American Sign Language
American Sign Language | |
---|---|
Visual American Sign Language | |
Native to | United States, Canada |
Region | Anglo-America |
Signers | Native signers: 730,000 (2006)[1] L2 signers: 130,000 (2006)[1] |
Dialects | |
None are widely accepted si5s (ASLwrite), ASL-phabet, Stokoe notation, SignWriting | |
Official status | |
Official language in | none |
Recognised minority language in | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | ase |
Glottolog | asli1244 ASL familyamer1248 ASL proper |
Areas where ASL or a dialect/derivative thereof is the national sign language Areas where ASL is in significant use alongside another sign language |
American Sign Language (ASL) is a
ASL originated in the early 19th century in the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of language contact. Since then, ASL use has been propagated widely by schools for the deaf and Deaf community organizations. Despite its wide use, no accurate count of ASL users has been taken. Reliable estimates for American ASL users range from 250,000 to 500,000 persons, including a number of children of deaf adults and other hearing individuals.
ASL signs have a number of
Classification
ASL emerged as a language in the American School for the Deaf (ASD), founded by Thomas Gallaudet in 1817,[6]: 7 which brought together Old French Sign Language, various village sign languages, and home sign systems. ASL was created in that situation by language contact.[7]: 11 [a] ASL was influenced by its forerunners but distinct from all of them.[6]: 7
The influence of French Sign Language (LSF) on ASL is readily apparent; for example, it has been found that about 58% of signs in modern ASL are cognate to Old French Sign Language signs.[6]: 7 [7]: 14 However, that is far less than the standard 80% measure used to determine whether related languages are actually dialects.[7]: 14 That suggests that nascent ASL was highly affected by the other signing systems brought by the ASD students although the school's original director, Laurent Clerc, taught in LSF.[6]: 7 [7]: 14 In fact, Clerc reported that he often learned the students' signs rather than conveying LSF:[7]: 14
I see, however, and I say it with regret, that any efforts that we have made or may still be making, to do better than, we have inadvertently fallen somewhat back of Abbé de l'Épée. Some of us have learned and still learn signs from uneducated pupils, instead of learning them from well instructed and experienced teachers.
— Clerc, 1852, from Woodward 1978:336
It has been proposed that ASL is a
Although the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia share English as a common oral and written language, ASL is not mutually intelligible with either British Sign Language (BSL) or Auslan.[9]: 68 All three languages show degrees of borrowing from English, but that alone is not sufficient for cross-language comprehension.[9]: 68 It has been found that a relatively high percentage (37–44%) of ASL signs have similar translations in Auslan, which for oral languages would suggest that they belong to the same language family.[9]: 69 However, that does not seem justified historically for ASL and Auslan, and it is likely that the resemblance is caused by the higher degree of iconicity in sign languages in general as well as contact with English.[9]: 70
American Sign Language is growing in popularity in many states. Many high school and university students desire to take it as a foreign language, but until recently, it was usually not considered a creditable foreign language elective. ASL users, however, have a very distinct culture, and they interact very differently when they talk. Their facial expressions and hand movements reflect what they are communicating. They also have their own sentence structure, which sets the language apart.[10]
American Sign Language is now being accepted by many colleges as a language eligible for foreign language course credit;[11] many states are making it mandatory to accept it as such.[12] In some states however, this is only true with regard to high school coursework.
History
Prior to the birth of ASL, sign language had been used by various communities in the United States.
In the 19th century, a "triangle" of
ASL is thought to have originated in the American School for the Deaf (ASD), founded in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817.[6]: 4 Originally known as The American Asylum, At Hartford, For The Education And Instruction Of The Deaf And Dumb, the school was founded by the Yale graduate and divinity student Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet.[16][17] Gallaudet, inspired by his success in demonstrating the learning abilities of a young deaf girl Alice Cogswell, traveled to Europe in order to learn deaf pedagogy from European institutions.[16] Ultimately, Gallaudet chose to adopt the methods of the French Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris, and convinced Laurent Clerc, an assistant to the school's founder Charles-Michel de l'Épée, to accompany him back to the United States.[16][b] Upon his return, Gallaudet founded the ASD on April 15, 1817.[16]
The largest group of students during the first seven decades of the school were from Martha's Vineyard, and they brought MVSL with them.[7]: 10 There were also 44 students from around Henniker, New Hampshire, and 27 from the Sandy River valley in Maine, each of which had their own village sign language.[7]: 11 [c] Other students brought knowledge of their own home signs.[7]: 11 Laurent Clerc, the first teacher at ASD, taught using French Sign Language (LSF), which itself had developed in the Parisian school for the deaf established in 1755.[6]: 7 From that situation of language contact, a new language emerged, now known as ASL.[6]: 7
More schools for the deaf were founded after ASD, and knowledge of ASL spread to those schools.[6]: 7 In addition, the rise of Deaf community organizations bolstered the continued use of ASL.[6]: 8 Societies such as the National Association of the Deaf and the National Fraternal Society of the Deaf held national conventions that attracted signers from across the country.[7]: 13 All of that contributed to ASL's wide use over a large geographical area, atypical of a sign language.[7]: 14 [7]: 12
While
Population
Counting the number of ASL signers is difficult because ASL users have never been counted by the American census.[24]: 1 [d] The ultimate source for current estimates of the number of ASL users in the United States is a report for the National Census of the Deaf Population (NCDP) by Schein and Delk (1974).[24]: 17 Based on a 1972 survey of the NCDP, Schein and Delk provided estimates consistent with a signing population between 250,000 and 500,000.[24]: 26 The survey did not distinguish between ASL and other forms of signing; in fact, the name "ASL" was not yet in widespread use.[24]: 18
Incorrect figures are sometimes cited for the population of ASL users in the United States based on misunderstandings of known statistics.[24]: 20 Demographics of the deaf population have been confused with those of ASL use since adults who become deaf late in life rarely use ASL in the home.[24]: 21 That accounts for currently-cited estimations that are greater than 500,000; such mistaken estimations can reach as high as 15,000,000.[24]: 1, 21 A 100,000-person lower bound has been cited for ASL users; the source of that figure is unclear, but it may be an estimate of prelingual deafness, which is correlated with but not equivalent to signing.[24]: 22
ASL is sometimes incorrectly cited as the third- or fourth-most-spoken language in the United States.
Geographic distribution
ASL is used throughout Anglo-America.[7]: 12 That contrasts with Europe, where a variety of sign languages are used within the same continent.[7]: 12 The unique situation of ASL seems to have been caused by the proliferation of ASL through schools influenced by the American School for the Deaf, wherein ASL originated, and the rise of community organizations for the Deaf.[7]: 12–14
Throughout
In addition to the aforementioned West African countries, ASL is reported to be used as a first language in Barbados, Bolivia, Cambodia[26] (alongside Cambodian Sign Language), the Central African Republic, Chad, China (Hong Kong), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, the Philippines, Singapore, and Zimbabwe.[1] ASL is also used as a lingua franca throughout the deaf world, widely learned as a second language.[1]
Regional variation
Sign production
Sign production can often vary according to location. Signers from the South tend to sign with more flow and ease. Native signers from New York have been reported as signing comparatively quicker and sharper. Sign production of native Californian signers has also been reported as being fast. Research on that phenomenon often concludes that the fast-paced production for signers from the coasts could be due to the fast-paced nature of living in large metropolitan areas. That conclusion also supports how the ease with which Southerners sign could be caused by the easygoing environment of the South in comparison to that of the coasts.[27]
Sign production can also vary depending on age and native language. For example, sign production of letters may vary in older signers. Slight differences in finger spelling production can be a signal of age. Additionally, signers who learned American Sign Language as a second language vary in production. For Deaf signers who learned a different sign language before learning American Sign Language, qualities of their native language may show in their ASL production. Some examples of that varied production include fingerspelling towards the body, instead of away from it, and signing certain movement from bottom to top, instead of top to bottom. Hearing people who learn American Sign Language also have noticeable differences in signing production. The most notable production difference of hearing people learning American Sign Language is their rhythm and arm posture.[28]
Sign variants
Most popularly, there are variants of the signs for English words such as "birthday", "pizza", "Halloween", "early", and "soon", just a sample of the most commonly recognized signs with variants based on regional change. The sign for "school" is commonly varied between black and white signers; the variants used by black signers are sometimes called Black American Sign Language.[29] Social variation is also found between citation forms and forms used by Deaf gay men for words such as "pain" and "protest".[30]
History and implications
The prevalence of residential Deaf schools can account for much of the regional variance of signs and sign productions across the United States. Deaf schools often serve students of the state in which the school resides. That limited access to signers from other regions, combined with the residential quality of Deaf Schools promoted specific use of certain sign variants. Native signers did not have much access to signers from other regions during the beginning years of their education. It is hypothesized that because of that seclusion, certain variants of a sign prevailed over others due to the choice of variant used by the student of the school/signers in the community.
However, American Sign Language does not appear to be vastly varied in comparison to other signed languages. That is because when Deaf education was beginning in the United States, many educators flocked to the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, whose central location for the first generation of educators in Deaf education to learn American Sign Language allows ASL to be more standardized than its variant.[29]
Varieties
Varieties of ASL are found throughout the world. There is little difficulty in comprehension among the varieties of the United States and Canada.[1]
Just as there are accents in speech, there are regional accents in sign. People from the South sign slower than people in the North—even people from northern and southern Indiana have different styles.
— Walker, Lou Ann (1987). A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family. New York: HarperPerennial. p. 31.ISBN 978-0-06-091425-7.
There is also a distinct variety of ASL used by the Black Deaf community.
ASL is used internationally as a
When communicating with hearing English speakers, ASL-speakers often use what is commonly called
ASL changes over time and from generation to generation. The sign for telephone has changed as the shape of phones and the manner of holding them have changed.[39] The development of telephones with screens has also changed ASL, encouraging the use of signs that can be seen on small screens.[39]
Stigma
In 2013, the White House published a response to a petition that gained over 37,000 signatures to officially recognize American Sign Language as a community language and a language of instruction in schools. The response is titled "there shouldn't be any stigma about American Sign Language" and addressed that ASL is a vital language for the Deaf and hard of hearing. Stigmas associated with sign languages and the use of sign for educating children often lead to the absence of sign during periods in children's lives when they can access languages most effectively.
Most children born to deaf parents are hearing.
Writing systems
Although there is no well-established writing system for ASL,
The most widely used
Several additional candidates for written ASL have appeared over the years, including SignFont, ASL-phabet, and Si5s.
For English-speaking audiences, ASL is often
Phonology
Each sign in ASL is composed of a number of distinctive components, generally referred to as parameters. A sign may use one hand or both. All signs can be described using the five parameters involved in signed languages, which are
|
|
There are also meaningful
Grammar
Morphology
ASL has a rich system of verbal
ASL has a productive system of
In linguistics, there are two primary ways of changing the form of a word: derivation and inflection. Derivation involves creating new words by adding something to an existing word, while inflection involves changing the form of a word to convey grammatical information without altering its fundamental meaning or category.
For example, adding the suffix "-ship" to the noun "friend" creates the new word "friendship", which has a different meaning than the original word. Inflection, on the other hand, involves modifying a word's form to indicate grammatical features such as tense, number, gender, person, case, and degree of comparison.
In American Sign Language (ASL), inflection is conveyed through facial expressions, body movements, and other non-manual markers. For instance, to indicate past tense in ASL, one might sign the present tense of a verb (such as "walk"), and then add a facial expression and head tilt to signify that the action occurred in the past (i.e., "walked").
While inflection does not change the basic meaning or category of a word, it does provide additional information that helps us better understand how the word is being used in a sentence. This is similar to how subtitles in a movie provide additional information without altering the content of the film itself.
According to the book Linguistics of American Sign Language, ASL signs have two main components: hold segments and movement segments. Hold segments consist of hand-shape, location, orientation, and non-manual features, while movement segments possess similar features.
Morphology is the study of how languages form words by using smaller units to construct larger units. The smallest meaningful unit in a language is known as a "morpheme", with some morphemes able to stand alone as independent units (free morphemes), while others must occur with other morphemes (bound morphemes).
For example, the plural "-s" and third person "-s" in English are bound morphemes. In ASL, the 3 handshape in signs like THREE-WEEKS and THREE-MONTHS are also bound morphemes.
Affixes, which are morphemes added to words to create new words or modify their meanings, are part of the derivational process. For example, in English, prefixes like "re-" and suffixes like "-able" are affixes. In ASL, affixation can be used to modify the sign for CHAIR to indicate different types of chairs. The inflectional process, on the other hand, adds grammatical information to existing units.
By studying morphemes and how they can be combined or modified, linguists gain insight into the underlying structure of language and the creative ways in which it can be used to express meaning. Understanding morphology is essential to understanding how languages are built and how new signs or words can be formed.
Furthermore, understanding morphology has practical applications in language learning and teaching. For example, teaching students the basic morphological structures of a language can help them to better understand the language's grammar and syntax, and can also aid in their acquisition of new vocabulary.
In summary, morphology is an essential component of language and provides valuable insights into the structure and function of languages. By understanding the morphological processes involved in language formation, we can gain a deeper understanding of how languages work and how they can be effectively taught and learned.
Fingerspelling
American Sign Language possesses a set of 26 signs known as the
Fingerspelling is a form of
Syntax
ASL is a
However, other word orders may also occur since ASL allows the
Besides, word orders can be obtained through the phenomenon of subject copy in which the subject is repeated at the end of the sentence, accompanied by head nodding for clarification or emphasis:[29]
ASL also allows
Topicalization, accompanied with a null subject and a subject copy, can produce yet another word order,
Those properties of ASL allow it a variety of word orders, leading many to question which is the true, underlying, "basic" order. There are several other proposals that attempt to account for the flexibility of word order in ASL. One proposal is that languages like ASL are best described with a
Iconicity
Common misconceptions are that signs are iconically self-explanatory, that they are a transparent imitation of what they mean, or even that they are pantomime.[62] In fact, many signs bear no resemblance to their referent because they were originally arbitrary symbols, or their iconicity has been obscured over time.[62] Even so, in ASL iconicity plays a significant role; a high percentage of signs resemble their referents in some way.[63] That may be because the medium of sign, three-dimensional space, naturally allows more iconicity than oral language.[62]
In the era of the influential linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, it was assumed that the mapping between form and meaning in language must be completely arbitrary.[63] Although onomatopoeia is a clear exception, since words like "choo-choo" bear clear resemblance to the sounds that they mimic, the Saussurean approach was to treat them as marginal exceptions.[64] ASL, with its significant inventory of iconic signs, directly challenges that theory.[65]
Research on acquisition of pronouns in ASL has shown that children do not always take advantage of the iconic properties of signs when they interpret their meaning.[66] It has been found that when children acquire the pronoun "you", the iconicity of the point (at the child) is often confused, being treated more like a name.[67] That is a similar finding to research in oral languages on pronoun acquisition. It has also been found that iconicity of signs does not affect immediate memory and recall; less iconic signs are remembered just as well as highly-iconic signs.[68]
See also
- American Sign Language grammar
- American Sign Language literature
- Baby sign language
- Bimodal bilingualism
- Great ape language, of which ASL has been one attempted mode
- Legal recognition of sign languages
- Pointing
- Sign name
- ASL interpreting
Notes
- ^ In particular, Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, Henniker Sign Language, and Sandy River Valley Sign Language were brought to the school by students. They, in turn, appear to have been influenced by early British Sign Language and did not involve input from indigenous Native American sign systems. See Padden (2010:11), Lane, Pillard & French (2000:17), and Johnson & Schembri (2007:68).
- ^ The Abbé Charles-Michel de l'Épée, founder of the Parisian school Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris, was the first to acknowledge that sign language could be used to educate the deaf. An oft-repeated folk tale states that while visiting a parishioner, Épee met two deaf daughters conversing with each other using LSF. The mother explained that her daughters were being educated privately by means of pictures. Épée is said to have been inspired by those deaf children when he established the first educational institution for the deaf.[18]
- ^ Whereas deafness was genetically recessive on Martha's Vineyard, it was dominant in Henniker. On the one hand, this dominance likely aided the development of sign language in Henniker since families would be more likely to have the critical mass of deaf people necessary for the propagation of signing. On the other hand, in Martha's Vineyard the deaf were more likely to have more hearing relatives, which may have fostered a sense of shared identity that led to more inter-group communication than in Henniker.[19]
- ^ Although some surveys of smaller scope measure ASL use, such as the California Department of Education recording ASL use in the home when children begin school, ASL use in the general American population has not been directly measured. See Mitchell et al. (2006:1).
- cheremes, but other linguists have referred to them as phonemes. See Bahan (1996:11).
References
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- ^ Province of Ontario (2007). "Bill 213: An Act to recognize sign language as an official language in Ontario". Archived from the original on 2018-12-24. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
- ^ Education Policy Counsel at National Association of the Deaf. "States that Recognize American Sign Language as a Foreign Language" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
- ^ About American Sign Language Archived 2013-05-19 at the Wayback Machine, Deaf Research Library, Karen Nakamura
- ^ "American Sign Language". NIDCD. 2015-08-18. Archived from the original on 2016-11-15. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag Bahan (1996)
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Padden (2010)
- ^ a b c d e Kegl (2008)
- ^ a b c d Johnson & Schembri (2007)
- ^ "ASL as a Foreign Language Fact Sheet". www.unm.edu. Archived from the original on 2018-09-27. Retrieved 2015-11-04.
- ^ Wilcox Phd, Sherman (May 2016). "Universities That Accept ASL In Fulfillment Of Foreign Language Requirements". Archived from the original on October 24, 2018. Retrieved May 24, 2018.
- ^ Burke, Sheila (April 26, 2017). "Bill Passes Requiring Sign Language Students Receive Credit". US News. Archived from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved May 24, 2018.
- ^ Ceil Lucas, 1995, The Sociolinguistics of the Deaf Community
- ^ Lane, Pillard & French (2000:17)
- ISBN 978-0-674-27041-1. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
everyone here sign.
- ^ a b c d "A Brief History of ASD". American School for the Deaf. n.d. Archived from the original on March 1, 2014. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
- ^ "A Brief History Of The American Asylum, At Hartford, For The Education And Instruction Of The Deaf And Dumb". 1893. Archived from the original on September 5, 2013. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
- ^ See:
- Ruben, Robert J. (2005). "Sign language: Its history and contribution to the understanding of the biological nature of language". Acta Oto-Laryngologica. 125 (5): 464–7. S2CID 1704351.
- ISBN 978-0-8147-9853-9.
- Ruben, Robert J. (2005). "Sign language: Its history and contribution to the understanding of the biological nature of language". Acta Oto-Laryngologica. 125 (5): 464–7.
- ^ See Lane, Pillard & French (2000:39).
- ^ Shaw & Delaporte 2015, p. xii-xiv.
- ^ a b c d e f Armstrong & Karchmer (2002)
- ^ Stokoe, William C. 1960. Sign Language Structure: An Outline of the Visual Communication Systems of the American Deaf Archived 2013-12-02 at the Wayback Machine, Studies in linguistics: Occasional papers (No. 8). Buffalo: Dept. of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Buffalo.
- ^ "American Sign Language, ASL or Ameslan". Handspeak.com. Archived from the original on 2013-06-05. Retrieved 2012-05-21.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Mitchell et al. (2006)
- ^ a b c d e Nyst (2010)
- ^ Benoit Duchateau-Arminjon, 2013, Healing Cambodia One Child at a Time, Archived 2023-03-19 at the Wayback Machine p. 180.
- ^ Rogelio, Contreras (November 15, 2002). "Regional, Cultural, and Sociolinguistic Variation of ASL in the United States". Archived from the original on January 21, 2018. Retrieved March 19, 2018.
- ^ Gallaudet Department of Linguistics (2017-09-16), Do sign languages have accents?, archived from the original on 2021-10-30, retrieved 2018-04-27
- ^ ISBN 978-1-56368-283-4.
- S2CID 149249585.
- ^ a b c d Bailey & Dolby (2002:1–2)
- ^ Lucas, Bayley & Valli (2003:36)
- ^ a b c d e Solomon (2010)
- ^ Bolivian Sign Language at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ Hurlbut (2003, 7. Conclusion)
- ^ a b c Nakamura, Karen (2008). "About ASL". Deaf Resource Library. Archived from the original on May 19, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f Costello (2008:xxv)
- ^ Collins (2004:33)
- ^ from the original on 2022-07-27. Retrieved 2022-07-28.
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- ISBN 978-0-525-95379-1.
- ^ a b c d Bishop & Hicks (2005)
- ^ a b Supalla & Cripps (2011, ASL Gloss as an Intermediary Writing System)
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j van der Hulst & Channon (2010)
- ^ Armstrong, David F., and Michael A. Karchmer. "William C. Stokoe and the Study of Signed Languages." Sign Language Studies 9.4 (2009): 389-397. Academic Search Premier. Web. 7 June 2012.
- Carl G. Croneberg. 1965. A dictionary of American sign languages on linguistic principles. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet College Press
- ^ Everson, Michael; Slevinski, Stephen; Sutton, Valerie. "Proposal for encoding Sutton SignWriting in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. Retrieved 1 April 2013.
- ^ Charles Butler, Center for Sutton Movement Writing, 2014
- ^ Roberto Costa; Madson Barreto. "SignWriting Symposium Presentation 32". signwriting.org. Archived from the original on 2022-02-07. Retrieved 2014-07-25.
- ^ "Test wikis of sign languages". incubator.wikimedia.org. Archived from the original on 2015-09-10. Retrieved 2015-11-02.
- ^ "Request for ASL Wikipedia". meta.wikimedia.org. Archived from the original on 2018-11-21. Retrieved 2015-11-02.
- ISBN 9789027212306.
- ^ Valli & Lucas (2000:86)
- ^ Costello (2008:xxiv)
- ^ "Sign language alphabets". www.handspeak.com. Retrieved 2024-02-21.
- ^ "What Is American Sign Language (ASL)? | NIDCD". www.nidcd.nih.gov. 2021-10-29. Retrieved 2024-02-21.
- ^ "The Many Languages of Sign Language". Little Passports. 2021-09-23. Retrieved 2024-02-21.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-262-14067-6.
- ISBN 978-1-56368-283-4.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-56368-283-4.
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- Bailey, Carol; Dolby, Kathy (2002). The Canadian dictionary of ASL. Edmonton, AB: The University of Alberta Press. ISBN 978-0888643001.
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External links
- American Sign Language at Curlie
- Accessible American Sign Language vocabulary site
- American Sign Language discussion forum
- One-stop resource American Sign Language and video dictionary
- National Institute of Deafness ASL section
- National Association of the Deaf ASL information
- American Sign Language
- The American Sign Language Linguistics Research Project
- Video Dictionary of ASL
- American Sign Language Dictionary