Indo-Pakistani Sign Language
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Indo-Pakistani Sign Language | |||
---|---|---|---|
Native to | Nepalese Sign | ||
Dialects |
| ||
Language codes | |||
ISO 639-3 | Variously:ins – Indian Sign Languagepks – Pakistani Sign Languagewbs – West Bengal Sign Language | ||
Glottolog | indo1332 Indo-Pakistani Signindi1237 Indian SLpaki1242 Pakistan SL | ||
Area of use by country. Native Countries
Partial Users
Non-native users on large scale |
Indo-Pakistani Sign Language (IPSL) is the predominant
Some scholars regard varieties in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and possibly Nepal as variety of Indo-Pakistani Sign Language. Others recognize some varieties as separate languages. The ISO standard currently distinguishes:
- Indian Sign Language (ins),
- Pakistan Sign Language (pks),
- West Bengal Sign Language (Kolkata Sign Language) (wbs), and
- Nepalese Sign Language (nsp).[4]
Status of sign language
This section needs additional citations for verification. (April 2020) |
Deaf schools in
India
In 2005, the National Curricular Framework (NCF) gave some degree of legitimacy to sign language education, by hinting that sign languages may qualify as an optional third language choice for hearing students.
Strenuous efforts have been made by
Besides AYJNIHH, organisations like the Mook Badhir Sangathan in
Pakistan
Pakistan has a deaf population of 0.24 million, which is approximately 7.4% of the overall disabled population in the country.[7]
Varieties
There are many
- Woodward (1992a) researched the vocabulary of the sign language varieties in Calcutta (West Bengal, India). He found cognacy rates of 62–71% between the Karachi vocabulary on the one hand and the four Indian vocabularies on the other, and concluded that 'sign language varieties in India and Pakistan are distinct but closely related language varieties belonging to the same language family'.[8]
- Woodward (1993) expanded on his 1992 research by comparing the results from India and Pakistan with new data from Nepal, tentatively concluding that the sign language varieties of India, Pakistan, Nepal and probably also Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are so closely related that they may, in fact, constitute a single sign language.[9]
- Zeshan (2000), based on her own research in Karachi and New Delhi concluding that their grammar was identical and there were only small differences in vocabulary, proposed that the Indian and Pakistani varieties constitute a single language, introduced the term 'Indo-Pakistani Sign Language' and emphatically rejected the notion of separate Indian and Pakistani sign languages.[3]
- The ISO 639-3 standard categorises these varieties as three separate sign languages in India and Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal. Ethnologue (2016), which follows the ISO standard, acknowledges the relatedness of these varieties as well as the controversy over whether they are one language or many.[10] They identify the following variety within India: Bangalore-Chennai-Hyderabad Sign Language, Mumbai-Delhi Sign Language and Kolkata Sign Language.
- Johnson and Johnson (2016)[11] found in a comparative study of signs used in Delhi, Kolkata, and Dhaka that the language used in Delhi was different enough from that of the cities in Bengal to impede mutual intelligibility. Enough similarities were observed between the signs used in Kolkata and Dhaka to demonstrate decisively that these cities use the same sign language variety.
While the sign system in IPSL appears to be largely indigenous, elements in IPSL are derived from
The Delhi Association for the Deaf is reportedly working with
History
Early history
Although discussion of sign languages and the lives of deaf people is extremely rare in the history of South Asian literature, there are a few references to deaf people and gestural communication in texts dating from antiquity.
An early reference to gestures used by deaf people for communication appears in a 12th-century Islamic legal commentary, the
Early in the 20th century, a high incidence of deafness was observed among communities of the
As one might expect ... of men without the art of writing, the language of signs has reached a high state of development... To judge how highly developed is this power of communicating by signs, etc., it is necessary only to experience a Naga interpreter's translation of a story or a request told to him in sign language by a dumb man. ... Indeed the writer has known a dumb man make a long and detailed complaint of an assault in which nothing was missing except proper names, and even these were eventually identified by means of the dumb man's description of his assailants' dress and personal appearance.[17]
(See
Residential deaf schools
Documented deaf education began with welfare services, mission schools and
While a few students who were unable to learn via the oralist method were taught with signs, many students preferred to communicate with each other via sign language, sometimes to the frustration of their teachers. The first study of the sign language of these children, which is almost certainly related to modern IPSL, was in 1928 by British teacher H. C. Banerjee. She visited three residential schools for deaf children, at
A rare case of a public event conducted in sign language was reported by a mission in Palayamkottai in 1906: "Our services for the Deaf are chiefly in the sign language, in which all can join alike, whether learning Tamil, as those do who belong to the Madras Presidency, or English, which is taught to those coming from other parts."[26]
Grammar
Despite the common assumption that Indo-Pakistani Sign Language is the manual representation of spoken English or Hindi, it is in fact unrelated to either language and has its own grammar. Zeshan (2014) discusses three aspects of IPSL: its lexicon, syntax and spatial grammar. Some distinct features of IPSL that differ from other sign languages include:
- Number Signs: The numbers from zero to nine are formed in IPSL by holding up a hand with the appropriate handshape for each number. From one to five the corresponding number of extended fingers forms the numeral sign, whereas for zero and the numbers from six to nine special handshapes are used that derive from written numbers. Ten may either be expressed by two 5-hands or by ‘1+0’. (Zeshan, 2000)
- Family Relationship: The signs for family relationship are preceded by the sign for ‘male/man’ and ‘female/woman’.
- i)
man
sibling
brother
- ii)
woman
sibling
sister
- Sign families: Several signs belong to same family if they share one or more parameters including handshapes, place of articulation and movement.
- Pass' and fail have the same handshape, but move in opposite directions.
- Money, pay and rich have the same handshape, but different places of articulation and movement patterns.
- Think, know and understand use the same place of articulation, viz, the head.
- The IPSL consists of various non-manual gestures including mouth pattern, mouth gesture, facial expression, body posture, head position and eye gaze (Zeshan, 2001)
- There is no temporal inflection in IPSL. The past, present and future is depicted by using signs for before, then, and after.
- Question words like what or where are placed at the end of a sentence.
- i)
BANK
bank
WHERE
WH
Where is the bank?
- ii)
SICK
sick
WHO
WH
Who is sick?
- The use of space is a crucial feature of IPSL.
Sentences are always predicate final, and all of the signs from the open lexical classes can function as predicates. Ellipsis is extensive, and one-word sentences are common. There is a strong preference for sentences with only one lexical argument. Constituent order does not play any role in the marking of grammatical relations. These are coded exclusively by spatial mechanisms (e.g., directional signs) or inferred from the context. Temporal expressions usually come first in the sentence, and if there is a functional particle, it always follows the predicate (e.g., YESTERDAY FATHER DIE COMPLETIVE – "(My) father died yesterday").[27]
Popular culture
Indo-Pakistani Sign Language has appeared in numerous Indian films such as:
- Koshish, 1972 film about a deaf couple.
- Mozhi, 2007 film about the love story of a deaf and mute girl.
- Khamoshi: The Musical, a 1996 film about a deaf couple with a daughter who becomes a musician.
- Black, a 2005 film about a blind and deaf girl based in part on the life of Helen Keller.
Computational Resources
There has been some significant amount of research on Sign language recognition, but with much less focus for Indo sign language. Due to the political divide, Indian and Pakistani sign languages are generally perceived different, hence leading to fragmented research. There have been a few initiatives that gather open resources for Indian[28] and Pakistani SLs.[29]
References
- ^ Vasishta, M., J. C. Woodward, and K. L. Wilson (1978). "Sign Language in India: Regional Variation within the Deaf Population". Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics. 4 (2): 66–74.
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Ethnologue gives the signing population in India as 2,680,000 in 2003.
Gordon, Raymond G. Jr. (ed.) (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International.{{cite book}}
:|author=
has generic name (help) - ^ a b Ulrike Zeshan (2000). Sign Language of Indo-Pakistan: A description of a Signed Language. Philadelphia, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.
- ^ a b Indian Sign Language, Ethnologue
- ^ What are the top 200 most spoken languages?, Ethnologue
- ^ Dilip Deshmukh (1996). Sign Language and Bilingualism in Deaf Education. Ichalkaranji.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Pakistan Sign Language – A Synopsis Archived 15 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- ^
Woodward, J (1993). "The relationship of sign language varieties in India, Pakistan and Nepal". Sign Language Studies. 1078 (78): 15–22. S2CID 143886617.
- ISBN 9780199842315. Retrieved 18 April 2020.
- ^ "Indian Sign Language", Ethnologue (19 ed.), SIL International, 2016, retrieved 23 October 2016
- S2CID 148131477.
- ^ "Standard sign language for the deaf in India soon". New Delhi: Hindustan Times. Press Trust of India. 16 September 2004. Archived from the original on 16 February 2012.
- ^ M. Miles (2001). "Sign, Gesture & Deafness in South Asian & South-West Asian Histories: a bibliography with annotation and excerpts from India; also from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma / Myanmar, Iraq, Nepal, Pakistan, Persia / Iran, & Sri Lanka". Archived from the original on 27 April 2007. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
- S2CID 171696623.
- ^ Shukla, Hira Lal (1994). Semiotica Indica. Encyclopaedic dictionary of body-language in Indian art and culture. 2 vols. New Delhi: Aryan Books International.
- ^ Vol. IV, Book LIII. Al-Marghinani (1975) [1870]. The Hedaya or Guide. A commentary on the Mussulman laws. 2nd edn. transl. Charles Hamilton, ed. Standish Grady, 4 vols in one. Lahore: Premier Book.
- ^ Hutton, John Henry (1921). The Angami Nagas, with some notes on neighbouring tribes. London: MacMillan. pp. 291–292.
- ^ Miles, M. 2001, extended and updated 2006-04. "Signs of Development in Deaf South & South-West Asia: histories, cultural identities, resistance to cultural imperialism". This is a further revised, extended and updated version of a chapter first published in: Alison Callaway (ed) Deafness and Development, University of Bristol, Centre for Deaf Studies, 2001. Internet publication URL: http://www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles200604.html
- ^ Hull, Ernest R. (1913) Bombay Mission-History with a special study of the Padroado Question. Volume II 1858–1890. Bombay: Examiner Press
- ^ Report on Public Instruction in the Madras Presidency for 1892–93. Madras, 1893. (Report by D. Duncan).
- ^ Editorial (1895), "The deaf mutes in India". The Indian Magazine and Review, August 1895, pp. 436–38. (Quoting largely an article by Ernest J.D. Abraham, in The British Deaf-Mute, May 1895).
- ^ Iyer, A. Padmanabha (1938). "Modern Mysore, impression of a visitor". Trivandrum: Sridhara Printing House. pp 78–83
- ^ Smith, M. Saumarez (1915) "C.E.Z.M.S. Work among the Deaf in India & Ceylon". London: Church of England Zenana Mission Society. p. 13
- ^ Report on Public Instruction in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1923–24. Bombay: Central Govt Press. 1925. (Report by M. Hesketh). p. 91
- ^ Banerjee, H.C. (1928). "The sign language of deaf-mutes". Indian Journal of Psychology. 3: 69–87. (quote from p.70)
- ^ Swainson, Florence (1906). "Report of the Deaf and Dumb and Industrial School in connection with the Church of England Zenana Mission, Palamcottah, South India, for 1905". Palamcottah: Church Mission Press. p.9
- ^ Zeshan, U. (2003). "Indo-Pakistani Sign Language Grammar: A Typological Outline." Sign Language Studies 3:2, 157–212.
- ^ "The ASSIST Project". sign-language.ai4bharat.org. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
- ^ "PSL | Pakistan Sign Language". www.psl.org.pk. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
Further reading
- Deshmukh, D (1997), "Sign Language and Bilingualism in Deaf Education".
Ichalkaranj, India: Deaf Foundation.
- Sulman, Nasir & Zuberi, Sadaf (2002) "Pakistan Sign Language – A synopsis".
Sinha, Samar (2003), A Skeletal Grammar of Indian Sign Language, MPhil dissertation. JNU, New Delhi. Sinha, Samar (2008), A Grammar of Indian Sign Language, PhD thesis, JNU, New Delhi
- Ali Imran; Abdul Razzaq; Irfan Ahmad Baig; Aamir Hussain; Sharaiz Shahid; Tausif-ur Rehman (June 2021). "Dataset of Pakistan Sign Language and Automatic Recognition of Hand Configuration of Urdu Alphabet through Machine Learning". PMID 33937455.
External links
- Higher Secondary School & Multi Purpose Training Institute for Deaf (Indore, Madhya Pradesh) – a residential school run by a deaf couple and using Indo-Pakistani Sign Language in the classroom.
- Pakistan Sign Language – A Synopsis
- The people behind India's first sign language dictionary—BBC