Giving oranges and puppies: Children’s production of directional verbs in an emerging sign language from Oaxaca

Abstract

Children’s acquisition of directional verbs in sign languages has received a lot of attention, but less is known about the sociocultural process of using these verbs, especially in the context of emerging sign languages in diverse language ecologies. Directional verbs are a common grammatical phenomenon of many sign languages in which some verbs such as ‘to give’ and ‘to take’ can move in the direction of one or more of its arguments for indicating grammatical relations between agents and patients or recipients. I discuss the case study of one signing family who uses ‘making hands’, an emic term for the signing practices of deaf Chatino people and their families in the San Juan Quiahije municipality in Oaxaca, Mexico. The family in question consists of a first-generation adult signer and two second-generation child signers, aged 4;6 and 5;3. This article describes their usage of directional verbs for making explicit requests, asking questions, and talking about hypothetical events, including presenting or withholding gifts as part of the cultural understandings and practices of the allocations of goods. Ethnographic data reveals that the children’s production of verbs may be facilitated by directed input in the form of directives from a deaf adult signer, extensive peer play, and visual access to signed adult interactions. This case study offers insight about input and socialization for the children’s usage of directional verbs in an emerging sign language in a local Mesoamerican ecology.