TESTING CZECH SIGN LANGUAGE BY QUANTITATIVE LINGUISTIC METHODS TO INCREASE TEACHING EFFECTIVENESS

The contribution to the special education field will focus on expanding the theoretical basis for teaching the Czech sign language (hereinafter CSL) and for its particular grammatical description. This knowledge is a necessary condition for efficient teaching both of deaf users (prelingually deaf children) and of hearing users (parents and family members, students of special pedagogy, interpreters etc.).

The contribution is enunciated as a methodological paper focusing on speeches produced by the deaf in the CSL which will be processed by means of variant grammar instruments. These samples will then be analysed by means of a wide range of quantitative linguistic methods and the results will be compared to the results gained by quantitative analyses of spoken natural languages. Such a point of view would mean a significant change in the way sign languages are studies and understood on the national and international levels, and the discovered conclusions will contribute to expanding the knowledge of their linguistic substance and, therefore, also to increasing the quality of its theoretical fundament of as well as practical teaching.

The research will focus on enriching of Czech special education in the context of global trends with a view of increasing the effectiveness of teaching the CSL of the deaf. It is a research project in the field of special education with a multidisciplinary overlap using linguistic research methods. A deeper discovery of one of the other linguistic characteristics of the CSL (esp. of its hierarchical phoneme structure), obtained through quantitative linguistic methods contribute to the development of special education, especially for the theoretical and practical education of the CSL. Historically, it was developed on the basis of the analogy with the natural language; equivalents for the concepts used in describing a natural language (e.g. the phoneme, word, sentence etc.) were found for the sign language. This analogy then grounded a further consideration of the grammar and generally semiotic natures of the sign language. The nature of the sign language, yet, does not reflect the character of a natural language in many aspects. The biggest difference is seen in the simultaneous presence of signs related to phonemes in the text, which does not correspond to any natural language text; whether spoken, written of another. On the other hand, varying individual signs of the phonemic analogy in relation to other particular signs corresponds to the allophonic variability and phonotactic rules which are represented more or less in every natural language. There is, but, also a possibility to consider the sign simultaneity in the language of the deaf from the point of view of polysyntheticity; such a perspective, yet, requires the initial grammar model based on the phonemic structure of simultaneously used signs.

To reach the project objectives, the authors chose the methodology of the CSL quantitative analysis whose results will assist in deeper understanding of the CSL hierarchical structure and of particular differences from the Czech language, which is a basic assumption for understanding a different structure of the CSL. Due to its nature, therefore, the project will use quantitative linguistic research methods which will however be used for the development of the scientific branch of special education, or its scientific discipline of deaf studies.