A paper presented at the Rumsey Symposium, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 15 August 2019
Sign languages (SLs) in the upper Nebilyer and Kaugel valleys of Papua New Guinea are one-generation-old creations, centred on one deaf individual and (in some cases) a circle of adept hearing interlocutors. SLs in the region vary substantially in terms of elaboration and complexity, depending on how many regular, fluent sign interlocutors a deaf person has (cf. Nyst, Sylla, & Magassouba, 2012, p. 267 in rural Mali; Yau, 1992, p. 228 in China and Indigenous Canada). While Nebilyer/Kaugel SLs share basic lexicon at rates of 57%-79% (Reed, submitted), mutual intelligibility of these SLs is best explained not as a relationship between varieties, but a relationship between users (Hudson, 1996, pp. 35-36). Similarly, “understanding is not an independent state that precedes and affords coordinated social action, but rather a dimension of coordinated social action itself” (Bailey, 2005, p. 398).
Sign languages (SLs) in the upper Nebilyer and Kaugel valleys of Papua New Guinea are one-generation-old creations, centred on one deaf individual and (in some cases) a circle of adept hearing interlocutors. SLs in the region vary substantially in terms of elaboration and complexity, depending on how many regular, fluent sign interlocutors a deaf person has (cf. Nyst, Sylla, & Magassouba, 2012, p. 267 in rural Mali; Yau, 1992, p. 228 in China and Indigenous Canada). While Nebilyer/Kaugel SLs share basic lexicon at rates of 57%-79% (Reed, submitted), mutual intelligibility of these SLs is best explained not as a relationship between varieties, but a relationship between users (Hudson, 1996, pp. 35-36). Similarly, “understanding is not an independent state that precedes and affords coordinated social action, but rather a dimension of coordinated social action itself” (Bailey, 2005, p. 398).