American Sign Language - Wikipedia 29/12/2024, 11:34

American Sign Language

American Sign Language (ASL) is a
natural language[5] that serves as the American Sign Language
predominant sign language of Deaf Visual American Sign Language
communities in the United States and most of
Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and
organized visual language that is expressed by
employing both manual and nonmanual
features.[6] Besides North America, dialects of
ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many
Native to United States, Canada
countries around the world, including much of
West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL Region Northern America
is also widely learned as a second language, Signers Native signers:
serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely 730,000 (2006)[1]
related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has L2 signers: 130,000
(2006)[1]
been proposed that ASL is a creole language of
LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of Language family French Sign-based
(possibly a creole with
creole languages, such as agglutinative
Martha's Vineyard Sign
morphology. Language)

ASL originated in the early 19th century in the American Sign

Language
American School for the Deaf (ASD) in
Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of Dialects Protactile
language contact. Since then, ASL use has See Varieties of American
been propagated widely by schools for the Sign Language
deaf and Deaf community organizations. Writing system None are widely accepted
Despite its wide use, no accurate count of ASL si5s (ASLwrite), ASL-
phabet, Stokoe notation,
users has been taken. Reliable estimates for
SignWriting
American ASL users range from 250,000 to
Official status
500,000 persons, including a number of
children of deaf adults (CODA) and other Official language in none
hearing individuals. Recognised minority through legislation:
language in Canada (federal);
Signs in ASL have a number of phonemic Saskatchewan (provincial);
components, such as movement of the face, Ontario (provincial) only in
the torso, and the hands. ASL is not a form of domains of: legislation,
education and judiciary
pantomime, although iconicity plays a larger
proceedings.[2] through

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role in ASL than in spoken languages. English resolutions: Alberta,

loan words are often borrowed through Manitoba.
45 US states and DC
fingerspelling, although ASL grammar is
formally recognize ASL in
unrelated to that of English. ASL has verbal state law; Five states
agreement and aspectual marking and has a recognize ASL for
productive system of forming agglutinative educational foreign
classifiers. Many linguists believe ASL to be a language requirements,
subject–verb–object language. However, but have not formally
recognized ASL as a
there are several alternative proposals to
language in their
account for ASL word order. legislatures.[3][4]

Language codes
Classification ISO 639-3 ase
Glottolog asli1244 (https://g
ASL emerged as a language in the American lottolog.org/resour
School for the Deaf (ASD), founded by ce/languoid/id/asli
Thomas Gallaudet in 1817,[7]: 7 which brought 1244) ASL family
amer1248 (https://g
together Old French Sign Language, various lottolog.org/resour
village sign languages, and home sign ce/languoid/id/amer
systems. ASL was created in that situation by 1248) ASL proper
language contact.[8]: 11 [a] ASL was influenced
by its forerunners but distinct from all of
them.[7]: 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.[7]: 7 [8]: 14 However, that is far less than Areas where ASL or a dialect/derivative thereof
the standard 80% measure used to determine is the national sign language
whether related languages are actually Areas where ASL is in significant use alongside
dialects.[8]: 14 That suggests nascent ASL was another sign language
highly affected by the other signing systems
brought by the ASD students although the school's original director, Laurent Clerc, taught in
LSF.[7]: 7 [8]: 14 In fact, Clerc reported that he often learned the students' signs rather than
conveying LSF:[8]: 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

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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 creole in which LSF is the

superstrate language and the native village sign languages Travis Dougherty explains and
demonstrates the ASL alphabet.
are substrate languages.[9]: 493 However, more recent Voice-over interpretation by Gilbert
research has shown that modern ASL does not share many G. Lensbower.
of the structural features that characterize creole
languages.[9]: 501 ASL may have begun as a creole and then
undergone structural change over time, but it is also possible that it was never a creole-type
language.[9]: 501 There are modality-specific reasons that signed languages tend towards
agglutination, such as the ability to simultaneously convey information via the face, head, torso,
and other body parts. That might override creole characteristics such as the tendency towards
isolating morphology.[9]: 502 Additionally, Clerc and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet may have used
an artificially constructed form of manually coded language in instruction rather than true
LSF.[9]: 497

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.[10]: 68 All three languages show degrees of borrowing from English, but that alone is
not sufficient for cross-language comprehension.[10]: 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.[10]: 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.[10]: 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.[11]

American Sign Language is now being accepted by many colleges as a language eligible for
foreign language course credit;[12] many states are making it mandatory to accept it as such.[13]
In some states however, this is only true with regard to high school coursework.

History

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Prior to the birth of ASL, sign language had been used by various
communities in the United States.[7]: 5 In the United States, as
elsewhere in the world, hearing families with deaf children have
historically employed ad hoc home sign, which often reaches much
higher levels of sophistication than gestures used by hearing people
in spoken conversation.[7]: 5 As early as 1541 at first contact by
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, there were reports that the
Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains widely spoke a sign
language to communicate across vast national and linguistic
lines.[14]: 80

In the 19th century, a "triangle" of village sign languages developed

in New England: one in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts; one in
Henniker, New Hampshire, and one in Sandy River Valley,
Maine.[15] Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL), which was
particularly important for the history of ASL, was used mainly in
Chilmark, Massachusetts.[7]: 5–6 Due to intermarriage in the A sign language interpreter
at a presentation
original community of English settlers of the 1690s, and the
recessive nature of genetic deafness, Chilmark had a high 4% rate
of genetic deafness.[7]: 5–6 MVSL was used even by hearing residents whenever a deaf person
was present,[7]: 5–6 and also in some situations where spoken language would be ineffective or
inappropriate, such as during church sermons or between boats at sea.[16]

ASL is thought to have originated in the American School for the Deaf (ASD), founded in
Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817.[7]: 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.[17][18] 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.[17] 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.[17][b] Upon his return, Gallaudet founded the ASD on
April 15, 1817.[17]

The largest group of students during the first seven decades of the school were from Martha's
Vineyard, and they brought MVSL with them.[8]: 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.[8]: 11 [c] Other students brought knowledge of their own home
signs.[8]: 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.[7]: 7 From that
situation of language contact, a new language emerged, now known as ASL.[7]: 7

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More schools for the deaf were founded after ASD, and
knowledge of ASL spread to those schools.[7]: 7 In addition,
the rise of Deaf community organizations bolstered the
continued use of ASL.[7]: 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.[8]: 13 All of that contributed to
ASL's wide use over a large geographical area, atypical of a
sign language.[8]: 14 [8]: 12

While oralism, an approach to educating deaf students

focusing on oral language, had previously been used in American Sign Language Convention
American schools, the Milan Congress made it dominant of March 2008 in Austin, Texas
and effectively banned the use of sign languages at schools
in the United States and Europe. However, the efforts of
Deaf advocates and educators, more lenient enforcement of the Congress's mandate, and the
use of ASL in religious education and proselytism ensured greater use and documentation
compared to European sign languages, albeit more influenced by fingerspelled loanwords and
borrowed idioms from English as students were societally pressured to achieve fluency in
spoken language.[21] Nevertheless, oralism remained the predominant method of deaf
education up to the 1950s.[22] Linguists did not consider sign language to be true "language" but
as something inferior.[22] Recognition of the legitimacy of ASL was achieved by William Stokoe,
a linguist who arrived at Gallaudet University in 1955 when that was still the dominant
assumption.[22] Aided by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Stokoe argued for
manualism, the use of sign language in deaf education.[22][23] Stokoe noted that sign language
shares the important features that oral languages have as a means of communication, and even
devised a transcription system for ASL.[22] In doing so, Stokoe revolutionized both deaf
education and linguistics.[22] In the 1960s, ASL was sometimes referred to as "Ameslan", but
that term is now considered obsolete.[24]

Population
Counting the number of ASL signers is difficult because ASL users have never been counted by
the American census.[25]: 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).[25]: 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.[25]: 26 The
survey did not distinguish between ASL and other forms of signing; in fact, the name "ASL" was
not yet in widespread use.[25]: 18

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Incorrect figures are sometimes cited for the population of ASL users in the United States based
on misunderstandings of known statistics.[25]: 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.[25]: 21 That accounts for currently-cited estimations that are greater than 500,000;
such mistaken estimations can reach as high as 15,000,000.[25]: 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.[25]: 22

ASL is sometimes incorrectly cited as the third- or fourth-most-spoken language in the United
States.[25]: 15, 22 Those figures misquote Schein and Delk (1974), who actually concluded that
ASL speakers constituted the third-largest population "requiring an interpreter in
court".[25]: 15, 22 Although that would make ASL the third-most used language among
monolinguals other than English, it does not imply that it is the fourth-most-spoken language in
the United States since speakers of other languages may also speak English.[25]: 21–22

Geographic distribution
ASL is used throughout Anglo-America.[8]: 12 That contrasts with Europe, where a variety of
sign languages are used within the same continent.[8]: 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.[8]: 12–14

Throughout West Africa, ASL-based sign languages are signed by educated Deaf adults.[26]: 410
Such languages, imported by boarding schools, are often considered by associations to be the
official sign languages of their countries and are named accordingly, such as Nigerian Sign
Language, Ghanaian Sign Language.[26]: 410 Such signing systems are found in Benin, Burkina
Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Liberia, Mauritania, Mali, Nigeria, and Togo.[26]: 406 Due to lack of
data, it is still an open question how similar those sign languages are to the variety of ASL used
in America.[26]: 411

In addition to the aforementioned West African countries, ASL is reported to be used as a first
language in Barbados, Bolivia, Cambodia[27] (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

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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.[28]

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.[29]

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.[30] Social variation is also found between citation forms and forms used by Deaf gay
men for words such as "pain" and "protest".[31]

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

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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.[30]

Varieties
Varieties of ASL are found throughout the world. There is little Variants of ABOUT in Canadian
difficulty in comprehension among the varieties of the United ASL
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. 0:03

— Walker, Lou Ann (1987). A Loss for Words: The

About – General sign (Canadian
Story of Deafness in a Family (https://archive.or ASL)[32]
g/details/lossforwordsstor00walk/page/31). New
York: HarperPerennial. p. 31 (https://archive.org
/details/lossforwordsstor00walk/page/31).
ISBN 978-0-06-091425-7.

Mutual intelligibility among those ASL varieties is high, and

0:02
the variation is primarily lexical.[1] For example, there are
three different words for English about in Canadian ASL; the About – Atlantic Variation
standard way, and two regional variations (Atlantic and (Canadian ASL)[32]
Ontario).[32] Variation may also be phonological, meaning that
the same sign may be signed in a different way depending on
the region. For example, an extremely common type of
variation is between the handshapes /1/, /L/, and /5/ in signs
with one handshape.[33]

There is also a distinct variety of ASL used by the Black Deaf 0:02

community.[1] Black ASL evolved as a result of racially

About – Ontario Variation
segregated schools in some states, which included the
(Canadian ASL)[32]
residential schools for the deaf.[34]: 4 Black ASL differs from
standard ASL in vocabulary, phonology, and some
grammatical structure.[1][34]: 4 While African American English (AAE) is generally viewed as
more innovating than standard English, Black ASL is more conservative than standard ASL,
preserving older forms of many signs.[34]: 4 Black sign language speakers use more two-handed
signs than in mainstream ASL, are less likely to show assimilatory lowering of signs produced

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on the forehead (e.g. KNOW) and use a wider signing space.[34]: 4 Modern Black ASL borrows a
number of idioms from AAE; for instance, the AAE idiom "I feel you" is calqued into Black
ASL.[34]: 10

ASL is used internationally as a lingua franca, and a number of closely related sign languages
derived from ASL are used in many different countries.[1] Even so, there have been varying
degrees of divergence from standard ASL in those imported ASL varieties. Bolivian Sign
Language is reported to be a dialect of ASL, no more divergent than other acknowledged
dialects.[35] On the other hand, it is also known that some imported ASL varieties have diverged
to the extent of being separate languages. For example, Malaysian Sign Language, which has
ASL origins, is no longer mutually comprehensible with ASL and must be considered its own
language.[36] For some imported ASL varieties, such as those used in West Africa, it is still an
open question how similar they are to American ASL.[26]: 411

When communicating with hearing English speakers, ASL-speakers often use what is
commonly called Pidgin Signed English (PSE) or 'contact signing', a blend of English structure
with ASL vocabulary.[1][37] Various types of PSE exist, ranging from highly English-influenced
PSE (practically relexified English) to PSE which is quite close to ASL lexically and
grammatically, but may alter some subtle features of ASL grammar.[37] Fingerspelling may be
used more often in PSE than it is normally used in ASL.[38] There have been some constructed
sign languages, known as Manually Coded English (MCE), which match English grammar
exactly and simply replace spoken words with signs; those systems are not considered to be
varieties of ASL.[1][37]

Tactile ASL (TASL) is a variety of ASL used throughout the United States by and with the deaf-
blind.[1] It is particularly common among those with Usher's syndrome.[1] It results in deafness
from birth followed by loss of vision later in life; consequently, those with Usher's syndrome
often grow up in the Deaf community using ASL, and later transition to TASL.[39] TASL differs
from ASL in that signs are produced by touching the palms, and there are some grammatical
differences from standard ASL in order to compensate for the lack of nonmanual signing.[1]

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.[40] The development of
telephones with screens has also changed ASL, encouraging the use of signs that can be seen on
small screens.[40]

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.

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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.[41] Scholars such as Beth S. Benedict advocate not only for bilingualism (using ASL
and English training) but also for early childhood intervention for children who are deaf. York
University psychologist Ellen Bialystok has also campaigned for bilingualism, arguing that those
who are bilingual acquire cognitive skills that may help to prevent dementia later in life.[42]

Most children born to deaf parents are hearing.[43]: 192 Known as CODAs ("Children of Deaf
Adults"), they are often more culturally Deaf than deaf children, most of whom are born to
hearing parents.[43]: 192 Unlike many deaf children, CODAs acquire ASL as well as Deaf cultural
values and behaviors from birth.[43]: 192 Such bilingual hearing children may be mistakenly
labeled as being "slow learners" or as having "language difficulties" because of preferential
attitudes towards spoken language.[43]: 195

Writing systems
Although there is no well-established writing system for
ASL,[44] written sign language dates back almost two
centuries. The first systematic writing system for a sign
The ASL phrase "American Sign
language seems to be that of Roch-Ambroise Auguste
Language", written in Stokoe notation
Bébian, developed in 1825.[45]: 153 However, written sign
language remained marginal among the public.[45]: 154 In
the 1960s, linguist William Stokoe created Stokoe notation specifically for ASL. It is alphabetic,
with a letter or diacritic for every phonemic (distinctive) hand shape, orientation, motion, and
position, though it lacks any representation of facial expression, and is better suited for
individual words than for extended passages of text.[46] Stokoe used that system for his 1965 A
Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles.[47]

SignWriting, proposed in 1974 by Valerie Sutton,[45]: 154 is the first writing system to gain use
among the public and the first writing system for sign languages to be included in the Unicode
Standard.[48] SignWriting consists of more than 5000 distinct iconic graphs/glyphs.[45]: 154
Currently, it is in use in many schools for the Deaf, particularly in Brazil, and has been used in
International Sign forums with speakers and researchers in more than 40 countries, including
Brazil, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Tunisia, and the
United States. Sutton SignWriting has both a printed and an electronically produced form so
that persons can use the system anywhere that oral languages are written (personal letters,
newspapers, and media, academic research). The systematic examination of the International
Sign Writing Alphabet (ISWA) as an equivalent usage structure to the International Phonetic
Alphabet for spoken languages has been proposed.[49] According to some researchers,
SignWriting is not a phonemic orthography and does not have a one-to-one map from
phonological forms to written forms.[45]: 163 That assertion has been disputed, and the process

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for each country to look at the ISWA and create a phonemic/morphemic

assignment of features of each sign language was proposed by researchers
Msc. Roberto Cesar Reis da Costa and Madson Barreto in a thesis forum on
June 23, 2014.[50] The SignWriting community has an open project on
Wikimedia Labs to support the various Wikimedia projects on Wikimedia
Incubator[51] and elsewhere involving SignWriting. The ASL Wikipedia
request was marked as eligible in 2008[52] and the test ASL Wikipedia has 50
articles written in ASL using SignWriting.

The most widely used transcription system among academics is HamNoSys,

developed at the University of Hamburg.[45]: 155 Based on Stokoe Notation,
HamNoSys was expanded to about 200 graphs in order to allow transcription
of any sign language.[45]: 155 Phonological features are usually indicated with The ASL
single symbols, though the group of features that make up a handshape is phrase
"American
indicated collectively with a symbol.[45]: 155
Sign
Language",
Several additional candidates for written ASL have appeared over the years,
including SignFont, ASL-phabet, and Si5s. written in
Sutton
SignWriting

Comparison of ASL writing systems: Sutton SignWriting, Si5s, Stokoe

notation, SignFont, and ASLphabet

For English-speaking audiences, ASL is often glossed using English words. Such glosses are
typically all-capitalized and are arranged in ASL order. For example, the ASL sentence DOG
NOW CHASE>IX=3 CAT, meaning "the dog is chasing the cat", uses NOW to mark ASL
progressive aspect and shows ASL verbal inflection for the third person (>IX=3). However,
glossing is not used to write the language for speakers of ASL.[44]

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 handshape, movement, palm orientation,
location and nonmanual markers.[7]: 10 Just as phonemes of sound distinguish meaning in
spoken languages, those parameters are the phonemes that distinguish meaning in signed
languages like ASL.[53] Changing any one of them may change the meaning of a sign, as
illustrated by the ASL signs THINK and DISAPPOINTED:

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THINK[7]: 10 DISAPPOINTED[7]: 10

Handshape Closed fist with index finger extended Handshape (as for THINK)

Orientation Facing signer's body Orientation (as for THINK)

Location Tip of finger in contact with forehead Location Tip of finger in contact with chin

Movement Unidirectional single contacting movement Movement (as for THINK)

Distinctive features in
ASL

There are also meaningful nonmanual signals in ASL,[7]: 49 which

may include movement of the eyebrows, the cheeks, the nose, the
head, the torso, and the eyes.[7]: 49

William Stokoe proposed that such components are analogous to the

phonemes of spoken languages.[45]: 601:15 [e] There has also been a Phonemic handshape /2/
proposal that they are analogous to classes like place and manner of [+ closed thumb][7]: 12
articulation.[45]: 601:15 As in spoken languages, those phonological
units can be split into distinctive features.[7]: 12 For instance, the
handshapes /2/ and /3/ are distinguished by the presence or absence
of the feature [± closed thumb], as illustrated to the right.[7]: 12 ASL
has processes of allophony and phonotactic restrictions.[7]: 12, 19
There is ongoing research into whether ASL has an analog of syllables
in spoken language.[7]: 1
Phonemic handshape /3/
[− closed thumb][7]: 12
Grammar

Morphology
ASL has a rich system of verbal inflection, which involves
both grammatical aspect: how the action of verbs flows in
time—and agreement marking.[7]: 27–28 Aspect can be
marked by changing the manner of movement of the verb;
for example, continuous aspect is marked by incorporating
rhythmic, circular movement, while punctual aspect is
achieved by modifying the sign so that it has a stationary Two men and a woman signing

hand position.[7]: 27–28 Verbs may agree with both the

subject and the object, and are marked for number and reciprocity.[7]: 28 Reciprocity is
indicated by using two one-handed signs; for example, the sign SHOOT, made with an L-shaped

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handshape with inward movement of the thumb, inflects to SHOOT[reciprocal], articulated by

having two L-shaped hands "shooting" at each other.[7]: 29

ASL has a productive system of classifiers, which are used to classify objects and their
movement in space.[7]: 26 For example, a rabbit running downhill would use a classifier
consisting of a bent V classifier handshape with a downhill-directed path; if the rabbit is
hopping, the path is executed with a bouncy manner.[7]: 26 In general, classifiers are composed
of a "classifier handshape" bound to a "movement root".[7]: 26 The classifier handshape
represents the object as a whole, incorporating such attributes as surface, depth, and shape, and
is usually very iconic.[54] The movement root consists of a path, a direction and a manner.[7]: 26

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").

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.

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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 American manual alphabet, which can be
used to spell out words from the English language.[55] It
is rather a representation of the English alphabet, and
not a unique alphabet of ASL, although commonly
labeled as the "ASL alphabet".[56] It is borrowed from
French Sign Language (LSF), as much of ASL is derived
from LSF.[57][58] Such signs make use of the 19
handshapes of ASL. For example, the signs for 'p' and 'k'
use the same handshape but different orientations. A
common misconception is that ASL consists only of
fingerspelling; although such a method (Rochester
Method) has been used, it is not ASL.[38]

Fingerspelling is a form of borrowing, a linguistic process

wherein words from one language are incorporated into
another.[38] In ASL, fingerspelling is used for proper The American manual alphabet and
nouns and for technical terms with no native ASL numbers
[38]
equivalent. There are also some other loan words
which are fingerspelled, either very short English words
or abbreviations of longer English words, e.g. O-N from English 'on', and A-P-T from English
'apartment'.[38] Fingerspelling may also be used to emphasize a word that would normally be
signed otherwise.[38]

Syntax

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ASL is a subject–verb–object (SVO) language, but various phenomena affect that basic word
order.[59] Basic SVO sentences are signed without any pauses:[30]

FATHER LOVE CHILD

"The father loves the child."[30]

However, other word orders may also occur since ASL allows the topic of a sentence to be
moved to sentence-initial position, a phenomenon known as topicalization.[60] In object–
subject–verb (OSV) sentences, the object is topicalized, marked by a forward head-tilt and a
pause:[61]

CHILDtopic, FATHER LOVE

"The father loves the child."[61]

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:[30]

FATHER LOVE CHILD

FATHERcopy
"The father loves the child."[30]

ASL also allows null subject sentences whose subject is implied, rather than stated explicitly.
Subjects can be copied even in a null subject sentence, and the subject is then omitted from its
original position, yielding a verb–object–subject (VOS) construction:[61]

LOVE CHILD FATHERcopy

"The father loves the child."[61]

Topicalization, accompanied with a null subject and a subject copy, can produce yet another
word order, object–verb–subject (OVS).

CHILDtopic, LOVE FATHERcopy

"The father loves the child."[61]

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 topic–comment structure whose words are ordered by their importance in the sentence,
rather than by their syntactic properties.[62] Another hypothesis is that ASL exhibits free word
order, in which syntax is not encoded in word order but can be encoded by other means such as
head nods, eyebrow movement, and body position.[59]

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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.[63] In fact, many
signs bear no resemblance to their referent because they were originally arbitrary symbols, or
their iconicity has been obscured over time.[63] Even so, in ASL iconicity plays a significant role;
a high percentage of signs resemble their referents in some way.[64] That may be because the
medium of sign, three-dimensional space, naturally allows more iconicity than oral
language.[63]

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.[64] 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.[65]
ASL, with its significant inventory of iconic signs, directly challenges that theory.[66]

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.[67] 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.[68] 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.[69]

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
Inspirisles
Legal recognition of sign languages
Pointing
Sign name
ASL interpreting

Notes
a. In particular, Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, Henniker Sign Language, and Sandy River

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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).
b. 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.[19]
c. 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.[20]
d. 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).
e. Stokoe himself termed them cheremes, but other linguists have referred to them as
phonemes. See Bahan (1996:11).

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External links
Accessible American Sign Language vocabulary site (http://www.spreadthesign.com)
American Sign Language discussion forum (http://www.signlanguageforum.com/asl/)
One-stop resource American Sign Language and video dictionary (http://www.handspeak.co
m/)
National Institute of Deafness ASL section (https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/american-sign-l
anguage)
National Association of the Deaf ASL information (http://www.nad.org/issues/american-sign-l
anguage)
American Sign Language (http://www.lifeprint.com/)
The American Sign Language Linguistics Research Project (http://www.bu.edu/asllrp/)
Video Dictionary of ASL (http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm)
American Sign Language Dictionary (https://www.signasl.org)

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