Simultaneous constructions in GSL and AdaSL

A presentation at the 2020 Colloquium of African Languages and Linguistics, hosted at Leiden University.

Abstract: Our presentation examines the use of simultaneous constructions (SC) in Ghana Sign Language (GSL) and Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL). We considered manual simultaneity which involves two autonomous hands representing two different signs. From the analysis, it was identified that GSL signers used more SC as compared to AdaSL. These figures imply a greater preference for SC by the urban GSL signers as compared to the rural AdaSL signers. However, comparing the percentage of how SC is represented in the languages, not much difference was found except the absence of SC for location in AdaSL. In other words, both GSL and AdaSL used different types of manual SC comparative to what has been found in other sign languages. Furthermore, AdaSL signers were found to use different types of SC in the narrative tasks which were previously not identified. We found considerable use of SCs and of a wide variety of different types in our data, similar to use of SCs in GSL. We argue that the different types of SC used by AdaSL signers could be as a result of the different types of data analysed, and different nature of stimulus videos.