First steps in the documentation of Ecuadorian Sign Language (LSEC)

Abstract

Ecuador is home to 65,000-200,000 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) adults; most rely on Ecuadorian Sign Language (LSEC) for communication  with family, friends, schooling, etc. LSEC can be traced to three institutions in Quito and a sports team founded by DHH people, but also to some history of ASL through missionary efforts and other socio-economic/-political contact. To date, only very limited literature exists on LSEC, especially in collaboration with the DHH community. Thus, this project is the first direct description of LSEC by a collaborative deaf+hearing research team and serves as the first step in training community researchers in documenting and reclaiming their language/linguistic variety . We report on early results from four different studies focusing on description of LSEC as well as the methodologies for creation of LSEC corpora, all with the aim of capturing varying language contexts for evidence-based instruction for language learners and for interpreter training. The preliminary results indicate a) use of space (e.g. ‘agreeing’ predicates) reported in other literature on sign languages, b) different verb-types, c) SVO word-order, d) some (contact-induced) similarities with ASL, e) robust argument omission, f) role-shift, g) doubling, and other phenomena.The implications of this first step are direct: even with this limited dataset, the team can begin to inform creators of instructional materials.