Sign Language Contact

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Quinto-Pozos ◽  
Robert Adam
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Signed Languages

This chapter argues that language contact is the norm in Deaf communities, and that deaf people are typically multilingual. They use signed, written, and, in some cases, spoken languages for daily communication, which means that aspects of the spoken and/or written languages of the larger communities are in constant interaction with the signed languages. If one considers the contact that results from users of two different signed languages interacting, various comparisons can be made to contact that occurs across two or more spoken languages. The term unimodal contact, or that which comes about because of two languages within the same modality, can be used to characterize such contact. However, if one considers the contact that results from interaction between a signed and a spoken or written language, the term bimodal (or even multimodal) contact is more appropriate.

Multimedia Dictionary and Synthesis of Sign Language

2011 ◽  
pp. 268-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franc Solina ◽  
Slavko Krapez ◽  
Ales Jaklic ◽  
Vito Komac
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Proper Nouns ◽  
Basic Meaning ◽  
The World

Deaf people, as a marginal community, may have severe problems in communicating with hearing people. Usually, they have a lot of problems even with such—for hearing people—simple tasks as understanding the written language. However, deaf people are very skilled in using a sign language, which is their native language. A sign language is a set of signs or hand gestures. A gesture in a sign language equals a word in a written language. Similarly, a sentence in a written language equals a sequence of gestures in a sign language. In the distant past deaf people were discriminated and believed to be incapable of learning and thinking independently. Only after the year 1500 were the first attempts made to educate deaf children. An important breakthrough was the realization that hearing is not a prerequisite for understanding ideas. One of the most important early educators of the deaf and the first promoter of sign language was Charles Michel De L’Epée (1712-1789) in France. He founded the fist public school for deaf people. His teachings about sign language quickly spread all over the world. Like spoken languages, different sign languages and dialects evolved around the world. According to the National Association of the Deaf, the American Sign Language (ASL) is the third most frequently used language in the United States, after English and Spanish. ASL has more than 4,400 distinct signs. The Slovenian sign language (SSL), which is used in Slovenia and also serves as a case study sign language in this chapter, contains approximately 4,000 different gestures for common words. Signs require one or both hands for signing. Facial expressions which accompany signing are also important since they can modify the basic meaning of a hand gesture. To communicate proper nouns and obscure words, sign languages employ finger spelling. Since the majority of signing is with full words, signed conversation can proceed with the same pace as spoken conversation.

scholarly journals Signed languages and globalization

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Hiddinga ◽  
Onno Crasborn
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Deaf Culture ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
The Core ◽  
Form Part ◽  
Dependent Form ◽  
Global Language

AbstractDeaf people who form part of a Deaf community communicate using a shared sign language. When meeting people from another language community, they can fall back on a flexible and highly context-dependent form of communication calledinternational sign, in which shared elements from their own sign languages and elements of shared spoken languages are combined with pantomimic elements. Together with the fact that there are few shared sign languages, this leads to a very different global language situation for deaf people as compared to the situation for spoken languages and hearing people as analyzed in de Swaan (2001). We argue that this very flexibility in communication and the resulting global communication patterns form the core of deaf culture and a key component of the characterization of deaf people as “visual people.” (Globalization, sign language, international sign, Deaf culture, language contact, multilingualism)*

Before Normal, There Was Natural: John Bulwer, Disability, and Natural Signing in Early Modern England and Beyond

PMLA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 132 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth B. Bearden
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Human Variation ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Universal Language

Disability studies scholars and Renaissance scholars have much to learn from early modern schemata of disability. Early modern people used nature and the natural to discriminate against and to include people with atypical bodies and minds. In his writings, the English physician John Bulwer (1606–56) considers Deafness a natural human variation with definite advantages, anticipating current concepts of biolinguistic diversity and Deaf-gain, while acknowledging his society's biases. He refutes the exclusion of sign language and other forms of what he calls “ocular audition” from natural law, which made capacity for speech the benchmark for natural rights. Instead of using Deaf people as exceptions that prove the rule of nature or as limit cases for humanity, Bulwer makes deafness part of a plastic understanding of the senses, and he promotes the sociability of signed languages as a conduit to a universal language that might be encouraged and taught in England.

Historical Change in Signed Languages

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherman Wilcox ◽  
Corrine Occhino
Keyword(s):  
Written Language ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Educational Approach ◽  
Linguistic Study ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
The World

Signed languages are natural human languages used by deaf people around the world as their primary language. This chapter explores the linguistic study of signed language, their linguistic properties, and aspects of their genetic and historical relationships. The chapter focuses on historical change that has occurred in signed languages, showing that the same linguistic processes that contribute to historical change in spoken languages, such as lexicalization, grammaticization, and semantic change, contribute to historical change in signed languages. Historical influences unique to signed languages, such as the educational approach of borrowing and adapting signs and an effort to create a system of representing the surrounding spoken/written language and of the incorporation of lexicalized fingerspelling are also discussed.

scholarly journals Falibras Translator: Towards More Health Care Humanization for Deaf People

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vitor Marcolino ◽  
Natália Franco ◽  
Patrick Brito ◽  
Luis Coradine
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Translation System ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Translation Mechanism ◽  
Brazilian Sign Language

This work presents Falibras, a translation system between Portuguese and Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) that aims to help both, deaf people and hearers, in trying to communicate. Falibras offers an important tool to provide easy communication and more humanization of health care for deaf people. This paper presents some of the re-engineered artifacts of the Falibras system. Moreover, a discussion about its applicability in e-Health is also presented. Among its main applications, this system supports language learning, both sign and writing language, autonomy for deaf people and humanization in health care. Falibras also gives the possibility of generalizing the translation process in order to allow the translation from any written language to any target language (written, spoken or signaled). Thus, the translation mechanism does not limit the languages involved.

scholarly journals In Search of ISL's Pre-History

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bosco Conama ◽  
Cormac Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Straight Line ◽  
Gender And Age ◽  
On This Island ◽  
History Of

Irish Sign Language (ISL) became a recognised language in the State with the passing of the 2017 Irish Sign Language Act. It is a language that has been shown to not only be a fully-fledged language, but one that exhibits complexity and significant variation by gender and age. Research into the linguistics and sociolinguistics of ISL has been carried out over more than thirty years, and it is almost twenty years since the establishment of Trinity College's Centre for Deaf Studies, source of much of this research. But an examination of the historical records reveals an even greater complexity. Modern day ISL is descended, in the main, from the signed languages that were used in Cabra's Catholic Deaf schools from the 1840s, but little is written about other signed languages, and variations thereon, that have existed on this island over the last 200 years. This article attempts to show that the history of Irish signed language(s) used by Deaf people is neither the story of signing systems invented by hearing people, nor of a single genesis leading in a straight line to modern ISL - but a layered and diverse account of social, historical, educational, and language change.

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