Longitudinal Documentation of Sign Language Acquisition in a Deaf Village in Bali

Language	Kata Kolok
Depositor	Connie de Vos
Affiliation	Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Location	Indonesia
Collection ID	0124
Grant ID	SG0140
Funding Body	ELDP
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/a6981929-85ab-4ff4-b2f1-f9de151fddf9

 

Summary of the collection

Kata Kolok is a sign language indigenous to a Balinese village which has a high incidence of hereditary deafness. At the time of fieldwork 48 deaf signers, and 1,200 hearing community members used Kata kolok with varying degrees of proficiency. The language is threatened by the increasing number of sign-bilinguals using Indonesian Sign Language in addition to Kata Kolok, as well as recent changes in marital patterns. This project presents a unique effort to document the acquisition of a sign language in a deaf village over an extensive period of time.

 

Group represented

The above average incidence of hereditary deafness in this area is caused by a recessive gene which emerged in the village at least seven generations ago. At the time of documentation there were 48 deaf signers between the age of 6 and ~70. In addition, there were approximately 1,200 hearing signers. These hearing signers, in addition to spoken Balinese and Indonesian, use Kata Kolok with varying degrees of proficiency. Furthermore, the village has developed various socio-cultural adaptations to deafness including the shared belief in a deaf god, special offices for the deaf, and a deaf dance, called the Janger Kolok. For these reasons, Bengkala is called Desa Kolok “deaf village” by the local Balinese community. Kata Kolok has been acquired by multiple generations of signers and is currently used in all aspects of village life including politics, religious ceremonies, education, and gossip. All in all, hearing and deaf signers alike have positive attitudes towards deafness and readily use Kata Kolok to communicate with each other.

 

Language information

Kata Kolok is a rural signing variety of Bali that emerged in response to a sudden rise in the incidence of deafness. The language has been the primary means of communication of at least 5 subsequent generations of deaf signers in social, lithurgical, professional, and educational settings. It has a number of structural characteristics that are unusual compared to other sign languages; most notably, Kata Kolok signers prefer an absolute Frame of Reference in spatial description. At the time of fieldwork 48 deaf signers, and 1,200 hearing community members used Kata kolok with varying degrees of proficiency. The language is threatened by the increasing number of sign-bilinguals using Indonesian Sign Language in addition to Kata Kolok, as well as recent changes in marital patterns. Sociolinguistic investigations indicate that Kata Kolok is used exclusively in two neighbouring villages and should thus be considered a sign language isolate.

The Ethnologue refers to the language as Benkala Sign Language, while all known genetic, anthropological, and (socio)linguistic research papers call it Kata Kolok. This latter term is more appropriate, as it is the way the hearing villagers refer to the language. Kata Kolok means “language of the deaf” in spoken Balinese.

 

Collection contents

The Kata Kolok child signing corpus was recorded and collected by Ketut Kanta and Connie de Vos (the current depositor).

During initial documentation activities (2007-2009) two deaf children were filmed at least once a month from the ages of 1;11 and 2;0 until 3;9 and 4;2 respectively.

The second section of the corpus resumes recording of these two deaf children at ages of 6;3 and 6;4 for another 12 months. In addition, the video recordings include a deaf child who did not start to acquire Kata Kolok until the age of 5. During this phase of the project the depositor was also able to produce more indepth metadata as well as more video transcriptions.

 

Collection history

Initial documentation activities (2007-2009) were supported by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics as part of a PhD project (de Vos 2012). Further recordings as well as indepth metadata and video annotations (2011-2012) were funded by ELDP (SG0140). Currently, longitudinal documentation of child signing are ongoing with the birth of the first deaf baby of generation 6 born to deaf parents in 2014.

 

 

Acknowledgement and citation

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:

de Vos, Connie. 2013. Longitudinal Documentation of Sign Language Acquisition in a Deaf Village in Bali. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-000F-84A7-1. Accessed on [insert date here].