Differences in the production of non-manual expressions in Libras as L1 and L2 by fluent signers

• Grant number: 19/14326-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2020
• End date: December 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Plinio Almeida Barbosa
• Grantee: Letícia Kaori Hanada
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to analyze and compare non-manual expressions, in other words, body movements and facial expressions (Baker-Shenk & Cokely, 1980) that have functions such as lexical differentiation, participation in syntactic construction and contribution to intensification processes (Paiva et al., 2018) between a deaf person fluent in Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) as the first language (L1) and a hearing person fluent in Brazilian Sign Language as a second language (L2), specifically an interpreter. To do so, a corpus of approximately 30 sentences will be created that include affirmative and negative declarative sentences, partial interrogative sentences, imperative sentences. Adverbial phrases and topicalization were also used to form the sentences. It is expected that the results of this work will mainly contribute in three fronts: a) sign language research, b) understanding possible differences in the use of non-manual expressions between a user of LIBRAS as L1 and a user of LIBRAS as L2 and c) relevance of the methodology of Instrumental Phonetics for L2 acquisition by using a spatial-visual language.