Basic, unexplained similarities among sign languages.

 

We have argued that sign languages bear important similarities to spoken languages. But we have only hinted at how similar the grammatical structures of sign languages are to one another. As Elissa Newport stressed in an address to sign language researchers, this important generalization needs to be explained. Using various grammatical criteria, linguists sometimes find it instructive to group languages into categories or types. These criteria may be applied at any level of analysis – syntax, morphology, or phonology. For example, some languages have the Swahili type of morphology; others have the Navaho type; etc. In syntax, some languages have Subject-Verb-Object word order; others have Verb-Subject-Object order, for example. Phonologically, some languages allow several consonants to occur together before a vowel appears; others allow only one consonant at the beginning of a syllable. The point is that spoken languages may fall into one of any of a number of categories at each level of description. As we have hinted, in many ways, sign languages form a single language type, and one to which no spoken language belongs. If this is the case, then some essential questions arise, for both cognitive psychology and for linguistics. In the following paragraphs, we will demonstrate some of the typological traits of sign languages. Let us begin with the relationship between the elements of form and meaning. In figure 22.6 (“a coin is lying there”), we showed a complex sign, with three meaningful elements or morphemes. We pointed out that some spoken languages have equally complex forms, with substantively the same Types of morphemes in them. But there are two important generalizations that we now wish to emphasize: (1) all sign languages that we know of have precisely this type of morphology (American Sign Language, Israeli Sign Language, British Sign Language, Danish Sign Language, Swedish Sign Language, Japanese SignLanguage); and (2) despite the large number of meaning elements (morphemes) in signs of this type, they are all articulated essentially simultaneously, or within what may be viewed as a single syllable. A moment’s thought is enough to convince the reader that the first generalization is not true of spoken languages. Languages like English, for example, have