The Authors' Hypothesis That Sign Languages Emerged As Creolised Paralanguages

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 210):

Even more sensitive might be consideration of the genesis of sign languages around the world, and the possibility of a pidgin/creole continuum involving the range of speakers who had the opportunity to learn sign in childhood as a ‘native language’ and those who came to it at various stages later on in life as a first or additional language. How might such studies bear on the hypothesis that sign languages emerged as creolised paralanguages among communities of deaf speakers?

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Sign languages are language, with a content plane stratified into semantics and lexicogrammar. The ontogenesis of Sign is the ontogenesis of language.

A creolised paralanguage would be a pidgin paralanguage that has become a native paralanguage. A pidgin paralanguage would be a simplified paralanguage used by people who do not share a common paralanguage.

The authors' hypothesis here is that Sign languages emerge as the nativisation of a simplified accompaniment to language (paralanguage) in communities of deaf speakers who did not previously share a common accompaniment to language.

Deaf signers might be tempted to similarly hypothesise that spoken languages emerged as creolised vocal paralanguage among communities of hearing people. In this scenario, hearing signers, who did not previously have a shared vocalised accompaniment to Sign, created a simplified vocalised accompaniment, and when this paralanguage was learned by the next generation, it became spoken language.