LING 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: American Sign Language, Fingerspelling, Sign Language
Document Summary
Sign languages are a type of language diversity, but often go unrecognized. Uses a different medium (visual) than spoken language. Primary language of deaf people in usa and anglophone canada. 2-3 in 1000 babies born deaf, with 90% born to hearing parents. 2mil profoundly deaf people in the us. At least 100,000+ asl users in us. Common myths: sign language is universal. There are about 300 sign languages in the world. There can be dialects of a signed language. Black asl vs. standard asl: sign language is purely iconic, or just gestures. But most signs in any language are simply unguessable and not iconic. If signs were iconic, all deaf people would have the same signs, hearing people would be able to understand signs: signed languages encode spoken languages. The idea that asl is english but just moving your hands a lot. Asl verbs can tell if it happened once, regularly, or continuously.
