Orocovis Sign Language
Orocovis Sign Language is a village sign language native to Orocovis, Puerto Rico. Distinct from both the Puerto Rican dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) and Puerto Rican Sign Language (PRSL), LSOR is a language shared by both deaf and hearing members of the community. It is spoken by about 25 to 50 mostly Afro-Caribbean families in the inland town. Many in Orocivis are bilingual in PRSL and LSOR.
Grammar
Orocovis Sign Language features several notable grammatical differences to its neighboring dominant languages.Signing space and agreement
Like other village sign languages, LSOR signers employ an extended signing space. As such, signers are not restricted to the space in front of themselves: Signers will use extended bodily locations as well as the space behind their body. In addition, there is an extensive use of absolute pointing, a phenomenon seen in many other sign languages, where the signing space location is "absolute" which then is used for a variety of grammatical processes.As such, absolute pointing can reference an actual location:
It can also indicate where a referent in question is located, becoming an abstracted, symbolic element in the signer's speech. In the below two examples, the referent is either no longer alive or has moved locations since their signed location became abstracted:
LSOR's use of absolute pointing can provide the signer a rich vocabulary for locations that are not visually accessible from the location of the conversation. For example, pointing to a specific place can reference the a subject or topic that is associated with that particular space:
When subjects are moving, their location indicated by absolute pointing concretizes within the discourse and can be used as a reference point later. For example, the person indicated by IXfrt-lft-up is at the front-left-up position across from the signer, but she was moving from one location to another, and soon left the front-left-up position.
Similarly, the location of each daughter at the point of utterance becomes an absolute location: