Kata Kolok

"Deaf talk" redirects here. For other languages used by deaf people, see Sign language.

Bengkala Sign Language
Kata Kolok
Native to	Bali, Indonesia
Region	One village in the northern part of the island
Signers	40 deaf signers (2007) 1,200 hearing signers (2011)
Language family	Language isolate
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bqy
Glottolog	beng1239
ELP	Kata Kolok

Kata Kolok (literally "deaf talk"), also known as Benkala Sign Language and Balinese Sign Language, is a village sign language which is indigenous to two neighbouring villages in northern Bali, Indonesia. The main village, Bengkala, has had high incidences of deafness for over seven generations. Notwithstanding the biological time depth of the recessive mutation that causes deafness, the first substantial cohort of deaf signers did not occur until five generations ago, and this event marks the emergence of Kata Kolok. The sign language has been acquired by at least five generations of deaf, native signers and features in all aspects of village life, including political, professional, educational, and religious settings.

Kata Kolok is linguistically unrelated to spoken Balinese or other sign languages. It lacks certain common contact sign phenomena that often arise when a sign language and an oral language are in close contact, such as fingerspelling and mouthing. It differs from other known sign languages in a number of respects: signers make extensive use of cardinal directions and real-world locations to organize the signing space, and they do not use a metaphorical "time line" for time reference. Additionally, Kata Kolok is the only known sign language which predominantly deploys an absolute frame of reference rather than an intrinsic or relative frame.

The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI) and the International Institute for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies have archived over 100 hours of Kata Kolok video data. The metadata of this corpus are accessible online (see www.mpi.nl).

Deaf people in the village express themselves using special cultural forms such as deaf dance and martial arts and occupy special ritual and social roles, including digging graves and maintaining water pipes. Deaf and hearing villagers alike share a belief in a deaf god.

History

Background

Kata Kolok was most likely established due to the prevalence of hereditary sensorineural deafness caused by a recessive non-syndromic mutation of the MYO15A gene. This gene caused a significant number of hearing-impaired people in the Bengkal village. Accordin to 1995 census, around 2.2% of the village population has hearing impartation.

This form of communication is thought to have established since five or seven generations ago. According to 2011 census in Bengkal village, out of 2,740 people, around 1,500 people or 57% of the population able to communicate in this language in addition to 46 hearing-impaired people. In addition, at least eight hearing-impaired people from Bengkal that have left the village but then returned after a while were still be able to use Kata Kolok.

Usage in Bengkal village

Kata Kolok usually used when at least one of the interlocutors is deaf. It can also be used by hearing interlocutors when they are far apart or working with noisy equipment. Kata Kolok can be used in all areas of life: i.e. used to communicate when repairing water pipes or when a village nurse need to communicate with hearing-impaired patients.

Due to the high proportion of people who were able to communicate in Kata Kolok, a deaf child can learn it from birth in the same way that hearing children learn spoken language.

Phonology

In the study of different gesture languages, such as American Sign Language, gestures are decomposed into several components: palm shape, hand orientation, gesture, and hand movement were taken into account denoting meaning. If gestures differ in only one component, they are said to form minimal pairs. The presence of such pairs allows user to prove that the differing parameters have phoneme and meaning. User of any sign language pay attention to them when determining the meaning of an utterance, and the transition from one meaning to another changes the content of the gesture.

Unlike mentioned phonology charateristic of sign language, in Kata Kolok, it is almost impossible to identify minimal pairs, so it is difficult to determine the phoneme status of the palm forms used in gesturing.

All palm shapes observed in Kata Kolok can be categorized into 3 category: basic (i.e. the simplest configurations that are easily recognised and used in a large number of gestures), regular (found in a certain number of gestures but less frequently than basic), and limited (used in a single gesture).

Basic palm shapes include the following configurations:

• 
  a form of the palm in which all fingers are fully extended and spread apart.
• 
  Curved-5, A palm shape in which all fingers are separated and slightly bent at each joint.
• 
  IX, The index finger is extended, the rest of the fingers are clenched into a fist.
• 
  B, A palm shape in which all fingers are fully extended and folded together.
• 
  Curved-B, fingers folded together and slightly bent at each joint, forming an arc.
• 
  A, Fingers folded into a fist, thumb resting on the side of the other four fingers.

Bibliography

• Branson, Jan, Don Miller, I Gede Marsaja & I Wayan Negara (1996). Everyone Here Speaks Sign Language Too: A Deaf Village in Bali, Indonesia. In: Lucas, Ceil, ed. (1996): Multicultural Aspects of Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities, 39–57. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press.
• Branson, J., Miller, D., & Marsaja, I. G. (1999). Sign Languages as Natural Part of the Linguistic Mosaic: The Impact of Deaf People on Discourse Forms in Northern Bali, Indonesia. In E. Winston (Ed.), Storytelling and Conversation (Vol. 5). Washington D.C.: Gallaudet University Press.
• De Vos, C. (2011). A signers' village in Bali, Indonesia. Minpaku Anthropology Newsletter, 33, 4–5. more
• De Vos, C. (2011). Kata Kolok color terms and the emergence of lexical signs in rural signing communities. The Senses & Society, 6(1), 68–76. doi:10.2752/174589311X12893982233795.
• De Vos, C. (2012). Sign-Spatiality in Kata Kolok: how a village sign language of Bali inscribes its signing space. PhD Dissertation. Nijmegen: Radboud University.
• Friedman, T. B., Hinnant, J. T., Fridell, R. A., Wilcox, E. R., Raphael, Y., & Camper, S. A. (2000). DFNB3 Families and Shaker-2 Mice: Mutations in an Unconventional Myosin, myo 15. Advances in Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, 56, 131–144.
• Friedman, T. B., Liang, Y., Weber, J. L., Hinnant, J. T., Barber, T. D., Winata, S., Arhya, I. N., et al. (1995). A gene for congenital, recessive deafness DFNB3 maps to the pericentrometric region of chromosome 17. Nature Genetics, 9, 86–91.
• Kortschak, Irfan (2010). "Everyone Speaks Deaf Talk" In: Kortschak, Irfan (2010): Invisible People: Poverty and Empowerment in Indonesia, The Lontar Foundation, Jakarta, Indonesia.
• Liang, Y., Wang, A., Probst, F. J., Arhya, I. N., Barber, T. D., Chen, K.-S., et al. (1998). Genetic Mapping Refines DFNB3 to 17p11.2, Suggests Multiple Alleles of DFNB3, and Supports Homology to the Mouse Model shaker-2. American Journal of Human Genetics, 62, 904–915.
• Marsaja, I. G. (2008). Desa Kolok - A deaf village and its sign language in Bali, Indonesia. Nijmegen: Ishara Press.
• Perniss, P., & Zeshan, U. (2008). Possessive and existential constructions in Kata Kolok. In P. Perniss & U. Zeshan (Eds.), Possessive and existential constructions in sign languages. Sign Language Typology Series No. 2. Nijmegen: Ishara Press.
• Winata, S., Arhya, I. N., Moeljopawiro, S., Hinnant, J. T., Liang, Y, Friedman, T B, & Asher, J. J. (1995). Congenital Non-Syndromal Autosomal Recessive Deafness in Bengkala, an Isolated Balinese Village. Journal of Medical Genetics, 32(5), 336–343.