Horizon MSH 1

Axis 1 “ Multilingual territories ” of the MSH of Bordeaux

Ricardo Etxepare (IKER – CNRS)

November 29, 2022, 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m., Salle Jean Borde, MSHBx

Coordination: Giovanni Agresti (IKER – Bordeaux Montaigne University), Cédric Brun (SPH – Bordeaux Montaigne University), Ricardo Etxepare (IKER – CNRS)

This presentation examines bilingualism in the form of bimodalism (oral language/signed language), at the interface of linguistics and archaeology. She reports on recent work carried out on incomplete hand negatives found in sites belonging to the Pyrenean Gravettian period. It explores the hypothesis that the so-called “incomplete” or “mutilated” negative hands, found in the walls of Gargas, Tibiran, Fuente del Trucho and other caves on both sides of the Pyrenees (dated between 27,000 and 22,000 years ago), represent in reality gestures from so-called “alternative” sign languages. Gesture-speech bimodalism is well attested among current hunter-gatherer populations in Australia, North America, and southern Africa. This hypothesis is the subject of an ongoing multidisciplinary project which relies on a team including specialists in sign languages, archaeologists (including those responsible for the Gargas cave and researchers from the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas from the Universidad de Cantabria), specialists in gesture-speech bimodalism within native populations (in Australia and the United States) and linguists interested in questions of language development.

This research invites us to consider sign languages ​​not as a secondary development strategy once the spoken language cannot flourish, but rather as an option open to all, but carried out in certain specific cultural niches.