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.

finishvariation and grammaticalization in a signed language: How far down this well-trodden pathway is Auslan (Australian Sign Language)?

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Johnston ◽  
Donovan Cresdee ◽  
Adam Schembri ◽  
Bencie Woll
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Main Verb

AbstractLanguage variation is often symptomatic of ongoing historical change, including grammaticalization. Signed languages lack detailed historical records and a written literature, so tracking grammaticalization in these languages is problematic. Grammaticalization can, however, also be observed synchronically through the comparison of data on variant word forms and multiword constructions in particular contexts and in different dialects and registers. In this paper, we report an investigation of language change and variation in Auslan (Australian Sign Language). Signs glossed asfinishwere tagged for function (e.g., verb, noun, adverb, auxiliary, conjunction), variation in production (number of hands used, duration, mouthing), position relative to the main verb (pre- or postmodifying), and event types of the clauses in which they appear (states, activities, achievements, accomplishments). The data suggest ongoing grammaticalization may be part of the explanation of the variation—variants correlate with different uses in different linguistic contexts, rather than social and individual factors.

Language Ideologies, Policies, and Attitudes toward Signed Languages

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Hill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Language Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

This chapter describes how ideologies about signed languages have come about, and what policies and attitudes have resulted. Language ideologies have governed the formal recognition of signed language at local, national, and international levels, such as that of the United Nations. The chapter discusses three major areas in the study of attitudes toward signed languages: Attitudes versus structural reality; the social factors and educational policies that have contributed to language attitudes; and the impact of language attitudes on identity and educational policy. Even in the United States, American Sign Language does not get recognition as a language in every region, and the attempt to suppress sign language is still operative. This is a worldwide issue for many countries with histories of opposition tosigned languages that parallel the history of the United States.

Perceiving fingerspelling via point-light displays: The stimulus and the perceiver both matter

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorna C Quandt ◽  
Athena Willis ◽  
Carly Leannah
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Total N ◽  
Online Study ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Real Place ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Point Light

Signed language users communicate in a wide array of sub-optimal environments, such as in dim lighting or from a distance. While fingerspelling is a common and essential part of signed languages, the perception of fingerspelling in varying visual environments is not well understood. Signed languages such as American Sign Language (ASL) rely on visuospatial information that combines hand and bodily movements, facial expressions, and fingerspelling. Linguistic information in ASL is conveyed with movement and spatial patterning, which lends itself well to using dynamic Point Light Display (PLD) stimuli to represent sign language movements. We created PLD videos of fingerspelled location names. The location names were either Real (e.g., KUWAIT) or Pseudo-names (e.g., CLARTAND), and the PLDs showed either a High or a Low number of markers. In an online study, Deaf and Hearing ASL users (total N = 283) watched 27 PLD stimulus videos that varied by Realness and Number of Markers. We calculated accuracy and confidence scores in response to each video. We predicted that when signers see ASL fingerspelled letter strings in a suboptimal visual environment, language experience in ASL will be positively correlated with accuracy and self-rated confidence scores. We also predicted that Real location names would be understood better than Pseudo names. Our findings show that participants were more accurate and confident in response to Real place names than Pseudo names and for stimuli with High rather than Low markers. We also discovered a significant interaction between Age and Realness, which shows that as people age, they can better use outside world knowledge to inform their fingerspelling success. Finally, we examined the accuracy and confidence in fingerspelling perception in sub-groups of people who had learned ASL before the age of four. Studying the relationship between language experience with PLD fingerspelling perception allows us to explore how hearing status, ASL fluency levels, and age of language acquisition affect the core abilities of understanding fingerspelling.

The relationship between spontaneous gestures of the hearing and American Sign Language

Gesture ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyn McClave
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Electronic Edition ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Spontaneous Movements ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This paper presents evidence of non-manual gestures in American Sign Language (ASL). The types of gestures identified are identical to non-manual, spontaneous gestures used by hearing non-signers which suggests that the gestures co-occurring with ASL signs are borrowings from hearing culture. A comparison of direct quotes in ASL with spontaneous movements of hearing non-signers suggests a history of borrowing and eventual grammaticization in ASL of features previously thought to be unique to signed languages. The electronic edition of this article includes audio-visial data.

Gesture and language

Gesture ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherman Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Grammatical Morphemes ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Region I ◽  
Using Data

In this paper I explore the role of gesture in the development of signed languages. Using data from American Sign Language, Catalan Sign Language, French Sign Language, and Italian Sign Language, as well as historical sources describing gesture in the Mediterranean region, I demonstrate that gesture enters the linguistic system via two distinct routes. In one, gesture serves as a source of lexical and grammatical morphemes in signed languages. In the second, elements become directly incorporated into signed language morphology, bypassing the lexical stage. Finally, I propose a unifying framework for understanding the gesture-language interface in signed and spoken languages.

On The Relevance of Signed Languages to Research in Interpretation

Target ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Isham
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Visual Channel ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Research Opportunity ◽  
The Difference

Abstract Research using interpreters who work with signed languages can aid us in understanding the cognitive processes of interpretation in general. Using American Sign Language (ASL) as an example, the nature of signed languages is outlined first. Then the difference between signed languages and manual codes for spoken languages is delineated, and it is argued that these two manners of communicating through the visual channel offer a unique research opportunity. Finally, an example from recent research is used to demonstrate how comparisons between spoken-language interpreters and signed-language interpreters can be used to test hypotheses regarding interpretation.

scholarly journals Embodying metaphors: Signed language interpreters at work

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Lena Nilsson
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Processing Time ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Complex Sequences ◽  
Types Of Information

AbstractThe present study describes how Swedish Sign Language (SSL) interpreters systematically use signing space and movements of their hands, arms and body to simultaneously layer iconic expressions of metaphors for differences and for time, in ways previously not described. This is analyzed as the interpreters embodying metaphors, and each of the conceptual metaphors they embody seems to be expressed in a distinct manner not noted before in accounts of the structure of signed languages. Data consists of recordings of Swedish-SSL interpreting by native SSL signers. Rendering spoken Swedish into SSL, these interpreters produce complex sequences making abundant use of the circumstance that in signed language you can express several types of information simultaneously. With little processing time, they produce iconic expressions, frequently using several underlying conceptual metaphors to simultaneously layer information. The interpreters place individual signs in relation to time lines in order to express metaphorical content related to time, and use movement’s of their bodies to express comparisons and contrasts. In all of the analyzed sequences, the interpreters express the metaphor difference-between-is-distance-between. In addition, they layer metaphors for difference and time simultaneously, in some instances also expressing the orientational metaphor pair more-is-up and less-is-down at the same time.

Differentiating the use of gaze in bilingual-bimodal language acquisition: a comparison of two sets of twins with deaf parents

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. DAYLENE RICHMOND-WELTY ◽  
PATRICIA SIPLE
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Mutual Gaze ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Deaf Parents

Signed languages make unique demands on gaze during communication. Bilingual children acquiring both a spoken and a signed language must learn to differentiate gaze use for their two languages. Gaze during utterances was examined for a set of bilingual-bimodal twins acquiring spoken English and American Sign Language (ASL) and a set of monolingual twins acquiring ASL when the twins were aged 2;0, 3;0 and 4;0. The bilingual-bimodal twins differentiated their languages by age 3;0. Like the monolingual ASL twins, the bilingual-bimodal twins established mutual gaze at the beginning of their ASL utterances and either maintained gaze to the end or alternated gaze to include a terminal look. In contrast, like children acquiring spoken English monolingually, the bilingual-bimodal twins established mutual gaze infrequently for their spoken English utterances. When they did establish mutual gaze, it occurred later in their spoken utterances and they tended to look away before the end.

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.

Language in Deaf Populations

2018 ◽  
pp. 258-286
Author(s):  
David P. Corina ◽  
Laurel A. Lawyer
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Spatial Processing ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Models Of Reading

The study of language processing by deaf individuals presents new opportunities to expand our understanding of core psycholinguistic principles that have traditionally been predicated on the studies of oral and written languages. While psycholinguistic studies of signed languages reveal familiar effects of lexicality, semantic- and form-based priming, increasingly, studies of signed languages have begun to explore properties that appear to be unique to signing, such as the effects of iconicity and the role of spatial processing of the sign language signal. Studies of alphabetic reading in deaf individuals who cannot fully access the sound forms of the language they read present challenges to existing models of reading. This chapter summarizes these phenomena and discusses the ways in which the psycholinguistic processing of spoken and signed language are similar and identifies points of divergence.

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