The influence of community size on constituent order: A comparison between emerging and conventionalized sign languages

The current study examines the effect of community size on constituent order by comparing conventionalized sign languages (TID and LIBRAS) and emerging sing languages (CTSL and CENA) from two different countries. When the relevant literature is examined, it is observed that languages that emerge in communities with larger populations tend to have a more uniform structure, while languages that emerge in smaller and closed-knit communities exhibit greater diversity regarding their constituent order. Data was collected through an elicitation task comprised of 30 video short video clips containing sentences with intransitive, transitive (reversible vs. irreversible events), and ditransitive structures. Significant relationships were found between community size and constituent order, revealing that conventionalized sign languages presented more uniform word orders in intransitive and ditransitive structures and transitive structures with irreversible events, whereas no significant relationship was detected for reversible events. The study contributes to the existing literature by demonstrating that languages from larger communities rely on commonly used constituent orders to describe events; in contrast, languages from smaller communities produce more uncommon constituent orders. The current study has practical implications for the relationship between sign languages in different stages of development and constituent order preferences, highlighting the developmental phases of language emergence and evolution.