Pragmatic competence without a language model: Other-Initiated Repair in Balinese homesign

Homesigners are deaf individuals who have grown up in the absence of a conventional language model and co-created unique communication system with their hearing relatives other interlocutors. This paper presents first analysis Other-Initiated Repair (OIR) sequences as window into pragmatic competence homesigners. Our conversation analyses based on 2:24 h video data from five homesigners interlocutors Buleleng regency Bali, Indonesia. On par speakers signers languages, we find that all main OIR formats adopted these conversations. Moreover, restricted repair preferred over open ones. also upgrade strategies multiple just like languages do to achieve increasing specificity. Yet, reported for sign is more frequent our dataset compared previously studied spoken languages. All all, findings support hypothesis interactional abilities develop even can therefore be seen foundation emergence take off.