In this article, I briefly explore recent investigations regarding the emergence of sign languages in Mesoamerican contexts and examine some features that facilitate their emergence. In recent years, many studies have been documenting emerging sign languages around the world. Mesoamerica provides an interesting comparative field, since several of these sign languages appeared within the Mayan area while others emerged in communities belonging to a different spoken language family. A comparison based on the first available reports and studies conducted in this area reveals that there are many similarities but also crucial differences clearly linked to the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of the surrounding communities in which these sign languages emerged. Prominent features that help and, to some extent, shape the sign language are the use of multimodal communication in the surrounding hearing community (i.e., the significant use of conventional gestures and nonverbal behaviors), the (positive) attitude toward deafness, and the shared material culture as well as cultural and communicative practices. Also, contexts of sign language use vary according to the type of speech community. For instance, there will be differences in terms of vocabulary size and degrees of conventionalization between home sign languages or sign systems (with one deaf individual), village sign languages (with multiple deaf individuals with a shared background), and community sign languages (with multiple deaf individuals without a shared background) (Meir et al. 2012). Even if these emerging languages are new, they are already complex. In this article, I show how there is syntactic systematicity SLS 19(3) Pgs 309-478.indd 375 3/21/2019 12:57:56 PM 376 | Sign Language Studie s and that word order (although variable) is present from the beginning. Interestingly, in several emerging sign languages considered in this article, the sign language word order differs from that of the surrounding spoken language. A second issue is word class distinction. I considered only the noun vs. verb division. Although many documented emerging sign languages make a distinction (Haviland 2011; Safar and Petatillo Chan forthcoming; Tkachman and Sandler 2013), in many cases it is done through compositionality (we could also talk about derivation) and is not always obligatory. This fact reminds us that noun versus verb is not such a natural distinction, and in many spoken Amerindian languages this distinction is not as obvious as many grammars would lead us to believe (see Lois and Vapnarsky 2006 for a discussion on this point in spoken languages of the Americas). Typological Interests of Emerging Sign Languages Many emerging sign languages show unusual features rarely or never before described for spoken as well as institutional sign languages (also called notional languages—such as American Sign Language, ASL; Mexican Sign Language, LSM; and French Sign Language, LSF), such as the absence of third-person pronouns (de Vos 2012b) or the use of various unusual counting systems (Zeshan et al. 2013; Safar et al. 2018). Within the typology of sign languages themselves, emerging sign languages have developed new and unanticipated ways of making use of the signing space. At the syntactic level, de Vos found that in Kata Kolok, directionality in the signing space for verbal agreement is not obligatory for certain verbs—in contrast with how institutional sign languages work (de Vos 2012b). The use of entity classifiers (i.e., the handshape representing a type of entity), which has been claimed to be universal in sign language (Emmorey 2003; Pfau, Steinbach, and Woll 2012), does not exist in Adamorobe Sign Language (Nyst 2007), although, as in Yucatec Maya Sign Language (YMSL), there are some size and shape classifiers and a few examples of what could be considered classifiers. In order to talk about time, many sign languages productively use space to create a timeline. In most documented sign languages, the space in front of the signer refers to the future and behind the signer refers to the past, but there are examples of the reverse strategy, as in SLS 19(3) Pgs 309-478.indd 376 3/21/2019 12:57:56 PM Emerging Sign Language of Mesoamerica | 377 Urubu Ka’apor sign language (Ferreira-Brito 1984), in which the front refers to the past and the back to the future. However, many village sign languages around the world only differentiate between now versus not now, such as Kata Kolok (de Vos 2012b) and YMSL (Le Guen 2012) (see also Kendon 1993 for Warlpiri alternate sign language). The Emerging Sign Languages of Mesoamerica When considering emerging sign language in Mesoamerica, several clarifications should be made. First, we do not include institutional (or sometimes called established or national) sign languages in the “emerging” category. Second, we want to distinguish between known emerging sign languages and the ones that have not been documented or identified in the past. This is an important consideration since there are numerous settings throughout Mesoamerica in which sign languages are created and used, but very few have been described to date. In this sense, the sample presented in this paper is far from being representative of the (potential) variety of sign languages in this area. Finally, since work on these languages is mostly incipient, relatively few studies have been published yet. The Documented Emerging Sign Languages of Mesoamerica Because very little information is available on the emerging sign languages in Mesoamerica, I present a rapid sketch of the communities that have been documented so far and some relevant information regarding the researchers who have been documenting these languages. Many researchers have provided me with some information through personal communication, and I wish to thank all of them for their generosity. Before examining all the languages, I will define the Mesoamerican area. For linguists and anthropologists, the Mesoamerican area is roughly outlined as the territory between northern Mexico and Nicaragua (sometimes including northern Costa Rica). This criterion is used in this paper more to enable comparison of various sign languages that emerged in this part of the world than being motivated by specific features (although the question is important and remains to be answered through a more extended comparison). The languages presented in this paper are (from north to south): Chatino SLS 19(3) Pgs 309-478.indd 377 3/21/2019 12:57:56 PM 378 | Sign Language Studie s Sign Language, Zinacantan home sign, and Yucatec Maya Sign Language in Mexico; Nebaj home systems and K’iche Sign Language of Nahualá in Guatemala; Bay Island sign languages in Honduras; Nicaraguan Sign Language in Nicaragua; and Old Costa Rican Sign Language (OLESCO) in Costa Rica. Figure 1 provides a map of the documented emerging sign languages in Mesoamerica. Chatino Sign Language, or San Juan Quiahije Chatino Sign Language, as it has been called by Lynn Hou and Kate Mesh, who described it, arose among a community of Chatino speakers in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico. The signing community is constituted by eleven deaf signers (five of whom are children) and just more than twenty hearing signers. The total population of the village of San Juan, along with its outlying hamlet Cieneguilla, is 3,628, according to the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI 2015); however, there is a high rate of emigration to the United States, possibly lowering the actual number of people living there. The incidence of deafness is around 0.3 percent (11 out of 3,628). Although the community is small, it comprises two generations (in some families). The researchers classify them into interactional Figure 1. Map of the documented emerging sign languages in Mesoamerica († = extinct). SLS 19(3) Pgs 309-478.indd 378 3/21/2019 12:57:57 PM Emerging Sign Language of Mesoamerica | 379 groups (following Kisch 2012). Since 2012, Hou, using methods from ethnography and linguistics, has mainly been working on language acquisition and language socialization (Hou 2016, 2018), while Mesh’s focus has been on the importance of cospeech gestures in the creation of the sign language (Mesh 2017). Jointly, they also looked at the comparative semiotics of negation signs and gestures in the local language ecology. Zinacantan home sign, or “Z,” as John Haviland terms it, is a home sign language that arose in Zinacantan, in Chiapas, Mexico, among a community of Tsotsil speakers (Tsotsil is the surrounding Mayan language). The sign language is used by a small number of signers—three deaf siblings along with twelve other people. The home sign system was developed among the three deaf and one hearing sibling as well as a niece who grew up together with them and became fluent in the sign language. In contrast with YMSL, deaf people are not really integrated in the Zinacantan community. Because of its restricted social network, Zinacantan Sign Language can be considered a home sign system. It is, however, being transmitted to a second generation, as one of the deaf siblings has a hearing baby who is learning to sign. John Haviland has been working for many years on everyday and multimodal communication among the Tsotsil speakers. His main research interest is to understand how a communication system emerges in a micro-community like the one using Zinacantan Sign Language (Haviland 2011, 2013a, 2013b, 2015, 2016, forthcoming). Although limited to a small signing community, Zinacantan Sign Language shows some interesting linguistic features, which make it an already complex and efficient linguistic system for communication with identifiable parts of speech and syntax (Haviland 2011, 2013b, 2015, forthcominga, German 2018). However, it is not free from misunderstanding and specific sociolinguistic ideology, as with any language of the world (see Haviland 2013a for a discussion). Yucatec Maya Sign

中文翻译：

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中美洲新兴手语

在本文中，我简要探讨了最近关于中美洲语境中手语出现的调查，并研究了促进手语出现的一些特征。近年来，许多研究记录了世界各地新兴的手语。中美洲提供了一个有趣的比较领域，因为其中一些手语出现在玛雅地区，而其他手语出现在属于不同口语家族的社区中。根据在该领域进行的第一批可用报告和研究进行的比较表明，存在许多相似之处，但也存在与这些手语出现的周围社区的文化和语言背景明显相关的重大差异。突出的功能有助于，并且在某种程度上，塑造手语的是周围听力社区中多模态交流的使用（即大量使用传统手势和非语言行为）、对耳聋的（积极）态度、共享的物质文化以及文化和交流实践。此外，手语使用的背景因言语社区的类型而异。例如，家庭手语或手语系统（有一个聋人）、乡村手语（有多个具有共同背景的聋人）和社区手语（有一个聋人）在词汇量和约定化程度方面存在差异。多个没有共同背景的聋人）（Meir 等人，2012 年）。即使这些新兴语言是新的，它们也已经很复杂了。在本文中，我展示了如何存在句法系统性 SLS 19(3) Pgs 309-478.indd 375 3/21/2019 12:57:56 PM 376 | Sign Language Studie s 和那个词序（虽然可变）从一开始就存在。有趣的是，在本文考虑的几种新兴手语中，手语词序与周围口语的词序不同。第二个问题是词类区分。我只考虑了名词与动词的划分。尽管许多记录在案的新兴手语做出了区分（Haviland 2011；Safar 和 Petatillo Chan 即将发布；Tkachman 和 Sandler 2013），但在许多情况下，它是通过组合（我们也可以谈论推导）完成的，并不总是强制性的。这个事实提醒我们名词和动词并不是那么自然的区别，并且在许多美洲印第安人语言中，这种区别并不像许多语法会让我们相信的那么明显（参见 Lois 和 Vapnarsky 2006 年关于美洲口语中这一点的讨论）。新兴手语的类型学兴趣 许多新兴手语显示出很少或以前从未为口语和机构手语（也称为概念语言，例如美国手语，ASL；墨西哥手语，LSM；和法国手语）描述的不同寻常的特征, LSF)，例如没有第三人称代词 (de Vos 2012b) 或使用各​​种不寻常的计数系统 (Zeshan et al. 2013; Safar et al. 2018)。在手语本身的类型学中，新兴的手语已经开发出新的和意想不到的方式来利用手语空间。在句法层面，de Vos 发现，在 Kata Kolok 中，口头协议的签名空间中的方向性对于某些动词并不是强制性的——与机构手语的工作方式相反（de Vos 2012b）。实体分类器（即代表一种实体类型的手形）的使用，在 Adamorobe 手语中不存在（Nyst 2007），它被声称在手语中是通用的（Emmorey 2003；Pfau、Steinbach 和 Woll 2012） )，尽管在 Yucatec Maya Sign Language (YMSL) 中，有一些大小和形状分类器以及一些可以被视为分类器的示例。为了谈论时间，许多手语有效地利用空间来创建时间线。在大多数记录在案的手语中，手语者前面的空间表示未来，手语者后面的空间表示过去，但也有反向策略的例子，如 SLS 19(3) Pgs 309-478.indd 376 3/21/2019 12:57:56 PM 中美洲新兴手语 | 377 Urubu Ka'apor 手语（Ferreira-Brito 1984），其中前指过去，后指未来。然而，世界各地的许多乡村手语只区分现在和不现在，例如 Kata Kolok (de Vos 2012b) 和 YMSL (Le Guen 2012)（另见 Kendon 1993 的 Warlpiri 替代手语）。中美洲新兴的手语 在考虑中美洲新兴的手语时，应该做出一些澄清。首先，我们不将机构（或有时称为已建立或国家）手语包括在“新兴”类别中。第二，我们想区分已知的新兴手语和过去没有记录或识别的手语。这是一个重要的考虑因素，因为在整个中美洲有许多创建和使用手语的环境，但迄今为止很少有描述。从这个意义上说，本文中提供的样本远不能代表该领域的（潜在）各种手语。最后，由于关于这些语言的工作大多处于起步阶段，因此发表的研究相对较少。记录在案的中美洲新兴手语 因为关于中美洲新兴手语的信息很少，我简要介绍了迄今为止已记录的社区以及有关记录这些语言的研究人员的一些相关信息。许多研究人员通过个人交流向我提供了一些信息，我要感谢他们的慷慨解囊。在检查所有语言之前，我将定义中美洲地区。对于语言学家和人类学家来说，中美洲地区被粗略地概括为墨西哥北部和尼加拉瓜（有时包括哥斯达黎加北部）之间的领土。在本文中，该标准更多地用于比较世界上出现的各种手语，而不是受特定特征的启发（尽管这个问题很重要，仍有待通过更广泛的比较来回答）。本文中呈现的语言是（从北到南）：Chatino SLS 19(3) Pgs 309-478.indd 377 3/21/2019 12:57:56 PM 378 | 墨西哥的手语研究手语、Zinacantan 家庭手语和 Yucatec Maya 手语；危地马拉纳瓦拉的 Nebaj 家庭系统和 K'iche 手语；洪都拉斯的湾岛手语；尼加拉瓜的尼加拉瓜手语；和哥斯达黎加的老哥斯达黎加手语 (OLESCO)。图 1 提供了中美洲记录在案的新兴手语地图。Chatino 手语，或称 San Juan Quiahije Chatino 手语，由 Lynn Hou 和描述它的 Kate Mesh 所称，起源于墨西哥瓦哈卡州的一个使用 Chatino 语言的社区。手语社区由十一名聋哑手语者（其中五名是儿童）和二十多位听力手语者组成。根据国家地理和地理研究所（INEGI 2015）的数据，圣胡安村及其外围小村庄 Cieneguilla 的总人口为 3,628 人；然而，移民到美国的比率很高，可能会降低居住在那里的实际人数。耳聋的发病率约为 0.3%（3,628 人中有 11 人）。虽然社区很小，但它由两代人组成（在一些家庭中）。研究人员将它们分类为交互性图 1. 中美洲记录的新兴手语地图（† = 灭绝）。SLS 19(3) Pgs 309-478.indd 378 3/21/2019 下午 12:57:57 中美洲新兴手语 | 379 个组（继 Kisch 2012 之后）。自 2012 年以来，侯使用民族志和语言学的方法，主要致力于语言习得和语言社会化（侯 2016，2018），而 Mesh 的重点一直是语音手势在手语创作中的重要性（Mesh 2017 ）。他们还共同研究了当地语言生态中否定符号和手势的比较符号学。Zinacantan 家庭手语，或约翰·哈维兰 (John Haviland) 所说的“Z”，是一种家庭手语，起源于墨西哥恰帕斯州的 Zinacantan，在 Tsotsil 语言社区中出现（Tsotsil 是周围的玛雅语言）。少数手语者使用手语——三个聋哑兄弟姐妹和其他十二个人。家庭手语系统是在三个聋子和一个听力正常的兄弟姐妹以及与他们一起长大并能流利使用手语的侄女之间开发的。与 YMSL 相比，聋人并没有真正融入 Zinacantan 社区。由于其社交网络受限，Zinacantan 手语可被视为家庭手语系统。然而，它正在传播给第二代，因为其中一个聋人兄弟姐妹有一个正在学习手语的听力婴儿。John Haviland 多年来一直致力于 Tsotsil 演讲者之间的日常和多模式交流。他的主要研究兴趣是了解通信系统如何在使用 Zinacantan 手语的微型社区中出现（Haviland 2011, 2013a, 2013b, 2015, 2016，即将推出）。虽然仅限于小型签约社区，Zinacantan 手语显示了一些有趣的语言特征，这使其成为一个已经很复杂且有效的语言系统，用于与可识别的词性和句法进行交流（Haviland 2011, 2013b, 2015,comingcoma, German 2018）。然而，与世界上的任何语言一样，它并非没有误解和特定的社会语言意识形态（参见 Haviland 2013a 的讨论）。尤卡特克玛雅标志