International Day of Sign Languages

Sign language is a visual form of communication that uses hand gestures, body language, and facial expressions to convey meaning. Similar to spoken languages, and unlike general assumption, sign languages are not universal and vary from country to country. In fact, there are over 300 different sign languages in use around the world. Despite these variations sign languages share some common features : space is commonly used to convey information about distance and direction. Additionally, sign languages typically have their own grammar and syntax, which can be quite different from spoken languages. The United Nations recognizes  The importance of sign language and has made efforts to Promote the use of sign languages internationally . The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed September 23rd as International Day of Sign Languages to help raise awareness about sign language and the rights of deaf people. On this day, events are held worldwide to celebrate sign langua...

As the Australian Deaf community celebrate its National Week of Deaf People from 22 to 28 September to honour Deaf culture, language, and achievements; they partnered with several landmarks to shine in blue light. This is a global initiative showing solidarity with Deaf communities and reminds us that there are no human rights without sign language rights. Share your photos with us and join the movement for sign language rights everywhere!

The choice of September 23rd commemorates the date that the World Federation of the Deaf was established in 1951. This day marks the birth of an advocacy organisation, which has as one of its main goals, the preservation of sign languages and deaf culture as pre-requisites to the realisation of the human rights of deaf people. Sign languages are fully fledged natural languages, structurally distinct from the spoken languages. There is also an international sign language, which is used by deaf people in international meetings and informally when travelling and socializing. It is considered a pidgin form of sign language that is not as complex as natural sign languages and has a limited lexicon. The International Day of Sign Languages is an unique opportunity to support and protect the linguistic identity and cultural diversity of all deaf people and other sign language users.

  Current linguistic theory which hypothesizes that humans are genetically endowed with the fundamental underpinnings of language is supported by the claim that languages are similar to each other in significant ways. This view gains further support from the sign language findings reported in the previous sections. As we mentioned earlier, current theories are also based on the related observation that children acquire language automatically, including aspects of the system that do not seem directly retrievable from the input they receive. This section reviews phases of  The acquisition of sign language , to see whether this process has the hallmarks of automaticity and systematicity that are found in spoken language acquisition. If sign languages  represent the same cognitive system as spoken languages do, then they should be acquired in a similar way. If, on the other hand, the modality somehow prevents sign languages from belonging to the same cognitive system, the...

  We begin by offering a sketch of the evidence that sign languages have grammatical structures comparable to those of spoken languages. First we examine the structure of the sentence (syntax) , and then we move to the structure of the smaller units of language , those that may be compared to the meaningless but identifiable sounds of speech (phonology) . We will end this section with a discussion of the structure of words (morphology) .

  In order to have sentences, one must have words, and words – at least in spoken language – are pronounced as a series of sounds. What about the sign of sign language? Does it have a level of substructure like the spoken word? Since spoken and signed languages are produced and perceived by different physical systems – oral / aural, and manual / visual – one might expect to find the least amount of similarity across the two modalities at this level of analysis. Yet, here, too, there is much common ground. In 1960, William Stokoe published a monograph in which he demonstrated that the words of American Sign Language are not holistic gestures, but, rather, are analyzable as a combination of three meaningless yet linguistically significant categories: handshapes, locations, and movements. That is, by changing some feature of any one of those three categories, themselves meaningless, one could change the meaning of the sign . For example, by changing only the configuration of the ha...

What is language, and how is it structured?  • Language - a system for combining symbols (such as words) so that an unlimited number of meaningful statements can be made for the purpose of communicating with others.   • Grammar - the system of rules governing the structure and use a of language. • Syntax - the system of rules for combining words and phrases to form grammatically correct sentences.  • Morphemes - the smallest units of meaning within a language. – Semantics - the rules for determining the meaning of words and sentences. • Phonemes - the basic units of sound in language.  • Pragmatics - aspects of language involving the practical ways of communicating with others, or the social “niceties” of language How are language and thought related?  Language and Cognition  • Cognitive universalism – theory that concepts are universal and influence the development of language.  • Jean Piaget believed that concepts precede and aid the developm...

  One of the fundamental properties of human language is that it can be used to create an unlimited number of utterances given a limited number of pieces. At the syntactic level, this property follows directly from a mathematical property of language called recursiveness. We’re all familiar with recursiveness (even if not with the term). It is found in language , and computer programs, and even in children’s stories, as in (1). In (1), the process or rule that creates a relative clause (here, the clauses beginning with that) has applied repeatedly to the noun phrases inside other relative clauses. This repeated application of the same rule to create more and more complex sentences is an example of recursiveness. The children’s story is amusing precisely because we all know that there is no theoretical limit to the application of this rule. Any speaker of English can add to the story by generating another relative clause at the beginning, as in (2). The only limitations on th...

  The study of sign language  provides a natural laboratory for isolating certain fundamental properties of human language apart from the modality in which it is transmitted. Doing so has confirmed the existence of purported language universals, such as a systematic sub-word level of structure , syntactic embedding and recursion , and particular types of complex word formation. It has also strengthened the claim that the acquisition of language by children is a natural and automatic process with a set timetable, pointing to some degree of genetic predisposition for the development of just such a system. Certain modality specific characteristics have also been found: a tendency for simultaneous layering of linguistic structure and particular types of grammatical constructions that are at once linguistic in the formal sense, and in some way iconic. 

  Poetry takes language far beyond its primary task of everyday communication. By artfully manipulating the forms and meanings of language, the poet conveys a particular or heightened understanding of human experience. Devices such as meter, rhyme, and alliteration may filter the meaningful content of a poem , in order to create an impression or focus an image in the mind of the audience . A conventional meaning may be intentionally distorted in such a way as to enhance the perspective the poet wishes to present. This union of language, culture, and art is found in some signing communities . We know of several accomplished deaf poets in the United States and Holland, and bring as an example of sign language poetry some work of Wim Emmerik from Amsterdam. Among the devices used by this poet are reiterative use of handshape, and a fluidity of style that results from the elimination of transitional movements. Entire poems may be characterized by one or two basic handshapes, such ...

  Neurolinguists attempt to gain insight into the nature of language by determining which areas of the brain control various components of the language system. One way in which this is done is by studying the performance of people who have incurred brain damage, such as the localized damage resulting from strokes. In hearing, speaking people, numerous studies have found that damage to certain areas of the left cerebral hemisphere typically results in some type of language dysfunction, called aphasia. There are  Different types of aphasia , in which damage to different areas of the brain results in Different types of language deficits . It is assumed that if a given function y is lost after damage to a certain area A, then that area is involved in the control or processing of that function. In this realm of investigation as well, similarities between signed and spoken languages have been found. Although damage to areas of the left hemisphere results in aphasia in hearing subje...

  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...