thesis

Creation de langues gestuelles chez les sourds isoles

Defense date:

Jan. 1, 1988

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Institution:

Paris 7

Disciplines:

Linguistics

Authors:

Directors:

Abstract EN:

The present dissertation is devoted to the study of the gestural languages created by native deaf signers who live in a hearing community and have had no contact with any other deaf persons apart from their own kin. Since they are illiterate and deaf by birth, their personal gesture languages can be considered as being created without any conventional linguistic models. During my several sojourns in the amerindian reservations of northern canada and in the rural areas of china from 1977 to 1986, i succeeded in localizing and studying a dozen subjects. The analysis of the cognito-visual constraints in their gestural creating process allowed me to compare the lexico-syntactic mechanisms involved with the parallel phenomena observed in oral child languages and chinese picto-ideographic writing.

Abstract FR:

Cette these est consacree a l'etude des langues gestuelles creees independemment de toute influence linguistique exterieure par des sourds de naissance, analphabetes, vivant au sein d'une communaute entendante et sans contact avec des sourds autres que ceux de leurs propres familles. Au cours de plusieurs sejours dans des reserves amerindiennes du canada et en chine rurale entre 1977 et 1986, j'ai pu localiser et etudier une douzaine de sujets. L'analyse des contraintes cognitovisuelles dans leurs processus de creation gestuelle m'a permis de rapprocher les demarches lexico-syntaxiques de ces sourds de phenomenes paralleles dans les langues orales enfantines et dans l'ecriture picto-ideographique chinoise.