Bimodal Bilingualism: A Spoken Language and a Sign Language

When children grow up in an environment where both a spoken language and a sign language are used, they may become bimodal bilinguals – users of languages in two different modalities. These families often include deaf, signing parents with hearing children or deaf children who sign and use spoken language with hearing technology. Hearing parents of deaf and hard-of-hearing children may also choose to pursue bimodal bilingualism and learn a sign language together with their children. How do children learn and use both a sign language and a spoken language? What is it like to learn a sign language as an adult together with your child? What does bimodal bilingualism look like for adults who grew up in these contexts? There are many parallels between these contexts and contexts involving two spoken languages, but also many important differences due to the modalities and issues of accessibility. This presentation will provide an overview of research findings, including discussion of code-blending, the bimodal bilingual analogue to code-switching.

Diane Lillo-Martín is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut and a Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories. She is an affiliated faculty member of the CT Institute for Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a former fellow of the UConn Humanities Institute.

Her main research interest is in better understanding the human language faculty. Primarily, she examines this by studying the structure and acquisition of American Sign Language and examining the process of language acquisition across different languages.