Search Results

This concluding chapter presents a summary of the main argument of the book, which is that signed languages are in an important sense not unique, that they are merely manifestations of the human language ability, unfamiliar only because language scientists of the time were not familiar with deaf people and their natural languages. It has been proposed that transformation of gesture into language lies at the heart of the origin of language, that just as grammaticization-as-ritualization accounts for the change from lexical to grammatical, it also accounts for the transformation of gesture into language. Ritualization is implicated in the phylogenetic evolution of language from nonlinguistic behaviours, with visible gestures playing a key role.

The author of this chapter works as exactly the sort of social, cultural and language role model that deaf children need, as argued in previous chapters. He describes methods in teaching deaf children how to be Deaf. Part of the work is teaching British Sign Language, focusing particularly on characteristics typical of sign languages but not of speech, such as the use of space in locating participants in an event. Another part is introducing them to Deaf culture. Children need to understand that experiences they may have had are typical of deaf people and, as such, make them part of the community. And, finally, the author educates them about deaf history and famous deaf people, to instill in them pride in their cultural heritage.

There are multiple difficulties in knowing how many sign languages exist and in determining which are genetically related. This chapter compares the situation in North America with that of the Middle East. By looking at the rare remarks about sign languages from a hundred years ago and more, and the growth and dissemination of new sign languages (such as Nicaraguan Sign and Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language), we begin to understand how sign languages interact and to what extent the notion “genetically related” is useful in discussing the relationships between them. Comparisons allow us to see how the pattern of sign language distribution is deeply linked to political, cultural and social factors that influence how signers have contact with one another.

This chapter gives an overview of how historical linguists classify languages into families. While the comparative method and internal reconstruction are preferable when abundant data are available, the limited data on sign languages indicate that lexicostatistics is the most useful method. This method is made reliable by using the Swadesh word list revised appropriately for sign languages. Languages can have multiple ancestors, that is, languages that have contributed significantly to the daughters (thus creolization is included). The history of sign languages must be studied, not assumed, in order to be understood. An examination of families of signs in Southeast Asia and Central America alerts us to the endangered status of indigenous sign languages, often at the hand of ASL.

This chapter looks at question formation in a sign language isolate in Thailand that until recently was undocumented and undescribed. Interrogatives are found in every language, but like other language universals, they vary across languages with respect to several properties. Elucidating these similarities and differences expands our understanding of the extent of linguistic diversity. This study shows that yes-no questions in BKSL have many of the properties seen in yes-no questions in other sign languages. But the WH-question system has some characteristics unique, so far as we know, to this language. There are two WH-morphemes, and, while the range of questions for each is similar (who, what, when, etc.), the sense of the questions and their syntactic properties differ.

This chapter offers evidence consistent with the proposal that sign languages preceded spoken languages in the evolution of language. Using conceptual integration theory, the authors argue that what may be considered “just a funny story in British Sign Language” contains the human singularities needed to create novel mappings and compressions between pre-existing conventional cognitive parts and conventionally structured cognitive parts that make up human language. While it is arguable that spoken language could do without analogy, framing, and the like (though it would be vastly impoverished), it is entirely impossible for sign language to do so. Thus the fact that these human singularities emerged at roughly the same time as language makes sense if the first human language was signed.

This prologue begins with a description of an old thought experiment. The experiment imagines a situation where twenty-four human infants, twelve males and twelve females, are raised in a setting without any face-to-face interaction with or communication from anyone other than their own experimental peers. It is argued that the children's initial attempts to communicate would involve pointing to and touching or otherwise manipulating the other children and objects in their environment. This claim is reinforced by the experience of people who have tried to communicate with people whose language they don't know. In such circumstances, people often resort to pointing and pantomime to communicate. However, deaf people who encounter other deaf people from foreign countries are able to negotiate a visual code that results in basic communication. This is interesting since the signed languages of the deaf are quite diverse and not mutually comprehensible, and just as complex grammatically as spoken languages.

The chapter investigates how a new language develops devices for marking argument structure, by investigating two young sign languages, Israeli Sign Language (ISL) and Al‐Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) that emerged about seventy‐five years ago. At earlier stages, the two languages tend to avoid argument structure marking. However, later on they diverge, indicating that there is no one universal path for developing argument structure marking.

The study of village sign languages is at the forefront of new approaches to developing a typology of languages. Indeed, recent research has shown that the study of village sign disconfirms some of our previously held assumptions about the linguistic structure of sign languages based on the study of the better-known sign languages of Europe and North America (such as that they all use classifiers — Adamorobe Sign Language does not). Further, village sign languages present distinct sociolinguistic contexts that are instructive to study with respect to understanding language contact issues. Finally, the endangered status of these languages raises philosophical questions about the nature of human language.

This chapter outlines difficulties in determining a national sign language, examining language ideologies. The author witnessed political fragmentation in Japan, as the older generation, represented by Japanese Federation of the Deaf (JFD), coined and disseminated new signs in order to compete with the national public television service as well as fend off criticism from younger, cultural Deaf members. While everyone agrees new signs are necessary, JFD is challenged as the guardian of the JSL lexicon both by D-Pro, a group that wants to protect against spoken language influences, and by the television network NHK, which reaches out to all deaf, regardless of the extent to which they vocalize or sign and regardless of which variety of sign they use.

This chapter examines morphological processes in sign languages, with an eye toward understanding morphology that changes internal properties of a sign. Cross-linguistic comparisons of German, Japanese and American Sign Languages reveal two such types of morphological processes. One changes the sign according to fixed forms listed in the lexicon; the other looks to interaction with gestural space to determine its realization. While both are subject to language-specific constraints against marked forms, only the latter is also subject to phonological constraints against moving or twisting a manual articulator. These constraints arise because interaction with gestural space has the potential to result in forms that exceed the limits of the articulators. This latter type of nonconcatenative morphology makes sign languages unique.

This chapter focuses on interpreting in K-12 educational contexts. It describes linguistic demands and strategies that are applicable across a wide range of interpreting settings, and are relevant to both signed and spoken language interpreters. Given the variety of signed and spoken language-contact situations around the world, American Sign Language (ASL) and English are used as generic cover terms to illuminate some of the universal linguistic outcomes.

Broca's area (Brodmann areas 44/45) and the immediately surrounding cortex have been shown to play a role in several aspects of linguistic, as well as nonlinguistic, processing. Given the similarities between signed and spoken languages for phonology and syntax (two domains of processing implicated as functions of Broca's area), this chapter examines whether there is any evidence that Broca's area is involved in these aspects of sign language processing and whether this involvement mirrors that found for spoken languages. It shows that the functions associated with Broca's area for spoken language parallel those for signed language. With respect to language production, imaging data indicate a critical role for Broca's area (particularly BA 45) in lexical retrieval and/or selection. More posterior cortex (BA 44) appears to be involved in the coordination of linguistic articulation, regardless of whether the articulators are manual-brachial or orofacial.

This introduction is an overview of the book’s goals, with a brief summary of each chapter. The book followed an eponymous conference at Swarthmore College in 2008 at which activists and scholars in deaf matters exchanged ideas. The major thesis is that the interaction of activists and scholars is synergistic: activists find support in the work of scholars and scholars both have a responsibility toward the community they study and do better work when they understand activists’ concerns. The first part of the book is on the creation, context, and form of sign languages; the second, on social issues of Deaf communities. The global picture that emerges shows great similarity and continuity in the Deaf World.

This chapter pulls in cross-linguistic observations about the development and use of pointing, whether as a gesture or a sign, from both communities that use spoken languages (in Laos, Thailand, Australia, and Latin American Spanish) and those that use sign languages (in Denmark, Bali, and Germany). It argues that, if we set aside indexicals indicating plurality or time points, subtle changes in the phonological make-up of the remaining pointing signs will allow us to distinguish between different functions, considering both manual and nonmanual changes (e.g., eye gaze). It also addresses the issue of grammaticalization and shows how the study in chapter 4 adds to our understanding of diachronic change in sign languages.

This chapter highlights some areas that are particularly important to address at the present time—both in language instruction and research on the adult acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL). It focuses on polycomponential signs (PSs), referential shift (RS), and constructed action (CA). It argues that the time has come for the creation of research-based suggestions for curricula development—suggestions that would ultimately improve the reliability and success of language instruction methodologies. The methodologies for teaching interpreting students the use of PSs, RS, and CA, which have proven to be a difficult part of ASL, could benefit tremendously from such research.

This chapter examines evidence for the ubiquity of iconicity in signed languages, a consequence of their transmission in the visual medium. Adopting a cognitive grammar framework, the iconic representation of space and time in signed languages is described. Iconicity is understood not as a relation between language and the external world, but as a mapping within multidimensional conceptual space, between the semantic and phonological poles of a symbol. This mapping can vary in distance from one of identity or self-symbolization, in which the thing represents itself, to one of iconicity, in which the semantic and phonological poles reside in roughly the same conceptual space.

This chapter examines archeological evidence for the invention of writing and historical evidence concerning the emergence of the signed languages for the deaf to support the theory that language emerges first visually and gesturally. It shows that the development of these linguistic systems followed similar paths at places and at times that were widely separated. These events can be considered independent of one another and, thus, reflective of some fundamental human attribute.