers are unable to rely on a shared tacit knowledge of their
social context. The question is not inappropriate, for even in
the rather closed community of Providence Island signers must
deal with situations in which shared knowledge of context in-
adequately specifies their discourse topics.
I gathered examples of PSL context-independent signing
in interviews during which subjects viewed sequences of puppet
action and then described the events to another subject in sign.
In the majority of sentences which were elicited in this way,
signers employed multiple noun signs; i.e. they followed the
already well established procedure of expressing manually
the elements of the discourse topic (19, below). Only instead
of stating just one of the topic elements, they stated all the
topic elements and did so initially.

(19) MAN MAN DOG BABY BLACK TAKE CARRY AWAY.

(006,Fl3,6)
'The black baby gives the dog to the man.'

MAN MAN BABY BLACK WATER DRINK DONE THERE (index).

(006,F13,5)
'The man gives the black baby a drink of water.'

But again in these sentences just as in (17), there seems

to be no expressed specification of the semantic relations
between the noun signs. There is neither morphological speci-
fication nor word order specification of the agents, objects,
and beneficiaries of the actions described. Whether one com-
pares different sentences produced by a single signer (20), or
whether one compares the same sentence produced by different
signers (21), one can find no syntactic regularities by which
semantic relations are specifiec. Sentences such as these,
produced as they are in a context-independent situation, must
be ambiguous. And indeed the hearing interpreters correctly
interpreted these sentences with a rate of success little above
chance.
 Sign Language Studies 29

(20) a. BABY KISS (ind.). SLEEP (ind.). KISS BABY MAN (ind.).
KISS GIVE. (007,V3,33)

'The man sleeps; the baby kisses the man.'

b. BABY KISS SLEEP. (ind.) KISS BABY MAN. BABY

KISS (index). (007,V3,31)

'The baby sleeps; the man kisses the baby.'

c. MAN BABY BOX CRY (index). (006,F13,7)

'Man boxes baby.'

d. MAN BABY BLACK HIT CRY HIT. (006,F13,9)

'The black baby boxes the man.'

(21) a. BABY MAN, SIAP HIT. (005,V4,24)

'The man boxes the baby.'

b. MAN BABY BOX CRY (index). (006,F13,7)

'The man boxes the baby.'

c. BABY HIT BOX TWO. ME YOU BOX. BABY MAN BOX.

(001,V4a,46)
'The man boxes the baby.'

If the ambiguous sentences of (19), (20), and (21) pose

a real problem for communication in PSL, the conjoined sen-
tences of (22) seem to solve that problem. The conjoined
sentences begin with a listing of the noun sign topic elements.
They continue with a repetition of one or another noun sign
together with an appropriate verb sign. The complex discourse
strategy from which such sentences seem to be constructed is
this: (a) specify the elements of the discourse topic initially;
(b) specify semantic relations by juxtaposing a series of sim-
plex sentences which are connected or related by an implicit
or unexpressed logic.
Washabaugh

(22) a. BABY MAN SLAP HIT. BABY CRY BABY. MAN HIT BABY
HIT GONE. BABY CRY GONE. (005,V4,25)
'Man boxes baby.'

b. BABY SLEEPS. CLOTHES GONE. SLEEP. MAN KISS

WALK-AWAY. MAN ONE GO AWAY. BABY SLEEP STAY.
(005,V4,18)
'Baby sleeps; man kisses baby.'
c. MAN BABY FOWL GO GRAB GO AWAY. MAN BABY MAN
GRAB GIVE BABY GO AWAY. (005,V4,18)
'Man gives fowl to baby.'

The first discourse strategy, according to which elements

of the discourse topic are listed in sentence initial position,
produces sentences that are similar in form to the topic promi-
nent sentences of Caddo (Chafe 1976:51), in which topics are
mentioned sentence initially and then repeated in the actual
expression of the sentential predication. Whereas in the
English translations of these sentences, the topic elements
and the semantic relations between those elements are both
specified simultaneously; in the PSL sentences, as in the Caddo
sentences, the task of specifying topic elements is handled
independently of, and prior to, the specification of semantic
relations. Thus, contrasting the English translations with the
PSL and the Caddo sentences, we can detect two distinct
strategies for specifying the entirety of the discourse topic.
On the one hand, languages can specify topic elements and
their relations simultaneously; on the other, they can specify
the two aspects of discourse topic independently. The dis-
tinction in strategies may well underlie the grammatical
distinction between topic prominent languages and subject
prominent languages, explicated by Li and Thompson (1976).
Li and Thompson see the distinguishing feature of topic
prominent languages to be the lack of relationship between the
noun phrase topic and the grammatical subject. But this can
be stated at a more general level of discourse strategies by
saying that the distinguishing feature of topic prominent lan-
guages is their ability to establish topic elements indepen-
dently of establishing semantic relations between those elements.
Subject prominent languages mention topic elements and simul-
taneously place them in a case frame that relates them to other
elements of the topic. Topic prominent languages perform the
two tasks by distinct devices and in distinct moments.
 Sign Language Studies 29

Since some PSL sentences already display this tendency

to separate the expression of topic elements from the expres-
sion of topic relations, we should not be surprised to find
that occasionally PSL signers construct classical, double-
subject, topic prominent sentences (23). In such sentences
the initial noun phrase is completely independent of the noun
phrases in the sentential predication and serves the discourse
function of creating the scene for the actors and actions involved
in the predication.

(23) a. LONG-AGO COLD FAR PLANE SO, NO BIG, SO. MAN

COLD-FAR STOUT BLACK SIDEBURNS ONE CLEAR
TWO DRUNK DRINK DRIVE TUMBLE CRASH THERE
SAN ANDRES. (006,F19,4)

'Long ago a plane just so big, a big black man from

the states with sideburns and a clear man were
drunk while flying, and tumbled and crashed in
San Andres.'

b. SISTER ME, SISTER ME. MALE YOUNG, MALE YOUNG

TALL SO, THREE, SCHOOL NO, FINISH, COME.
WOMAN FAR ME WRITE. SHE ME SLEEP HERE.
SCHOOL GO. (017,F2,1)

'My sister, her three young boys didn't finish school.

She wrote and asked me if they could stay here and
go to school.'

The second discourse strategy, apparent in (22), is the

strategy through which semantic relations between noun signs
are expressed. According to that strategy, simplex sentences
are juxtaposed in such a way that logical relations implicit
in the juxtaposition will specify the semantic relations be-
tween the topic elements. Another term for this strategy is
verb serialization, which refers to "verbs which occur in
sequence, but which are not overtly marked for coordination
or subordination with respect to each other" (Hyman 1975:
136). Hyman suggests that verb serialization succeeds only
because the juxtaposition lends itself to "semantic seriali-
zation because of the resultative nature of the construction."
That is, verb serialization alludes to a semantic serialization
that the listeners must reconstruct from the juxtaposition of
Washabaugh

relatable verbs. For example, in (22a), the ambiguity of MAN

HIT. BABY HIT. is resolved by the juxtaposition of these sen-
tences with BABY CRY GONE. The receiver can now reconstruct
the sentence meaning, according to which BABY must have been
hit and later cried, and the man must have been the agent of
the hitting. Similarly in (22b), the juxtaposition of MAN KISS
WALK OFF and BABY SLEEP STAY implies that the MAN is not
only physically active but also semantically the agent, while
the baby is both physically and semantically passive. In (22c)
the MAN is linked to the giving; BABY is linked to the going;
and the FOWL is left aside. The logic implicit in the duxta-
positions is that the man gives the fowl to the baby.
The sentences (24) shed light from a different angle on
the PSL solution to the problem of specifying discourse topics.
At first glance, these sentences may seem irrelevant to the
specification of discourse topic and may seem worthy of note
only insofar as they fail to conform to the rule that noun
signs appear before verb signs in a sentence. A closer look
will prove worth the while.

(24) a FOWL MAN HIT. FOWL EAT. HIT FOWL. (003,VI,31)

'The man hits the fowl.'

b SUNDAY FEW-FUTURE HIM KILL EAT. HIM. (004,F21,12)

'Some Sunday he will kill that cow and eat it.'

In (24) the signers break the N+V sentence order; they do

so in order to reiterate some previously mentioned noun sign
or index. The sentences that result from this reiteration contain
a verb that is bracketed by two expressions of an identical
noun sign. It is interesting to note that the reiterated noun
sign not only follows the verb; often it is sentence final. It
may even be dangled, following a pause, at the end of an
already completed sentence (24b).
The repetition of a noun sign in a sentence, or after a
sentence, makes sense as a "repair strategy" (Goodwin 1976,
Schegloff et al. 1977). That is, after the signer has produced
the fundamental simplex sentence, he recognizes confusion
in the face of his interlocutor and feels the need to clarify
the sentence. The clarification, in the case of (24), involves
a restatement of the elements of the discourse topic. In the
 Sign Language Studies 29

restatement, the elements of the discourse topic are focused

on and given a special emphasis missing in their original
placement earlier in the sentence. The signer hopes that the
topic element will be clarified by the special emphasis
given to the noun sign in sentence final position.
The noun-sign repair strategy is theoretically interesting
insofar as it may be a discourse-based springboard for the
development of other sentence forms in PSL. The sentences
of (25), for example, seem to make use of an inverted word
order modeled after (24), in which the noun signs take sen-
tence final position and thereby receive greater emphasis.
The sentences of (25) suggest that the repair strategy may
have already established the sentence final position for noun
signs as the position of focus or emphasis, and that other
sorts of sentence organization may make use of this sentence-
finalfocal position. A second and distinct consequence of
the repair strategy that places noun signs after verb signs is
that it sets a precedent for the development of an alternative
word order.

(25) a OTHER-TIME OTHER-TIME THEM COME. BUMP HIM

BUMP YOU. (011,117,6)

'Long ago they came. He bumped you.'

b BUY JUANCHO BUY SHOES. (017,F6,9)

'He bought shoes from Juancho.'

(26) HIM ANGRY BLACK ANGRY (ME). TALK-ABOUT.

HEAR YOU. (003, V2a,33)

'He was angry with me and talked about it. Didn't

you hear?'

In (26) the "ME" is signed parenthetically to clarify belatedly

an aspect of the discourse topic that the signer initially assumed
to be understood by the interlocutor. The emphatic clarification
results in the placement of a new, previously unmentioned noun
sign after the verb. The use of this belated clarification
strategy is not unlike the "afterthought" strategy described by
Hyman, according to which one "finds it necessary to break
Washabaugh

the syntax and add grammatical elements in positions where

they should not appear" (Hyman 1975:119). Even as Hyman
considers "after-thought" to be a likely starting point for the
development of the SVO order in West African languages, so
the PSL counterpart as in (26) may be an augury of future
developments in PSL.
The objective of this description has been to show that
"there is much in the structure of languages that can only be
explained on the assumption that they have developed for
communication in face-to-face interaction" (Lyons 1977:637).
PSL sentence organization exemplifies the sort of structural
conventions that develop out of face-to-face communication.
Specifically, PSL signers regularly make use of an interlocu-
tor's tacit knowledge of the social context in order to specify
the discourse topic of their utterances; whereas most other
languages-except extremely topic-prominent languages like
Lisu-express the entire discourse topic verbally. But signers
are continually reworking those context-dependent sentences
to relieve the burdens that they place on the interpreter. So,
the use of multiple noun signs, verb serialization, topic
prominence, and after-thought repair all indicate a develop-
ment of conventional, "strongly coded" signing.

Di s c u s s i on . The evolution of a language like PSL or ASL

is not an altogether mysterious process. It
is characterized by the development of "weakly coded" context-
dependent signs into "strongly coded" context-independent
signs. Again, and in other words, languages evolve from a
productively simple, perceptually complex organization to a
productively complex, perceptually simple organization. The
process through which a producer complicates his utterances
to meet the perceptual needs of an interpreter is gradual and
incremental and dependent upon the nature of the signing
community. In a large diverse community like the United States,
this development has proceeded much further than in the small
young isolated community of Providence Island. So it is alto-
gether expectable that ASL signs will be more strongly coded
than PSL signs. ASL signs are understandably less variable,
less iconic, and less multi-modal than are PSL signs. The
ASL time referencing system is more detailed and convention-
alized than the PSL time referencing system. ASL syntax
(Friedman 1976), while a good deal more context-dependent
than Latin, is still much less context sensitive than the
syntax of PSL. In summary, the relationship between PSL and
 Sign Language Studies 29

ASL is the relationship between a "weakly coded, " context-

dependent language and a "strongly coded, " context-indepen-
dent language. The grammar of PSL is shallow only because
its users can rely on expressions that are directly tied to
context. ASL, by comparison, is predictably highly structured,
more nearly doubly structured, more obviously composed of
arbitrary, digitally distinguished signs. All this is necessary
if the members of the large and diverse ASL community are to
comprehend one another.
So saying, I conclude this partial description of PSL.
But I must add one additional and protracted comment to res-
pond to an objection which this analysis will certainly draw.
I have written here of a unilinear evolutionary development
from producer-oriented, context-dependent grammar to
interpreter-oriented, context-independent grammar. This
proposal is not new (Kay 1976, Ong 1977; compare
also Winner & Winner 1976), but neither is it complete or
entirely correct. It will be necessary to go one step further
to account for some linguistic facts that render this proposal
suspect. I am thinking specifically of the fact, mentioned by
Hymes (1973:50), that languages of small isolated communities
tend to be more highly structured, at least in their morphology,
than languages of large diverse communities. This fact seems
to contradict the hypothesis proposed here that communities
in which knowledge of context is homogeneously shared will
develop context-dependent, grammatically reduced languages.
In this paper I can only outline a response to this appar-
ent contradiction; elsewhere (Washabaugh 1977b) I have argued
in great depth. We have considered the phylogeny of language
here in the light of just one language function; i.e. the communi-
cation of information. To reiterate, speakers can successfully
communicate information in a small isolated community by
means of a context-dependent communication system; whereas
a context-independent communication system is necessary in
a large and diverse community. But the need to communicate
information is just one, and perhaps not even the primary,
function served by language. In the work of Habermas (1970)
Cook-Gumperz (1975, 1976), Luckmann (1975), and Gouldner
(1976), we can recognize another major language function.
Whether one calls it the "reflexive" function of language, or
the "semasiological" function of language, the description
is the same: language "steers attention and molds interpretation
of experience by providing a socially and historically charted
'topography of reality"' (Luckmann 1975:48). Language creates
Washabaugh

the grounds for .self-undestanding (Cook-Gumperz 1975:156).

According to this view, speaking turns back on the speaker
and tells him who he is by situating him within a social
tradition. "Speaking teaches me who I am, what I want,
what I lack, my talents, what I expect from others, from
life" (Parain 1971:54).
This reflexive language function operates most clearly
during enculturation. In enculturation, speaking defines a
child's experience and then demonstrates to the child that he
is not alone in that experience (Cook-Gumperz 1975:143).
This demonstration that the child's experience is not unique
but is shared within the community is accomplished not just
by words but by various features found to one degree or
another in all face-to-face communication. For example,
cooperative language use (Bruner 1975) and synchronization
of listener-speaker movements (Condon & Sander 1974) are
two aspects of the face-to-face interaction between child
and caretaker that serve to affirm to the child his "inter-
relatedness" with the social context. Similarly, "context-
dependent" features of communication force the child to
incorporate something of the cultural knowledge of the com-
munity (Cook-Gumperz 1976).
Having briefly outlined the nature of this reflexive lan- -
guage function and of the linguistic and paralinguistic
devices that mediate this function, we can proceed to dealing
with the problematic fact about the differential structuredness
of language in small versus large communities. From our
discussions of context dependency in inchoate languages
and in socialization, it will be evident that context depen-
dency may be either a symptom of language development or
a medium of socialization. On the first count, it is an
indication of communicative immaturity: the inchoate lan-
guage has not yet developed the capacity to communicate
information efficiently. On the second count, it is a necessary
and adaptive characteristic of all speaking, through which all
individuals construct their identity as social persons. Context
dependency, on the first count, is a condition which one hopes
will be superseded by context independency to facilitate the
exchange of information. Context dependency, on the second
count, is a vital and necessary feature of language: its
replacement by context independency must signal the break-
down of the socialization process (see Slater 1974:18).
We can be even more specific in our description of the
functionality of context dependence in regard to socialization.
The need for "interrelatedness" may be greater for some
 Sign Language Studies 29

communities than for others. For some communities a greater

degree of linguistic context dependency will be adaptive. Such
communities, in a relatively greater need of a context-dependent
language as a medium for establishing "interrelatedness, "
will be identical to the sorts of communities discussed by V.
Turner (1969, 1974), in which "anti-structural social move-
ments" arise. Like linguistic context dependency, anti-
structural social movements perform the reflexive function
of re-establishing within a community an "interrelatedness"
-a "communitas. " Like context dependency, anti-structural
movements are a kind of medium for socialization. Such com-
munities are just those which find themselves dominated by
some more powerful group. Dominated as they are, the people
of such communities are alienated from their own cultural
roots. Their response to such alienation is to struggle to es-
tablish new cultural roots through a re-emphasis on "inter-
relatedness. " Both the anti-structural social movement and
the adoption of context-dependent language serve to re-establish
this "interrelatedness. "
The peoples living in large diverse language communities
are just those peoples who are most likely to be dominated.
They are just the people who will find a context-dependent
sociolinguistic code most advantageous, in that it will serve
as a medium for the re-establishment of "interrelatedness."
So it is, for example, that "restricted codes, " which are
context-dependent codes used in complex societies, are de-
veloped by the lower classes who are alienated from positions
of significance in their own societies. Such context dependence
is not symptomatic of an immature or an inadequately developed
language (cf. Mueller 1973). Instead such codes are develop-
ments adaptive and effective for redressing the imbalances of
the social situation of dominated peoples.
Washabaugh

NOTES

This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper

entitled "Topic Prominence in Providence Island Sign Language,"
which was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic
Society of America in Chicago, December 1977. [It has also
appeared in Semiotica 29-1/2 (1980), 1-37 and is republished
here by kind permission of the Editor, Thomas A. Sebeok.]
I am grateful to the people of Providence Island and espec-
ially the deaf, without whose hospitality and generosity this
description could never have been begun. I am also grateful to
the National Science Foundation for providing support (Grant
No. BNS 76-800056) for the research reported in this paper,
and to Catherine Washabaugh who helped to collect a good
deal of the PSL corpus, who contributed many of the hypotheses
about PSL organization contained herein, and who helped edit
this report. I wish to thank James Woodward and Leo Dicker
for their comments on this paper, and Jennifer Green for her
illustrations.
2 The term Ssign will be used throughout this paper to refer
to a semiotic sign as opposed to a manual sign.

3 PSL informants, identified by the first three digits of the

code following each example sentence, were recorded on 8 mm.
film (F) and on half-inch videotape (V). Below are listed the
informants who contributed to the corpus:

Ident. no. Sex Age Village Deaf (+)

(approx.)
001 F 25 Southwest Bay +
002 M 20 Southwest Bay -
003 F 69 Lazy Hill +
004 M 70 Lazy Hill +
005 F 15 Southwest Bay +
006 F 68 Old Town +
007 M 68 Rocky Point +
011 F 14 Lazy Hill -
012 F 45 Old Town -
017 F 35 Old Town -
027 M 43 Lazy Hill -
 Sign Language Studies 29

Until December 18, 1976 the Betty Bee, which replaced the
ill-fated Alcabra, supplied almost all goods for the people of
Providence Island. On the night of December 18, with O.H.
as captain, she sank en route to Providence Island, carrying
at least forty-one islanders to their deaths (Vidales 1977).

5 This hypothetical description of PSL sentence organization

is weakened by the fact that our data corpus is small, limited
to the data observed during some twelve man-months of obser-
vation and about six hours of film and video recordings of
PSL signing.
6 Informant 005, who produced all these sentences,
is a
most interesting signer. First, she stands in a rather long
tradition of deafness and signing in Southwest Bay. Three of
her mother's siblings, who live close by, are deaf; and her
father's first cousin, now deceased, was also deaf and a
very capable signer. In addition she is the oldest child of
her family and handles well all the responsibilities normally
delegated to the oldest child.

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Washabaugh

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 Sign Language Studies 29

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Washabaugh

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Woodward, James
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William Washabaugh is an Assistant Professor in the anthro-

pology department of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
(53201). His Master's degree is from the University of
Connecticut (1970) and his Ph.D. from Wayne State University
(1974). His studies of Latin Americans have taken him both to
the Caribbean and to the northern urban and rural settings to
which they migrate. His research interest is focused on
culture and language in changing societies.

Readers will find that the present paper is part of a

sustained study of the way that a signed language used by
a small population of deaf people and their hearing associates
can lead to discovery of the relation of language to culture in
unexpected ways. In addition to "Hearing and Deaf Signers
on Providence Island"(SLS 24) and "The Organization and Use
of Providence Island Sign Language" (SLS 26), readers of the
present paper may wish to see "The Role of Speech in the
Construction of Reality" to appear soon in Semiotica. These
four studies carry the argument from signed languages to a
more general statement about the determination of the form
of language codes.
328 SLS 29

Appendix I
What follows is a description of the PSL signs which are referred to in the body
of the paper. These descriptions are meant to be just a reader's aid and nothing
more. Because many readers of this article will not be familiar with the trans-
cription system used for sign languages, the descriptions are non-technical and
loose. Exact transcriptions of these and other signs will be included in a future
dictionary of Providence Island Sign Language.
ANGRY (cheeks puffed out)
BLACK (up and down motion of a bent C hand on cheek)
BOAT (fist moving outward with a jerky motion while mouth
imitates the sound of a chugging engine)
BREAD (two prone A hands rolling outward)
BUY, (supine B hand brushes outward across supine B hand)
BUY 2 (prone F hand moves outward)
CANE GRIND (palm-out G hand twisting at the side of mouth followed by
the same G hand, with fingers pointed downward, making a
large circular motion)
CHRISTMAS (index finger held at larynx) (see Figure 10)
CLEAN (prone B hand brushes slowly outward across a supine B
hand while tongue wags from side to side) (see Figure 6)
COFFEE (B hand, with fingers pointed downward, brushes back and
forth over a supine B hand) (see Figure 2)
CONCHS (B hand chops down onto A hand; two prone B hands move
outward and downward while body leans into a diving
position) (see Figure 2)
COOK (tapered 0 hand placed at side of mouth; air forced through
rounded lips; cheeks puffed)
DEAD (head tilted slightly backward; eyes closed) (variant: eyes
closed; palm-inward B hand moves down across center of face)
DRINK, (A hand, with fingers bent and thumb inward, moves toward
mouth; head tilts backward) (see Figure 5)
DRINK2 (prone index finger brushes upward across lips) (see Figure 5)
FAT (mouth opera slightly but stretched wide revealing teeth: [vii)
(for frying) sound)
FEEL SORRY (palm-inward B hand moves across chest; eyes squint, inspira-
tion of air through slightly rounded lips)
FINISH (two prone B hands separate)
FIRE (tapered 0 held at side of mouth; air forced through rounded
lips; cheeks slightly puffed) (variant: air forced through
rounded lips; cheeks slightly puffed) (see Figure 8)
PSL 329

FLOWERS (loose prone B hands separate low in signing space; fingers

wave; tongue wags from side to side) (see Figure 6)
FRY (two tapered 0 hands near sides of mouth; air forced through
rounded lips; cheeks slightly puffed)
FULL (two C hands held near each other in front of body; prone B
(full grown) moves outward across palm of supine B; tongue wags from
side to side)
GIRL (index finger traces a line from top of forehead down side of
head near the hair line) (see Figure 3)
HUNGRY (palm-inward B hand circles at center of abdomen;inspiration
of air through slightly rounded lips) (variant: palm-inward B
hand is held at center of abdomen; inspiration of air through
slightly rounded lips) (see Figure 7)
ILL (palm outward B hand held on cheek; eyes squint; inspiration
of air through slightly rounded lips) (variant: tips of fingers
of palm-inward B hand rub back and forth on cheek; inspira-
tion of air through slightly rounded lips) (see Figure 7)
JOKE (palm-outward 5 hands, with fingers spread, move upward in
short jerky movements; tongue wags back and forth)
KITCHEN (two slanted B hands, high in front of body, touching at
finger tips; air forced through rounded lips; cheeks puffed)
LIGHT (high, bent, palm-upward B hand twists, followed by two
(electricity) palm-outward 5 hands separating in front of body; air forced
through rounded lips; cheeks puffed)
LIGHT (two palm-outward 5 hands separating in front of body; air
(sunlight) forced through rounded lips; cheeks puffed)
LIKE (palm-inward B hand makes circular movement on chest;
inspiration of air through slightly rounded lips)
MAN, (index finger pointing outward and upward at waist)
MAN 2 (index finger moves laterally across upper lip)
MANGO, (fist rubbing up and down on cheek) (see Figure 4)
MANGO 2 (fist opening and closing directly in front of mouth) (see
Figure 4)
MANGO 3 (mouth forming oral word mango) (mouth forming the sound
[chupeng])
OATH (fingers crossed at mouth; index finger pointing upward;
eyes directed upward) (see Figure 2)
OLD (cheeks sucked in) (variant: G hand, with fingers pointing
downward, makes repeated up and down movements; cheeks
sucked in)
330 SLS 29

OTHER-DAY, (B hand touches cheek and moves laterally to prone position)

(see Figure 9)
OTHER-DAY 2 (index finger touches cheeks and moves away sharply) (see
Figure 9)
OTHER-DAY (B hand makes arcing lateral motion in front of body) (see
Figure 9)
OTHER-TIME (B hand makes arcing lateral motion in front of body)
OTHER-WEEK (SUNDAY plus OTHER-TIME)
OTHER-YEAR (CHRISTMAS plus OTHER-TIME)
OVEN (two supine B hands slowly move outward; air forced through
rounded lips; cheeks puffed) (see Figure 8)
PAIN (inspiration of air through slightly rounded lips; eyes squint)
PLUM (F hand at mouth)
PRIEST (loose fist moves downward from chin)
PUSS (cat) (prone B hand held low: [ps] sound)
ROAST (two prone B hands, one about 4" above the other, move
back and forth in synchrony; air is forced through rounded
lips; cheeks puffed)
SLEEP (B hand held to side of tilted head)
SMOKE (tapered 0 held to side of mouth; air forced through rounded
lips; cheeks puffed; two loose B hands swirl outward and
upward)
STOVE (two prone B hands held at chest height followed by single A
hand twisting in front of body; air forced through rounded
lips; cheeks puffed)
SUNDAY (tapered 0 touches forehead and chest in two places) (see
Figure 10)
SWEET (index finger touches tongue; tongue wags from side to side)
THANK YOU (mouth moves in kissing motion) (variant: palm-inward B
hand touches chin and moves outward, often with an accom-
panying kissing motion)
WEIGH (two G hands move up and down reciprocally followed by an
arcing and downward motion of one G hand) (see Figure 2)
WARM (prone S hand rests on the palm of a slightly bent supine B;
this set then moves outward; air is forced through rounded
lips; cheeks puffed)
WOMAN (slightly bent, palm-upward B hand touches ipsi-lateral area
of chest)
YOUNG WOMAN (palm outward F hand touches contra-lateral area of chest)