Sign Languages
Sign languages are natural languages of the deaf, found all over the world. In contrast to popular belief there is no universal sign language invented by hearing people. On the contrary, there are hundreds of sign languages that have arisen spontaneously wherever deaf communities exist. Almost every country has its own sign language; Ethnologue’s genetic classification system distinguishes about 116 different sign languages, from Adamorobe Sign Language (Ghana) to Zimbabwean Sign Language. Although sign languages are not universal language there are universal features in sign languages, which help make it possible for users of different sign languages to understand one another far more quickly than users of unrelated spoken languages can. There are also families of sign languages. ASL (American Sign Languages) and NGT (Sign Language of the Netherlands) for example, are primarily descended from French Sign Language. British Sign Language (BSL) is quite different from ASL, but not from New Zealand Sign Language, and Australian Sign Language which are daughter languages of BSL. There are also distinct Chinese, Japanese, Swedish and many other sign languages. Their distribution sometimes corresponds with the linguistic divisions of the countries in which they are found: Ireland has two sign languages: Irish Sign Language (related to French Sign Language, and used by Catholic signers) and British Sign Language (used by Protestant signers)..
It has often been thought that sign languages are not real languages, but that they are either some sort of limited gesture system or pantomime or alternatively, a direct representation of the spoken language in signs. Neither is true. Sign Languages are real languages with their own grammar, not derived from the spoken language of the country in which a particular sign language is used. It is possible to use signs combined with the grammar of the spoken language, for example BSL vocabulary articulated in English word order. However this form of communication, called Signed English, is completely different from British Sign Language. It should be noted, however, that although BSL is different and independent from English, English has still influenced it. That is true of minority languages everywhere: any minority language that is surrounded by a majority language will be influenced by that majority language.
The main difference between sign languages and spoken languages can be found in how the languages are perceived and produced. Spoken languages are perceived through hearing; sign languages through seeing. Spoken languages are produced orally; sign languages are produced manually. Therefore, visually based languages such as sign languages have distinctive characteristics. The basic lexical units of sign languages are signs. Signs are articulated with distinctive movements and configurations of the hands at different locations at or close to the body. The space in front of, above and at the sides of the signer is called signing space and plays an important grammatical role in sign languages. This contrasts with spoken languages where the use of space does not serve a grammatical purpose. Signing space can be used to localize objects and persons so that they can be referred to during a conversation or story, or to realize verb agreement and inflection.
As well as the use of manual signs to display linguistic information, the face, head and upper body also play an important linguistic role. Facial signals and movements of the head and upper body are called non-manual signals and add important information to signs. They can be used to modify the meaning of a sign, to mark sentence types, or in role shift. ‘Deaf culture’ is defined in the same way as any other culture. Deaf people within a deaf community share a sign language and culture which underpin their identity. All around the world sign languages have their own forms of ‘word games’ or ‘sign games’, their own forms of humour, storytelling and poetry. In spoken languages poetry is constructed using effects such as rhythm and sound association. In sign language poetry parallel effects are found. These include rhythm of movement and form association (comparable to alliteration or rhyme), using patterns of hand shape, movement or location to create associations in meaning. For further information about sign languages, see the following web links and literature references.
Books
English Seeing Voices, by Oliver Sacks, 1989. The signs of language, by Edward Klima & Ursula Bellugi, 1979. The linguistics of British Sign Language, by Rachel Sutton-Spence & Bencie Woll, 1999.
Dutch Gebarentaal. De taal van doven in Nederland, door Liesbeth Koenen, Tony Bloem, Ruud Jansen en Albert van der Ven, 1993. Meer dan een gebaar. Rapport van de Commissie Erkenning Nederlandse Gebarentaal. 1997. http://212.204.242.26/download/rapport_mdg.PDF.
Web
English International Bibliography of Sign Language, http://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/bibweb/ British Deaf Association, http://www.britishdeafassociation.org.uk/ Swedish Deaf Association, http://www.sdrf.se/sdr/index_eng.htm Deaf Resource Library, http://deaflibrary.org International deaf / sign language links, http://members.rogers.com/signnet/DI_AG.html A good list of links (some with German descriptions), http://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/Quellen/Quellen.html A large list of links to Deaf-related web sites, http://www.deafbiz.com/
Dutch Dovenschap, Dutch Deaf Organization. http://www.dovenschap.nl Nederlands Gebarencentrum, http://www.gebarencentrum.nl
Swedish Sveriges Dövas Riksförbund, http://www.sdrf.se/sdr/index.htm Teckenwebben, samlingsplatsen för teckenspråk, http://www.teckenwebben.se/ Svenskt Teckenspråks-lexicon på internet, http://ling149.ling.su.se/
The ECHO project, March 2004 http://www.let.kun.nl/sign-lang/echo/