Chapter 4
The Language: American Sign Language
Signed languages, like ASL, are used by some as a first language
and others non-natively but as the primary language of communication.
This is not to be confused with spoken language-based systems
like Signed Exact English (SEE). Natural Signed languages have
histories, dialects, and their own systems. Still, there are
many reasons why the general population, and even academics doubt
that Signed systems are language. The main reason is the medium
in which the language is realized. Because most people are only
well acquainted with spoken language, sound is the medium they
consider appropriate for language.
American Sign Language was considered gestural communication,
but not full language until the 1960's. Those who observe signing,
but who have no access to its meaning and who do not have the
tools to analyze it linguistically, might miss the language on
first glance. Instead, they may perceive an indiscriminate combination
of hands, face and body gesturing in a way which seems
discernible. They may feel certain that if they just watch carefully,
the message will become clear to them. Furthermore, as they watch
the signers face move, they may imagine that he is mouthing the
English words for what he is signing. Some might argue that too
much fingerspelling of English words occurs, therefore ASL must
have a spoken counterpart. Perusing the few available ASL dictionaries,
which all rely on English to look up signs and their definitions,
one finds that ASL has less than 10,000 different items in its
lexicon.
The work of William Stokoe, the father of Sign Language Linguistics,
has helped to change many people's views on ASL and Signed language
in general. ASL, like any other language, changes over time and
it is used natively. It is infinitely expressive and productive.
Deaf people have Sign poetry and there are plays performed in
ASL. The Deaf use their language to discuss language, to joke
and pun and to educate on any subject. Yet, even as more linguists
and more of the general public become aware of the idea of ASL
as a language as full as and distinct from English, an enormous
difference between spoken language and ASL remains. ASL is not
pervasively written.
Like spoken languages which can be divided into phonology, morphology
and syntactic components, American Sign Language can be divided
into equivalent parts, although not based on sound distinctions.
Sign languages occur in a visual-spatial medium as opposed to
a sound-based medium. Signs are made up of smaller components
similar to the phonemes of spoken language, which utilize distinctive
features, and are sometimes called parameters (Valli and
Lucas 1992: 18). Their parameters include handshape, location,
movement, palm orientation and sometimes non-manual signs, and
each parameter consists of a bundle of primes.
There are various estimates regarding the number of primes for
each of the above-mentioned parameters. Handshape is a key characteristic
of almost any sign. There are around forty-one distinct handshapes
used in ASL...*Footnote 5: See Appendix C.... Each
of these handshapes can also be considered in terms of the openness
of the hand, the number of fingers extended, the manner in which
the fingers are held and the orientation of the palm. A handshape
may be closed, open/extended vertical or open/extended horizontal
(Valli and Lucas 1992).
Another parameter, location, refers to the placement of the
hands and arms in front of the signer. The location of a given
sign can be anywhere from the top of the head to the hip area
and from the signer's furthest reach right to furthest reach
left. Signs rarely occur behind the signer or much below the
signer's waist. Stokoe et al. (1965) recognized twelve basic
locations within this signing space. The neutral sign space,
in front of the middle area of the chest, is where most two-handed
signs are made. Because of this, the location of many two-handed
signs refers to the location on the non-dominant hand with which
the dominant hand is in contact. Unless both hands are symmetrical
in a two-handed sign, one hand is dominant and can form any number
of handshapes while the non-dominant hand will maintain one of
seven basic handshapes generally attributed to the passive hand
(Valli and Lucas 1992: 5). See Figure 2.
Figure 2:
Basic Handshapes of the Non-Dominant Hand
In terms of movement parameters, one might expect the largest
number of possibilities. Stokoe et al. (1965) postulated twenty-six
separate and distinguishing movements possible in the sign space
including the opening or closing of a hand. Most of these fall
into five general categories: vertical actions, sideways actions,
horizontal actions, rotary actions, interactions of hands, and
the movements of individual hands. Stokoe et al. (1965) claimed
that any sign could be described by the simultaneous production
of various parameters. Another conception of the basic units
of any given sign views each lexical item as a series of movements
and holds. In each unit of a sign, movement or hold, the handshape,
location, orientation and nonmanual sign features are bundles
of articulatory features, representing the relevant parameters
of a given sign.
Using movement, one can derive nouns from ASL verbs. In general,
this process occurs when a movement is added to the verb, making
it a noun. For example, the verb "sit" involves two
hands, both "h" hands...*Footnote
6... , signed in the neutral sign space. The palm of the
left hand faces in and the fingers point right. The palm of the
right hand faces down and the fingers point forward. The right
extended fingers move from slightly above the left hand to resting
on top of the fingers of the left hand. To derive the noun "chair,"
the movement is changed to a quick double movement parallel to
the slower singular movement observable in the verb "to
sit."
*Footnote 6: An "h" hand refers
to a handshape made when the forefinger and middle finger are
extended.
Sign morphology also occurs at the level of handshape, location
or movement. ASL morphology includes compound formation, numeral
incorporation, classifiers and loan signs. ASL syntax is quite
distinct from English in terms of word order, and ASL grammar
is often realized morphosyntactically, meaning that verbs often
morphologically encode meaning such as subject, object, agreement
and temporality. In other words, in many English sentences in
which separate lexical items are required, in ASL there is one
highly inflected lexical item (a verb).
There are three kinds of verbs in ASL which take both a subject
and an object. The first kind, plain verbs function similarly
to English verbs in that both the subject and the object are
signed separately from the verb. The second kind of verb can
inflect for the object but not the subject. A third kind includes
both the subject and the object in their agreement. The verb
"know" is a plain verb in ASL, and the signer must
sign separately, "I", "know" and "you",
but to sign "I will help you" involves only two signed
lexical items, "I" and "help-you." Furthermore,
"I say 'no' to you" involves only one lexical item,
the verb "say (or answer) 'no'" inflected for both
subject and object.
Figure 3: Types of Verbs
The drawings demonstrating a.) "I
know you" b.)"Should I help you?" and c.)"I
say no to you" are from a.) Fant 1994 and b.) and c.) from
Smith, Lentz and Mikos 1988.
ASL verbs also inflect for temporality. Different movements can
be applied to a base form of any verb to signify the temporal
aspect. For example, whereas in English one would say, "He
studied for a long period of time," in ASL two lexical items
would suffice: "he" and an inflected form of the verb
"studied"(Valli and Lucas 1992: 106). See Figure 4.
Figure 4: Temporality in
Verbs
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