A tale of two modalities: Sign and speech influence in each other in bimodal 
bilinguals

Manhardt, Francie; Brouwer, Susanne; Ozyurek, Asli

doi:10.1177/0956797620968789

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

A tale of two modalities: Sign and speech influence in each other in bimodal bilinguals

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons227177

Manhardt, Francie
Multimodal Language and Cognition, Radboud University Nijmegen, External Organizations;
International Max Planck Research School for Language Sciences, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons142

Ozyurek, Asli
Research Associates, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

Manhardt_etal_2021_Tale of two modalities.pdf
(Publisher version), 2MB

Supplementary Material (public)

Manhardt_etal_2021suppl_Tale of two modalities.pdf.docx
(Supplementary material), 218KB

Citation

Manhardt, F., Brouwer, S., & Ozyurek, A. (2021). A tale of two modalities: Sign and speech influence in each other in bimodal bilinguals. Psychological Science, 32(3), 424-436. doi:10.1177/0956797620968789.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0006-F992-C

Abstract

Bimodal bilinguals are hearing individuals fluent in a sign and a spoken language. Can the two languages influence each other in such individuals despite differences in the visual (sign) and vocal (speech) modalities of expression? We investigated cross-linguistic influences on bimodal bilinguals’ expression of spatial relations. Unlike spoken languages, sign uses iconic linguistic forms that resemble physical features of objects in a spatial relation and thus expresses specific semantic information. Hearing bimodal bilinguals (n = 21) fluent in Dutch and Sign Language of the Netherlands and their hearing nonsigning and deaf signing peers (n = 20 each) described left/right relations between two objects. Bimodal bilinguals expressed more specific information about physical features of objects in speech than nonsigners, showing influence from sign language. They also used fewer iconic signs with specific semantic information than deaf signers, demonstrating influence from speech. Bimodal bilinguals’ speech and signs are shaped by two languages from different modalities.