Sign language
Encyclopedia
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns (manual communication
Manual communication
Manual communication systems use articulation of the hands to mediate a message between persons. Being expressed manually, they are received visually, and sometimes tactually...
, body language
Body language
Body language is a form of non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Humans send and interpret such signals almost entirely subconsciously....
) to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's thoughts.
Wherever communities of deaf people exist, sign languages develop. Their complex spatial grammars are markedly different from the grammars of spoken languages. Hundreds of sign languages are in use around the world and are at the cores of local deaf culture
Deaf culture
Deaf culture describes the social beliefs, behaviors, art, literary traditions, history, values and shared institutions of communities that are affected by deafness and which use sign languages as the main means of communication. When used as a cultural label, the word deaf is often written with a...
s. Some sign languages have obtained some form of legal recognition, while others have no status at all.
History
In 2nd-century Judea, the recording in the Mishnah
Mishnah
The Mishnah or Mishna is the first major written redaction of the Jewish oral traditions called the "Oral Torah". It is also the first major work of Rabbinic Judaism. It was redacted c...
tractate Gittin
Nashim
Nashim is the third order of the Mishnah , containing the laws related to women and family life...
stipulated that for the purpose of commercial transactions "A deaf-mute can hold a conversation by means of gestures. Ben Bathyra says that he may also do so by means of lip-motions." This teaching was well known in Jewish society where study of Mishnah was compulsory from childhood.
In 1620, Juan Pablo Bonet
Juan Pablo Bonet
Juan Pablo Bonet was a Spanish priest and pioneer of education for the deaf. He published the first book on deaf education in 1620 in Madrid....
published (‘Reduction of letters and art for teaching mute people to speak’) in Madrid. It is considered the first modern treatise of Phonetics and Logopedia, setting out a method of oral education for the deaf people by means of the use of manual signs, in form of a manual alphabet to improve the communication of the mute or deaf people.
From the language of signs of Bonet, Charles-Michel de l'Épée published his manual alphabet in the 18th century, which has survived basically unchanged in France and North America until the present time.
Sign languages have often evolved around schools for deaf students. In 1755, Abbé de l'Épée founded the first school for deaf children in Paris; Laurent Clerc
Laurent Clerc
Laurent Clerc , born Louis Laurent Marie Clerc, was called "The Apostle of the deaf in America" by generations of American deaf people...
was arguably its most famous graduate. Clerc went to the United States with Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, LL.D., was a renowned American pioneer in the education of the Deaf. Along with Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell, he co-founded the first institution for the education of the Deaf in North America, and he became its first principal...
to found the American School for the Deaf
American School for the Deaf
The American School for the Deaf is the oldest permanent school for the deaf in the United States. It was founded April 15, 1817 in Hartford, Connecticut by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc and became a state-supported school in 1817.-History:...
in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817. Gallaudet's son, Edward Miner Gallaudet
Edward Miner Gallaudet
Edward Miner Gallaudet , son of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, was a famous early educator of the deaf in Washington, DC...
founded a school for the deaf in 1857 in Washington, D.C., which in 1864 became the National Deaf-Mute College. Now called Gallaudet University
Gallaudet University
Gallaudet University is a federally-chartered university for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing, located in the District of Columbia, U.S...
, it is still the only liberal arts university for deaf people in the world.
In popular thought, each spoken language has a sign language counterpart. There is a sense in which this is true, in as much as a linguistic population generally contains Deaf members who often generate a sign language. In much the same way that geographical or cultural forces isolate populations and lead to the generation of different and distinct spoken languages, the same forces operate on signed languages and so they tend to maintain their identities through time in roughly the same areas of influence as the local spoken languages. This occurs even though sign languages generally do not have any linguistic relation to the spoken languages of the lands in which they arise. In fact, the correlation between signed and spoken languages is much more complex than commonly thought, and due to the geographic influences just mentioned, varies depending on the country more than the spoken language. For example, the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand all have English as their dominant language, but American Sign Language
American Sign Language
American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
(ASL), used in the US and most parts of Canada, is derived from French Sign Language
French Sign Language
French Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf in the nation of France. According to Ethnologue, it has 50,000 to 100,000 native signers....
whereas the other three countries sign dialects of British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language
BANZSL
BANZSL, or British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language, is the language of which British Sign Language , Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language may be considered dialects...
. Similarly, the sign languages of Spain and Mexico are very different, despite Spanish being the national language in each country, and the sign language used in Bolivia is based on ASL rather than any sign language that is used in a Spanish-speaking country. Variations also arise within a 'national' sign language which don't necessarily correspond to dialect differences in the national spoken language; rather, they can usually be correlated to the geographic location of residential schools for the deaf.
International Sign
International Sign
International Sign is an international auxiliary language sometimes used at international meetings such as the World Federation of the Deaf congress, events such as the Deaflympics, and informally when travelling and socialising...
, formerly known as Gestuno, is used mainly at international Deaf events such as the Deaflympics
Deaflympics
The Deaflympics are an International Olympic Committee -sanctioned event at which deaf athletes compete at an elite level...
and meetings of the World Federation of the Deaf
World Federation of the Deaf
The World Federation of the Deaf is an international non-governmental organization that acts as a peak body for national associations of Deaf people, with a focus on Deaf people who use sign language and their family and friends...
. Recent studies claim that while International Sign is a kind of a pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
, they conclude that it is more complex than a typical pidgin and indeed is more like a full signed language.
Linguistics of sign
In linguistic terms, sign languages are as rich and complex as any oral language, despite the common misconception that they are not "real languages". Professional linguistsLinguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
have studied many sign languages and found that they exhibit the fundamental properties that exist in all languages.
Sign languages are not mime
Mime
The word mime is used to refer to a mime artist who uses a theatrical medium or performance art involving the acting out of a story through body motions without use of speech.Mime may also refer to:* Mime, an alternative word for lip sync...
– in other words, signs are conventional, often arbitrary and do not necessarily have a visual relationship to their referent, much as most spoken language is not onomatopoeic. While iconicity
Iconicity
In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness.Iconic principles:...
is more systematic and widespread in sign languages than in spoken ones, the difference is not categorical. The visual modality allows the human preference for close connections between form and meaning, present but suppressed in spoken languages, to be more fully expressed. This does not mean that signed languages are a visual rendition of an oral language. They have complex grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
s of their own, and can be used to discuss any topic, from the simple and concrete to the lofty and abstract.
Sign languages, like oral languages, organize elementary, meaningless units (phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s; once called cheremes in the case of sign languages) into meaningful semantic units. Like in spoken languages, these meaningless units are represented as (combinations of) features, although often also crude distinctions are made in terms of Handshape (or Handform), Orientation, Location (or Place of Articulation), Movement, and Non-manual expression.
Common linguistic features of many sign languages are the occurrence of classifiers
Classifier (linguistics)
A classifier, in linguistics, sometimes called a measure word, is a word or morpheme used in some languages to classify the referent of a countable noun according to its meaning. In languages that have classifiers, they are often used when the noun is being counted or specified...
, a high degree of inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
, and a topic-comment syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
. More than spoken languages, sign languages can convey meaning by simultaneous means, e.g. by the use of space, two manual articulators, and the signer's face and body.
Sign languages' relationships with oral languages
A common misconception is that sign languages are somehow dependent on oral languages, that is, that they are oral language spelled out in gesture, or that they were invented by hearing people. Hearing teachers in deaf schools, such as Thomas Hopkins GallaudetThomas Hopkins Gallaudet
Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, LL.D., was a renowned American pioneer in the education of the Deaf. Along with Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell, he co-founded the first institution for the education of the Deaf in North America, and he became its first principal...
, are often incorrectly referred to as “inventors” of sign language.
Although not part of sign languages, elements from the Manual alphabets (fingerspelling) may be used in signed communication, mostly for proper names and concepts for which no sign is available at that moment. Elements from the manual alphabet can sometimes be a source of new signs (e.g. initialized signs, in which the shape of the hand represents the first letter of the word for the sign).
On the whole, deaf sign languages are independent of oral languages and follow their own paths of development. For example, British Sign Language
British Sign Language
British Sign Language is the sign language used in the United Kingdom , and is the first or preferred language of some deaf people in the UK; there are 125,000 deaf adults in the UK who use BSL plus an estimated 20,000 children. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands,...
and American Sign Language
American Sign Language
American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
are quite different and mutually unintelligible, even though the hearing people of Britain and America share the same oral language. The grammars of sign languages do usually not resemble that of spoken languages used in the same geographical area; in fact, in terms of syntax, ASL shares more with spoken Japanese
Japanese grammar
The Japanese language has a regular agglutinative verb morphology, with both productive and fixed elements. In language typology, it has many features divergent from most European languages. Its phrases are exclusively head-final and compound sentences are exclusively left-branching. There are many...
than it does with English.
Similarly, countries which use a single oral language throughout may have two or more sign languages; whereas an area that contains more than one oral language might use only one sign language. South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, which has 11 official oral languages and a similar number of other widely used oral languages is a good example of this. It has only one sign language with two variants due to its history of having two major educational institutions for the deaf which have served different geographic areas of the country.
Spatial grammar and simultaneity
Sign languages exploit the unique features of the visual medium (sight), but may also exploit tactile features (tactile sign languages). Oral language is by and large linear; only one sound can be made or received at a time. Sign language, on the other hand, is visual and, hence, can use simultaneously expression, although this is limited articulatorily and linguistically. Visual perception allows processing of simultaneous information. As an illustration, in English one could utter the phrase, "I drove here". To add information about the drive, one would have to add words or phrases, or make use of gesture to express the path and location of "here". However, in many sign languages, information about the shape of the road can be conveyed simultaneously with the verb expressing 'drive' by adapting the motion of the sign.The large focus on the possibility of simultaneity in signed languages in contrast to spoken languages is sometimes exaggerated, though. Non-manual behavior that can simultaneously accompany signing to express affection (e.g. joy or anger) and information about the phrase type (e.g. question, topic) is comparable to some extent to intonation that accompanies speech to give affective and paralinguistic information. Also, the use of two manual articulators is subject to motor constraints, resulting in a large extent of symmetry or signing with one articulator only.
Classification of sign languages
Although deaf sign languages have emerged naturally in deaf communities alongside or among spoken languages, they are unrelated to spoken languages and have different grammatical structures at their core.There has been very little historical linguistic research on sign languages, apart from a few comparisons of lexical data
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
of related sign languages. Sign language typology is still in its infancy, since extensive knowledge about sign language grammars is still scarce. Although various cross-linguistic studies have been undertaken, it is difficult to use these for typological purposes.
Sign languages may spread through migration, through the establishment of deaf schools (often by foreign-trained educators), or due to political domination.
Language contact
Language contact
Language contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
and creolization
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
is common, making clear family classifications difficult – it is often unclear whether lexical similarity is due to borrowing or a common parent language, or whether there was one or several parent languages. Contact occurs between sign languages, between signed and spoken languages (contact sign
Contact Sign
A contact sign language, or contact sign, is a variety or style of language that arises from contact between a deaf sign language and a spoken language...
), and between sign languages and gestural systems
Gesture
A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of speech or together and in parallel with spoken words. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or other parts of the body...
used by the broader community. One author has speculated that Adamorobe Sign Language
Adamorobe Sign Language
Adamorobe Sign Language is an indigenous sign language used in Adamorobe, an Akan village in eastern Ghana. It is used by about 30 deaf and 1370 hearing people.”...
may be related to the "gestural trade jargon used in the markets throughout West Africa", in vocabulary and areal features including prosody and phonetics.
- BSLBritish Sign LanguageBritish Sign Language is the sign language used in the United Kingdom , and is the first or preferred language of some deaf people in the UK; there are 125,000 deaf adults in the UK who use BSL plus an estimated 20,000 children. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands,...
, AuslanAuslanAuslan is the sign language of the Australian deaf community. The term Auslan is an acronym of "Australian sign language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the early 1980s, although the language itself is much older...
and NZSL are usually considered to be a language known as BANZSLBANZSLBANZSL, or British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language, is the language of which British Sign Language , Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language may be considered dialects...
. Maritime Sign LanguageMaritime Sign LanguageMaritime Sign Language , is a sign language, derived from British Sign Language, formerly used in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, Canada...
and South African Sign LanguageSouth African Sign LanguageSouth African Sign Language is the name of the sign language favoured by the South African government. SASL was formally recognised in 1995, and is still being codified...
are also related to BSL. - Danish Sign LanguageDanish Sign Language-Classification:Wittmann assigned DSL to the French Sign Language family because of similarities in vocabulary. However, the founder of the first deaf school in Denmark, Peter Atke Castberg , was receptive to local sign and so may have introduced FSL signs to the local language rather than FSL...
and its descendants Norwegian Sign LanguageNorwegian Sign LanguageNorwegian Sign Language, or NSL , is the principal deaf sign language Norway. There are many sign language organizations and some television programs broadcast in NSL in Norway...
and Icelandic Sign LanguageIcelandic Sign LanguageThe Icelandic sign language is the sign language of the deaf community in Iceland. It is based on the Danish Sign Language; until 1910, deaf Icelandic people were sent to school in Denmark, but the languages have diverged since then...
are largely mutually intelligible with Swedish Sign Language. Finnish Sign LanguageFinnish Sign LanguageFinnish Sign Language is the sign language most commonly used in Finland. There are 5000 Finnish deaf who have Finnish Sign Language as a mother tongue...
, and Portuguese Sign LanguagePortuguese Sign LanguagePortuguese Sign language is a sign language used mainly by Deaf people in Portugal.It has official recognition....
derive from Swedish SL, though with local admixture in the case of mutually unintelligible Finnish SL. Danish SL has French SL influence and Wittmann (1991) places them in that family, though he proposes that Swedish, Finnish, and Portuguese SL are instead related to British Sign LanguageBritish Sign LanguageBritish Sign Language is the sign language used in the United Kingdom , and is the first or preferred language of some deaf people in the UK; there are 125,000 deaf adults in the UK who use BSL plus an estimated 20,000 children. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands,...
. - Japanese Sign LanguageJapanese Sign Language, also known by the acronym "JSL", is the dominant sign language in Japan.-History:Little is known about sign language and the deaf community before the Edo period. In 1862, the Tokugawa shogunate dispatched envoys to various European schools for the deaf...
, Taiwanese Sign LanguageTaiwanese Sign LanguageTaiwanese Sign Language or TSL is the deaf sign language most commonly used in Taiwan.-History:The beginnings of Taiwan Sign Language date from 1895.The origins of TSL developed from Japanese Sign Language during Japanese rule...
and Korean Sign LanguageKorean Sign LanguageKorean Sign Language or KSL is the deaf sign language of Korea.The beginnings of KSL date from 1889.The first primary school for deaf children, opened in 1908, used KSL....
are thought to be members of a Japanese Sign Language familyJapanese Sign Language familyThe Japanese Sign Language family is a language family of three sign languages, Japanese Sign Language , Korean Sign Language , and Taiwanese Sign Language .There is little difficulty in communication between the three languages....
. - French Sign Language familyFrench Sign Language familyThe French Sign Language family is a proposed language family of sign languages which includes French Sign Language and American Sign Language, among others....
. There are a number of sign languages that emerged from French Sign LanguageFrench Sign LanguageFrench Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf in the nation of France. According to Ethnologue, it has 50,000 to 100,000 native signers....
(LSF), or are the result of language contact between local community sign languages and LSF. These include: French Sign LanguageFrench Sign LanguageFrench Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf in the nation of France. According to Ethnologue, it has 50,000 to 100,000 native signers....
, Italian Sign LanguageItalian Sign LanguageItalian Sign Language or ISL is the visual language employed by deaf people in Italy. Deep analysis of it began in the 1980s, along the lines of William Stokoe's research on American Sign Language in the 1960s. Until recently, most of the studies about Italian Sign Language have dealt with its...
, Quebec Sign LanguageQuebec Sign LanguageQuebec Sign Language, known in French as Langue des signes québécoise , is a sign language used in Canada. Most LSQ users are located in Quebec, but a few are scattered in major cities in the rest of the country....
, American Sign LanguageAmerican Sign LanguageAmerican Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
, Irish Sign LanguageIrish Sign LanguageIrish Sign Language is the sign language of Ireland, used primarily in the Republic of Ireland. It is also used in Northern Ireland, though British Sign Language is also used. Irish Sign Language is more closely related to French Sign Language than to British Sign Language, which was first used...
, Russian Sign LanguageRussian Sign LanguageRussian Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf community in Russia. It has a grammar unlike the Russian language, with much stricter word order and word formation rules. Russian sign language belongs to a family of French sign language and is similar to American sign language...
, Dutch Sign LanguageDutch Sign LanguageDutch Sign Language is the sign language used by deaf people in the Netherlands and is not officially recognized. As of 1995, more and more schools for the deaf in The Netherlands teach 'Nederlands met Gebaren' or 'NmG'...
(NGT), Spanish Sign LanguageSpanish Sign languageSpanish Sign Language is a sign language used mainly by deaf people in Spain and the people who live with them.There are small differences throughout Spain with no difficulties in intercommunication, except in Catalonia and in Valencia...
, Mexican Sign LanguageMexican Sign LanguageMexican Sign Language , is the language of the Deaf community in the urban regions of Mexico. It is the language of 87,000 to 100,000 signers Mexican Sign Language (“lengua de señas mexicana” or LSM, also known by several other names), is the language of the Deaf community in the urban regions of...
, Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS)Brazilian Sign LanguageBrazilian Sign Language, also known as "Libras" and previously known as LSB, LGB or LSCB , is the language of the Deaf communities of urban Brazil....
, Catalan Sign LanguageCatalan Sign LanguageCatalan Sign Language is a sign language used by 18,000 signers in Catalonia. About 50% intelligibility by users of Spanish Sign Language.Since 1994, it has an official status thanks to a law to promote and diffuse the language promulgated by Generalitat de Catalunya...
, Austrian Sign LanguageAustrian Sign LanguageAustrian Sign Language, or Österreichische Gebärdensprache , is the sign language used by the Austrian Deaf community — approximately 10,000 people. -Classification:...
(along with its twin Hungarian Sign LanguageHungarian Sign LanguageHungarian Sign Language is the sign language of Deaf people in Hungary. There is historical evidence that Hungarian and Austrian Sign Language are related, but there is no linguistic research and proof for the matter, yet....
and its offspring Czech Sign Language) and others.- A subset of this group includes languages that have been heavily influenced by American Sign Language (ASL), or are regional varieties of ASL. Bolivian Sign LanguageBolivian Sign LanguageBolivian Sign Language is a dialect of American Sign Language used in Bolivia.In 1973 ASL was adopted in Bolivia by missionary activities and the original sign languages of the towns were no longer used. The first book of LSB was published in 1992, but more than 90% of the signs were of from ASL...
is sometimes considered a dialect of ASL. Thai Sign LanguageThai Sign LanguageThai Sign Language or Modern Standard Thai Sign Language , is the national sign language of Thailand's Deaf community and is used in most parts of the country by the 20% of the estimated 56,000 pre-linguistically deaf people who go to school...
is a mixed languageMixed languageA mixed language is a language that arises through the fusion of two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism, so that it is not possible to classify the resulting language as belonging to either of the language families that were its source...
derived from ASL and the native sign languages of Bangkok and Chiang Mai, and may be considered part of the ASL family. Others possibly influenced by ASL include Ugandan Sign LanguageUgandan Sign LanguageUgandan Sign Language is the deaf sign language of Uganda. Uganda was the second country in the world to recognize sign language in its constitution, in 1995. A Ugandan Sign Language Dictionary has been published. However, knowledge of USL is primarily urban, as access to education for the rural...
, Kenyan Sign LanguageKenyan Sign LanguageKenyan Sign Language is the language of the Deaf community in Kenya, used throughout the country by over half the country's estimated Deaf population of 600,000....
, Philippine Sign Language and Malaysian Sign LanguageMalaysian Sign LanguageMalaysian Sign Language is the sign language in everyday use in many parts of Malaysia. BIM has many dialects, differing from state to state....
.
- A subset of this group includes languages that have been heavily influenced by American Sign Language (ASL), or are regional varieties of ASL. Bolivian Sign Language
- German Sign LanguageGerman Sign LanguageGerman Sign Language or Deutsche Gebärdensprache is the sign language of the Deaf community in Germany. It is often abbreviated as DGS. It is unclear how many use German Sign Language as their main language; Gallaudet University estimated 50,000 in 1986.The language has evolved through use in deaf...
(DGS) gave rise to Polish Sign LanguagePolish Sign LanguagePolish Sign Language is the language of the Deaf community in Poland. Its lexicon and grammar are distinct from the Polish language, although there is a manually coded version of Polish known as System Językowo-Migowy , which is often used by interpreters on television and by teachers in...
; it also at least strongly influenced Israeli Sign LanguageIsraeli Sign LanguageIsraeli Sign Language, or ISL, is the most commonly used sign language in the deaf community of Israel. Some other sign languages are also used in Israel, among them Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language....
, though it is unclear whether the latter derives from DGS or from Austrian Sign LanguageAustrian Sign LanguageAustrian Sign Language, or Österreichische Gebärdensprache , is the sign language used by the Austrian Deaf community — approximately 10,000 people. -Classification:...
, which is in the French family. - Lyons Sign LanguageLyons Sign LanguageLyons Sign Language is an old sign language of France. It is not intelligible with and apparently not related to French Sign Language, which developed in Paris...
may be the source of Flemish Sign LanguageFlemish Sign LanguageFlemish Sign Language is the language used by signers in Flanders, which is the northern part of Belgium, a country in Western Europe...
(VGT) though this is unclear. - According to a SIL report, the sign languages of Russia, Moldova and Ukraine share a high degree of lexical similarity and may be dialects of one language, or distinct related languages. The same report suggested a "cluster" of sign languages centered around Czech Sign Language, Hungarian Sign LanguageHungarian Sign LanguageHungarian Sign Language is the sign language of Deaf people in Hungary. There is historical evidence that Hungarian and Austrian Sign Language are related, but there is no linguistic research and proof for the matter, yet....
and Slovak Sign Language. This group may also include Romanian, Bulgarian, and PolishPolish Sign LanguagePolish Sign Language is the language of the Deaf community in Poland. Its lexicon and grammar are distinct from the Polish language, although there is a manually coded version of Polish known as System Językowo-Migowy , which is often used by interpreters on television and by teachers in...
sign languages. - Sign languages of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq (and possibly Saudi Arabia) may be part of a sprachbundSprachbundA Sprachbund – also known as a linguistic area, convergence area, diffusion area or language crossroads – is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity and language contact. They may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related...
, or may be one dialect of a larger Eastern Arabic Sign Language. - Known isolates include Nicaraguan Sign LanguageNicaraguan Sign LanguageNicaraguan Sign Language is a signed language spontaneously developed by deaf children in a number of schools in western Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s...
, Kata KolokKata KolokKata Kolok , also known as Benkala Sign Language and Balinese Sign Language, is a sign language of the village of Benkala in northern Bali, Indonesia, that has had an extraordinarily high rate of deafness for several generations...
, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign LanguageAl-Sayyid Bedouin Sign LanguageThe Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language is a sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert of southern Israel...
, and Providence Island Sign LanguageProvidence Island Sign LanguageProvidence Island Sign Language is the sign language used by the deaf community on the small island community of Providence Island in the Western Caribbean, off the coast of Nicaragua but belonging to Colombia...
.
The only comprehensive classification along these lines going beyond a simple listing of languages dates back to 1991. The classification is based on the 69 sign languages from the 1988 edition of Ethnologue
Ethnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
that were known at the time of the 1989 conference on sign languages in Montreal and 11 more languages the author added after the conference.
| Primary language |
Primary group |
Auxiliary language |
Auxiliary group |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prototype-A |
|
|
|
|
| Prototype-R |
|
|
|
|
| BSL-derived BANZSL BANZSL, or British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language, is the language of which British Sign Language , Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language may be considered dialects... |
|
|
|
|
| DGS-derived German Sign Language family The German Sign Language family is a small language family of sign languages, including German Sign Language, Polish Sign Language, and probably Israeli Sign Language. The latter also had influence from Austrian Sign Language, which is unrelated, and the parentage is not entirely clear.... |
|
|
|
|
| JSL-derived Japanese Sign Language family The Japanese Sign Language family is a language family of three sign languages, Japanese Sign Language , Korean Sign Language , and Taiwanese Sign Language .There is little difficulty in communication between the three languages.... |
|
|
|
|
| LSF-derived French Sign Language family The French Sign Language family is a proposed language family of sign languages which includes French Sign Language and American Sign Language, among others.... |
|
|
|
|
| LSG Lyons Sign Language Lyons Sign Language is an old sign language of France. It is not intelligible with and apparently not related to French Sign Language, which developed in Paris... -derived |
|
|
|
|
In his classification, the author distinguishes between primary and auxiliary sign languages as well as between single languages and names that are thought to refer to more than one language. The prototype-A class of languages includes all those sign languages that seemingly cannot be derived from any other language. Prototype-R languages are languages that are remotely modelled on a prototype-A language (in many cases thought to have been FSL) by a process Kroeber (1940) called "stimulus diffusion". The families of BSL
BANZSL
BANZSL, or British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language, is the language of which British Sign Language , Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language may be considered dialects...
, DGS
German Sign Language
German Sign Language or Deutsche Gebärdensprache is the sign language of the Deaf community in Germany. It is often abbreviated as DGS. It is unclear how many use German Sign Language as their main language; Gallaudet University estimated 50,000 in 1986.The language has evolved through use in deaf...
, JSL
Japanese Sign Language
, also known by the acronym "JSL", is the dominant sign language in Japan.-History:Little is known about sign language and the deaf community before the Edo period. In 1862, the Tokugawa shogunate dispatched envoys to various European schools for the deaf...
, LSF
French Sign Language
French Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf in the nation of France. According to Ethnologue, it has 50,000 to 100,000 native signers....
(and possibly LSG
Lyons Sign Language
Lyons Sign Language is an old sign language of France. It is not intelligible with and apparently not related to French Sign Language, which developed in Paris...
) were the products of creolization
Creolization
Creolization is a concept that refers to the process in which new African American cultures emerge in the New World. As a result of colonization there was a mixture between people of indigenous, African, and European decent, which became to be understood as Creolization...
and relexification
Relexification
Relexification is a term in linguistics used to describe the mechanism of language change by which one language replaces much or all of its lexicon, including basic vocabulary, with that of another language, without drastic change to its grammar. It is principally used to describe pidgins, creoles,...
of prototype languages. Creolization is seen as enriching overt morphology in sign languages, as compared to reducing overt morphology in vocal languages.
Typology of sign languages
Linguistic typology (going back on Edward SapirEdward Sapir
Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics....
) is based on word structure and distinguishes morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
classes such as agglutinating
Agglutination
In contemporary linguistics, agglutination usually refers to the kind of morphological derivation in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between affixes and syntactical categories. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages...
/concatenating, inflectional, polysynthetic, incorporating, and isolating ones.
Sign languages vary in syntactic typology as there are different word orders in different languages. For example, ÖGS
Austrian Sign Language
Austrian Sign Language, or Österreichische Gebärdensprache , is the sign language used by the Austrian Deaf community — approximately 10,000 people. -Classification:...
is Subject-Object-Verb while ASL
ASL
ASL is a common initialism for American Sign Language, and may also refer to:*Above sea level, altitude measurement*Adobe Source Libraries, a set of open source software libraries by Adobe...
is Object-Subject-Verb. Correspondence to the surrounding spoken languages is not improbable.
Brentari classifies sign languages as a whole group determined by the medium of communication (visual instead of auditive) as one group with the features monosyllabic and polymorphemic. That means, that via one syllable (i.e. one word, one sign) several morphemes can be expressed, like subject and object of a verb determine the direction of the verb's movement (inflection).
Written forms of sign languages
Sign languages do not have a traditional or formal written form. Many Deaf people do not see a need to write their own language. In those few countries with good educational opportunities available to the deaf, many deaf signers can read and write the oral language of their country, although there is a large variety in these skills.Several ways to statively represent sign languages have been developed.
- The Stokoe notationStokoe notationStokoe notation is the first phonemic script used for sign languages. It was created by William Stokoe for American Sign Language , with Latin letters and numerals used for the shapes they have in fingerspelling, and iconic glyphs to transcribe the position, movement, and orientation of the hands...
, devised by Dr. William StokoeWilliam StokoeWilliam C. Stokoe, Jr. was a scholar who researched American Sign Language extensively while he worked at Gallaudet University. He coined the term cherology, the equivalent of phonology for sign language .Stokoe graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY in 1941, and in...
for his 1965 Dictionary of American Sign Language, is an abstract phonemic notation system. Designed specifically for manual expression, it has no way of expressing facial expression. However, his was designed for research, not general-use.
- The Hamburg Notation SystemHamburg Notation SystemThe Hamburg Sign Language Notation System, or HamNoSys, is a phonetic transcription system for sign languages, analogous to the IPA for spoken languages. First developed in 1985 at the University of Hamburg, Germany, it is currently in its third revision....
(HamNoSys), developed in the early 1990s, is a detailed phonetic system, not designed for any one sign language, and intended as a transcription system for researchers rather than as a practical script.
- David J. Peterson has attempted to create a phonetic transcription system for signing that is ASCIIASCIIThe American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
-friendly known as the Sign Language International Phonetic Alphabet (SLIPA).
- SignWritingSignWritingSignWriting is a system of writing sign languages. It is highly featural and visually iconic, both in the shapes of the characters, which are abstract pictures of the hands, face, and body, and in their spatial arrangement on the page, which does not follow a sequential order like the letters that...
, developed by Valerie Sutton in 1974, is a system for representing signed languages phonetically (including mouthingMouthingIn sign language, mouthing is the production of visual syllables with the mouth while signing. Although not present in all sign languages, and sometimes not in signers at all levels of education, where it does occur it may be an essential element of a sign, distinguishing signs which would...
, facial expression and dynamics of movement). The script is sometimes used for detailed research, language documentation, as well as publishing texts and works in signed languages.http://www.signwriting.org
- si5s is another orthography which is largely phonemic. However, a few signs are logographs and/or ideographIdeographIdeograph is a term coined by rhetorical scholar and critic Michael Calvin McGee describing the use of particular words and phrases as political language in a way that captures particular ideological positions...
s due to regional variation in sign languages.
- ASL-phabet is a system designed by Dr. Sam Supalla which uses a minimalist collection of symbols in the order of Handshape-Location-Movement. Many signs can be written the same way (homographHomographA homograph is a word or a group of words that share the same written form but have different meanings. When spoken, the meanings may be distinguished by different pronunciations, in which case the words are also heteronyms. Words with the same writing and pronunciation A homograph (from the ,...
).
So far, there is no formal or consensus-wide acceptance of one or another of the aforementioned orthographies.
Telecommunications facilitated signing
One of the first demonstrations of the ability for telecommunicationTelecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
s to help sign language users communicate with each other occurred when AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
's videophone
Videophone
A videophone is a telephone with a video screen, and is capable of full duplex video and audio transmissions for communication between people in real-time...
(trademarked as the "Picturephone") was introduced to the public at the 1964 New York World's Fair
1964 New York World's Fair
The 1964/1965 New York World's Fair was the third major world's fair to be held in New York City. Hailing itself as a "universal and international" exposition, the fair's theme was "Peace Through Understanding," dedicated to "Man's Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe";...
– two deaf users were able to freely communicate with each other between the fair and another city. Various organizations have also conducted research on signing via videotelephony.
Sign language interpretation services via Video Remote Interpreting
Video Remote Interpreting
Video Remote Interpreting uses video or web cameras and telephone lines to provide sign language interpreting services, for deaf, hard-of-hearing or speech-impaired individuals, through an offsite interpreter, in order to communicate with hearing persons...
(VRI) or a Video Relay Service
Video Relay Service
A Video Relay Service , also sometimes known as a Video Interpreting Service, is a videotelecommunication service that allows deaf, hard-of-hearing and speech-impaired individuals to communicate over video telephones and similar technologies with hearing people in real-time, via a sign language...
(VRS) are useful in the present-day where one of the parties is deaf, hard-of-hearing or speech-impaired (mute)
Speech disorder
Speech disorders or speech impediments are a type of communication disorders where 'normal' speech is disrupted. This can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute.-Classification:...
and the other is Hearing. In VRI, a sign-language user and a Hearing person are in one location, and the interpreter is in another (rather than being in the same room with the clients as would normally be the case). The interpreter communicates with the sign-language user via a video telecommunications link, and with the Hearing person by an audio link. In VRS, the sign-language user, the interpreter, and the Hearing person are in three separate locations, thus allowing the two clients to talk to each other on the phone through the interpreter.
In such cases the interpretation flow is normally between a signed language and an oral language that are customarily used in the same country, such as French Sign Language
French Sign Language
French Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf in the nation of France. According to Ethnologue, it has 50,000 to 100,000 native signers....
(FSL) to spoken French, Spanish Sign Language
Spanish Sign language
Spanish Sign Language is a sign language used mainly by deaf people in Spain and the people who live with them.There are small differences throughout Spain with no difficulties in intercommunication, except in Catalonia and in Valencia...
(SSL) to spoken Spanish, British Sign Language
British Sign Language
British Sign Language is the sign language used in the United Kingdom , and is the first or preferred language of some deaf people in the UK; there are 125,000 deaf adults in the UK who use BSL plus an estimated 20,000 children. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands,...
(BSL) to spoken English, and American Sign Language
American Sign Language
American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
(ASL) also to spoken English (since BSL and ASL are completely distinct), etc. Multilingual sign language interpreters, who can also translate as well across principal languages (such as to and from SSL, to and from spoken English), are also available, albeit less frequently. Such activities involve considerable effort on the part of the interpreter, since sign languages are distinct natural language
Natural language
In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
s with their own construction and syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
, different from the oral language used in the same country.
With video interpreting, sign language interpreters work remotely with live video and audio feeds, so that the interpreter can see the deaf party, and converse with the hearing party, and vice versa. Much like telephone interpreting
Telephone interpreting
Telephone interpreting is a service that connects human interpreters via telephone to individuals who wish to speak to each other but do not share a common language. The telephone interpreter converts the spoken language from one language to another, enabling listeners and speakers to understand...
, video interpreting can be used for situations in which no on-site interpreters are available. However, video interpreting cannot be used for situations in which all parties are speaking via telephone alone. VRI and VRS interpretation requires all parties to have the necessary equipment. Some advanced equipment enables interpreters to remotely control the video camera, in order to zoom in and out or to point the camera toward the party that is signing.
Home sign
Sign systems are sometimes developed within a single family. For instance, when hearing parents with no sign language skills have a deaf child, an informal system of signs will naturally develop, unless repressed by the parents. The term for these mini-languages is home signHome sign
Home sign is the gestural communication system developed by a deaf child who lacks input from a language model in the family...
(sometimes homesign or kitchen sign).
Home sign arises due to the absence of any other way to communicate. Within the span of a single lifetime and without the support or feedback of a community, the child naturally invents signals to facilitate the meeting of his or her communication needs. Although this kind of system is grossly inadequate for the intellectual development of a child and it comes nowhere near meeting the standards linguists use to describe a complete language, it is a common occurrence. No type of Home Sign is recognized as an official language.
Use of signs in hearing communities
GestureGesture
A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of speech or together and in parallel with spoken words. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or other parts of the body...
is a typical component of spoken languages. More elaborate systems of manual communication
Manual communication
Manual communication systems use articulation of the hands to mediate a message between persons. Being expressed manually, they are received visually, and sometimes tactually...
have developed in places or situations where speech is not practical or permitted, such as cloistered religious communities
Monastery
Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...
, scuba diving
Scuba diving
Scuba diving is a form of underwater diving in which a diver uses a scuba set to breathe underwater....
, television recording studios
Television studio
A television studio is an installation in which a video productions take place, either for the recording of live television to video tape, or for the acquisition of raw footage for post-production. The design of a studio is similar to, and derived from, movie studios, with a few amendments for the...
, loud workplaces, stock exchange
Stock exchange
A stock exchange is an entity that provides services for stock brokers and traders to trade stocks, bonds, and other securities. Stock exchanges also provide facilities for issue and redemption of securities and other financial instruments, and capital events including the payment of income and...
s, baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
, hunting (by groups such as the Kalahari bushmen
Bushmen
The indigenous people of Southern Africa, whose territory spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola, are variously referred to as Bushmen, San, Sho, Barwa, Kung, or Khwe...
), or in the game Charades
Charades
Charades or charade is a word guessing game. In the form most played today, it is an acting game in which one player acts out a word or phrase, often by pantomiming similar-sounding words, and the other players guess the word or phrase. The idea is to use physical rather than verbal language to...
.
In Rugby Union
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...
the referee
Referee
A referee is the person of authority, in a variety of sports, who is responsible for presiding over the game from a neutral point of view and making on the fly decisions that enforce the rules of the sport...
uses a limited but defined set of signs to communicate his/her decisions to the spectators.
Military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
and police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
forces also use silent hand and arm signals to signal instructions/observations in combat situations.
Recently, there has been a movement to teach and encourage the use of sign language with toddlers before they learn to talk, because such young children can communicate effectively with signed languages well before they are physically capable of speech. This is typically referred to as Baby Sign
Baby Sign
Specialized sign language is sometimes used to communicate with infants and toddlers. While infants and toddlers have a desire to communicate their needs and wishes, they lack the ability to do so clearly because the production of speech lags behind cognitive ability in the first months and years...
. There is also movement to use signed languages more with non-deaf and non-hard-of-hearing children with other causes of speech impairment or delay, for the obvious benefit of effective communication without dependence on speech.
On occasion, where the prevalence of deaf people is high enough, a deaf sign language has been taken up by an entire local community. Famous examples of this include Martha's Vineyard Sign Language
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language is a sign language once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, U.S., from the early 18th century to the year 1952. It was remarkable for its use by both deaf and hearing people in the community; consequently, deafness did not...
in the USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Kata Kolok
Kata Kolok
Kata Kolok , also known as Benkala Sign Language and Balinese Sign Language, is a sign language of the village of Benkala in northern Bali, Indonesia, that has had an extraordinarily high rate of deafness for several generations...
in a village in Bali
Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...
, Adamorobe Sign Language
Adamorobe Sign Language
Adamorobe Sign Language is an indigenous sign language used in Adamorobe, an Akan village in eastern Ghana. It is used by about 30 deaf and 1370 hearing people.”...
in Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
and Yucatec Maya sign language in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. In such communities deaf people are not socially disadvantaged.
Many Australian Aboriginal sign languages
Australian Aboriginal sign languages
Many Australian Aboriginal cultures have or traditionally had a manually coded language, a sign-language counterpart of their spoken language. This appears to be connected with various speech taboos between certain kin or at particular times, such as during a mourning period for women or during...
arose in a context of extensive speech taboos, such as during mourning and initiation rites. They are or were especially highly developed among the Warlpiri
Warlpiri Sign Language
Warlpiri Sign Language is a sign language used by the Warlpiri, an Aboriginal community in the central desert region of Australia. It is one of the most elaborate, and certainly the most studied, of all Australian Aboriginal sign languages.-Social context:...
, Warumungu
Warumungu
The Warumungu are a group of Indigenous Australians, many of whom speak Kriol or the Pama–Nyungan language of Warumungu. They inhabit the region of Tennant Creek and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia as well as small towns to the South.- History :In the 1870s, early white...
, Dieri
Dieri
The Dieri is an Indigenous Australian group and language from the South Australian desert—specifically Cooper and Leigh Creek, Lake Howitt, and Lake Hope, Lake Gregory and Clayton River and low country north of Mount Freeling.-Alternate names:DiariDiyeri...
, Kaytetye
Kaytetye
Kaytetye is the name of the Indigenous Australians who live around Barrow Creek and Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory. Their neighbours to the east are the Alyawarre, to the south the Anmatyerre, to the west the Warlpiri, and to the north the Warumungu....
, Arrernte
Arrernte people
The Arrernte people , known in English as the Aranda or Arunta, are those Indigenous Australians who are the original custodians of Arrernte lands in the central area of Australia around Mparntwe or Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The Arrernte tribe has lived there for more than 20,000 years...
, and Warlmanpa, and are based on their respective spoken languages.
A pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
sign language arose among tribes of American Indians
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
in the Great Plains
Great Plains
The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...
region of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
(see Plains Indian Sign Language
Plains Indian Sign Language
The Plains Indian sign languages are various manually coded languages used, or formerly used, by various Native Americans of the Great Plains of the United States of America and Canada...
). It was used to communicate among tribes with different spoken language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
s. There are especially users today among the Crow, Cheyenne
Cheyenne
Cheyenne are a Native American people of the Great Plains, who are of the Algonquian language family. The Cheyenne Nation is composed of two united tribes, the Só'taeo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese .The Cheyenne are thought to have branched off other tribes of Algonquian stock inhabiting lands...
, and Arapaho
Arapaho
The Arapaho are a tribe of Native Americans historically living on the eastern plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Sioux. Arapaho is an Algonquian language closely related to Gros Ventre, whose people are seen as an early...
. Unlike other sign languages developed by hearing people, it shares the spatial grammar of deaf sign languages.
Gestural theory of human language origins
The gestural theory states that vocal human language developed from a gestural sign language. An important question for gestural theory is what caused the shift to vocalization.Primate use of sign language
There have been several notable examples of scientists teaching non-human primates basic signs in order to communicate with humans. Notable examples are:- Chimpanzees: WashoeWashoe (chimpanzee)Washoe was a chimpanzee who was the first non-human to learn to communicate using American Sign Language, as part of a research experiment on animal language acquisition....
and Loulis - Gorillas: MichaelMichael (gorilla)Michael was the first male 'talking' gorilla. He had a working vocabulary of over 600 signs in American Sign Language, taught to him by Koko, a female gorilla; Dr. Francine Patterson ; and other staff of Stanford University...
and KokoKoko (gorilla)Koko is a female western lowland gorilla who, according to Francine "Penny" Patterson, is able to understand more than 1,000 signs based on American Sign Language, and understand approximately 2,000 words of spoken English....
.
Deaf communities and deaf culture
Deaf communities are very widespread in the world and the culture which comprises within them is very rich. Sometimes it even does not intersect with the culture of hearing because of different impediments for hard-of-hearing people to perceive audial information.Legal recognition
Some sign languages have obtained some form of legal recognition, while others have no status at all.Media
See also
- Animal languageAnimal languageAnimal language is the modeling of human language in non human animal systems. While the term is widely used, researchers agree that animal languages are not as complex or expressive as human language....
- Body languageBody languageBody language is a form of non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Humans send and interpret such signals almost entirely subconsciously....
- BrailleBrailleThe Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write, and was the first digital form of writing.Braille was devised in 1825 by Louis Braille, a blind Frenchman. Each Braille character, or cell, is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two...
- CherologyCherologyCherology and chereme, sometimes chireme, are synonyms of phonology and phoneme previously used in the study of sign languages....
- Chinese number gesturesChinese number gesturesChinese number gestures are a method of using one hand to signify the natural numbers one through ten. This method may have been developed to bridge the many varieties of Chinese—for example, the numbers 4 and 10 are hard to distinguish in some dialects...
- Eldridge v. British Columbia (Attorney General)Eldridge v. British Columbia (Attorney General)Eldridge v. British Columbia [1997] 2 S.C.R. 624, is a leading decision by the Supreme Court of Canada that expanded the application of the charter under section 32 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and was one of the first four rulings proceeding where the Court was sharply divided...
- Gestures
- History of sign languageHistory of sign languageThe recorded history of sign language in Western societies extends from the 16th century, as a visual language or method of communication. Sign language is composed of a system of conventional gestures, mimic, hand signs and finger spelling, plus the use of hand positions to represent the letters...
- Intercultural competenceIntercultural competenceIntercultural competence is the ability of successful communication with people of other cultures.A person who is interculturally competent captures and understands, in interaction with people from foreign cultures, their specific concepts in perception, thinking, feeling and acting...
- International SignInternational SignInternational Sign is an international auxiliary language sometimes used at international meetings such as the World Federation of the Deaf congress, events such as the Deaflympics, and informally when travelling and socialising...
- Legal recognition of sign languagesLegal recognition of sign languagesThe legal recognition of sign languages is one of the major concerns of the international Deaf community. There is no standard way in which such a recognition can be formally or legally extended; every country has its own interpretation...
(status per country/region) - List of international common standards
- List of sign languages
- Metacommunicative competenceMetacommunicative competenceMetacommunicative competence is the ability to intervene within difficult conversations and to correct communication problems by utilizing the different ways of practical communication:...
- Sign language gloveSign language gloveA sign language glove is an electronic device which converts the complex motions of a sign language into written or spoken words.A young inventor on a Fulbright scholarship announced a working model in 2003 , and the US Army is also developing a battlefield model.A model being currently created at...
- Sign language in infants and toddlers
- Sign language mediaSign language mediaSign language media are media based on a media system for sign languages. Interfaces in sign language media are built on the complex grammar structure of sign languages. Generally media are built for spoken languages or written languages...
- Sign language on televisionSign language on televisionSign language on television is the use of a signer for a television programme. The signer usually appears in the bottom corner of the screen, with the programme being broadcast full size or slightly shrunk away from that corner....
- Sign nameSign nameIn Deaf culture and sign language, a sign name is a special sign that is used to uniquely identify a person, just like a name. There are some special cultural rules around sign names; for example, they must be agreed upon by you and people in the Deaf community...
Further Reading
- Fox, MargalitMargalit Fox-Biography:She attended Stony Brook University and received a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She has worked at the New York Times as a book reviewer and obituary reporter.-Bibliography:...
(2007) Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind , Simon & SchusterSimon & SchusterSimon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
ISBN 978-0743247122
External links
Note: the articles for specific sign languages (e.g. ASLAmerican Sign Language
American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
or BSL
British Sign Language
British Sign Language is the sign language used in the United Kingdom , and is the first or preferred language of some deaf people in the UK; there are 125,000 deaf adults in the UK who use BSL plus an estimated 20,000 children. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands,...
) may contain further external links, e.g. for learning those languages.
- American Sign Language (ASL) resource site.
- Signes du Monde, directory for all online Sign Languages dictionaries /
- List Serv for Sign Language Linguistics
- The MUSSLAP Project Multimodal Human Speech and Sign Language Processing for Human-Machine Communication.
- Publications of the American Sign Language Linguistics Research Project
- Sign language among North American Indians compared with that among other peoples and deaf-mutes, by Garrick MalleryGarrick MalleryGarrick Mallery was an American ethnologist.-Ancestry:His family was of English origin, he himself being in direct descent from Peter Mallery, who landed at Boston in 1638. Some of his ancestors were military officers in the colonial service, and at a later period others of them served in the...
from Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
. A first annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
, 1879–1880 - Pablo Bonet, J. de (1620) , (BNE).