The Study Of Low Grade Shanghai Deaf Pupils Mastering Chinese Sign Language Phonetics Structure

Sign language is the main communication vehicle of Deaf people.It is critical for their knowledge and language acquisition, cognitive development as well as their socialization process.There are enormous researches conducted in the realm of sign language, especially American Sign Language (ASL) by foreign researchers. However, limited researches have been conducted in China. Therefore, this paper focused on the phonetics structure characteristics of signs by primary school Deaf students, and why those characteristics emerged.The first section of this paper is about the background and design of the whole research. A systematic review of the literatures on the studies of phonetics structure of sign language is conducted. Then, the conception and hypothesis of this research is advocated.The second section of this paper is about the research methodology and findings. Observation and error rate analysis are used in this study. Daily conversations of Deaf students in primary schools are recorded and organized.The three parameters, namely the hand shape segment, location segment, and the movement segment are analyzed.The results show that:For the hand shape segment, the error rates of different types of single-hand hand shape in ascending order are one-finger(1.86%), four-fingers (2.04%), two-fingers (4.01%),three-fingers (3.57%) and five-fingers (3.69%).The error rate for two-hands hand shape is 3.08%.The error rate for the overall hand shape is 11.16%.The data shows that error rate is correlated with the anatomy characteristics of hands and the frequency of the emergence of the hand shape, and decreases with the development of the cognitive ability.For the location segment, the error rates (in ascending order) of the different types of location segments are the second-type error (0.32%), which refers to the motion errors in different part of hands, the third type error (0.35%),which refers to the hand motions error from the motions at either side of the trunk, the first type error (0.47%), which refers to the hand motion error happens in front of the chest, the fourth type error (2.89%), which refers to the hand motion error happens in front of the chest, and the fifth type (3.01%),which refers to the hand motion errors happen in different part of the body. The overall error rate for location segment is 1.47%.The data implies that for junior grade Deaf students in primary school,the sign errors of the location segment is positively correlated with the motor development sequence, but not correlated with the sequence of the acquisition of location segment.For the movement segment, the error rates in ascending order are inward movement (2.03%),Z-shape movement (5.7%),curve movement (7.32%),circular movement (10.13%)and linear movement(11.25%).The overall error rate is 7.28%.The possible reason could be that, the error rate might be related to the linguistic economic principal, and also related to the motor ability of the subjects.Generally, the error rates for the three parameters of Chinese Sign Language in ascending order are, location segment(1.47%), motion segment (7.28%) and hand shape segment(11.16%).The results show that the mastering of the phonetics structure of sign language is different from that of oral language.The third section of this paper is to summarize the characteristics of all the phonetic segments and the inner relation of phonetic structure in Chinese Sign Language, on the base of studies above. Put forward progressing orientation of phonetic structure study of Chinese Sign Language and reform of Chinese Sign Language curriculum.