Introduction
Presentation
Grammatical description of sign languages has tended to be scarce and unsystematic to date. Catalan Sign Language (llengua de signes catalana, LSC) is one of the few sign languages that had an early global description of its grammar (Gramàtica bàsica LSC, 2005), accessible in LSC, Catalan, Spanish and English and with online open access since 2011. Following its steps, here you have a more comprehensive and detailed presentation of the grammatical properties of LSC.
A grammar of Catalan Sign Language (LSC) follows the SignGram Blueprint, the first comprehensive guide to sign language grammar description at all levels: Phonology, Lexicon, Morphology, Syntax, and Pragmatics. It also includes an introduction to the sociohistorical background of the language. The SignGram Blueprint has been implemented as a grammar writing tool on the SIGN-HUB platform, which was developed by the Horizon 2020 SIGN-HUB project (2016-20) and is available in open access. Several grammars have been created for other sign languages, and the goal is that further sign languages will join the repository with new grammar descriptions.
Goals and coverage
This grammar is understood as a tool for LSC signers, students, interpreters, researchers, linguists, and whoever is interested in the study of LSC. Grammar description is necessary for many different scientific and applied goals, ranging from teaching materials to language assessment, and this grammar tries to address this need in a substantial way.
Reading A grammar of Catalan Sign Language (LSC) requires general knowledge about grammar and grammatical terminology, but basic concepts are explained in a glossary and in the text as well. It intends to be accessible to a general reader, in particular through the extensive use of visual examples (videos and pictures) accompanying the glossed renditions. As a digital and on-line product, A grammar of Catalan Sign Language (LSC), radically differs from other, more traditional grammars, since it provides thousands of visual examples, which makes sign language actual examples and grammar description much more accessible to the readers.
Despite the advancement in the past years in research on LSC grammar, to date the study of grammar of LSC is partial and the results offer only a fragmentary picture, sometimes scattered in scientific publications. This grammar compiles the existing research results and incorporates new research carried out on some topics especially for this work.
However, the task of writing a comprehensive grammar is never complete, and this one does not cover all possible aspects either, as becomes clear from the empty sections in the Table of Contents. Ideally, future research will contribute to enlarging the knowledge about LSC and will be integrated in future versions of this grammar. In this sense, A grammar of Catalan Sign Language (LSC) must be seen as a work under construction to be expanded in subsequent editions.
Methodology
This grammar has been developed by a team of senior and junior researchers, both Deaf and hearing, at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Catalonia) over a duration of 4 years, thanks to the SIGN-HUB project.
By following the SignGram Blueprint, many terminological and analytical choices were already settled from the outset. As a grammar, it intends to be mostly descriptive, and informed by Linguistic Theory, but not theory-loaded.
Use
The grammar is divided into 5 Parts, each one divided into chapters and sections, and subsections.
Content about one phenomenon is often distributed across different modules of the grammar, so the reader is advised to follow the hyperlinks for connected content, and to use the search function as well. The Table of Contents should serve as a basic navigation tool through the whole work. Many sections are void of content, because the research needed is still unavailable.
Information about the data gathered in order to produce the description is found at the end of the relevant chapter or section. This is important because it might give information about the particular variety represented in the description. For this grammar, the Barcelona variety is the one initially represented. Variation within the LSC community is well-known, but hardly studied. The LSC corpus being built by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans research will help complete the picture.
A list of the references used and the author(s) of the chapter or of individual sections are also reported at the end of each chapter.
At the end of the work, you can find the complete list of references. A glossary of grammatical terms is also available for basic concepts that are taken for granted in the text and are not explained there.
A grammar of Catalan Sign Language (LSC) is offered now in English, but there are also versions in Catalan and LSC planned for the future.
The SIGN-HUB project
SIGN-HUB was carried out by a European research consortium to provide an innovative and inclusive resource hub for the linguistic, historical and cultural documentation of the Deaf communities’ heritage and for sign language assessment in clinical intervention and school settings.
To this end, an open state-of-the-art digital platform with customized accessible interfaces was created. The project initially fed that platform with core content in the following domains, expandable in the future to other sign languages: (i) digital grammar descriptions of 7 sign languages, produced with a new online grammar writing tool; (ii) an interactive digital atlas of linguistic structures of the world's sign languages; (iii) online sign language assessment instruments for education and clinical intervention, and (iv) the first digital archive of life narratives by elderly signers, subtitled and partially annotated for linguistic properties.
These components, made available for the first time through a centralized platform to specialists and to the general public, should (a) help explore and value the identity and the cultural, historical and linguistic assets of Deaf signing communities, (b) advance linguistic knowledge on the natural languages of the Deaf, and (c) impact on the diagnosis of language deficits within these minorities.
The project involved the participation of 10 teams from 7 countries: France, Germany, Italy, Israel, The Netherlands, Turkey and Spain (Catalonia).
The platform can be accessed at sign-hub.eu.