International Day of Sign Languages

  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...

  Most languages have both simple words, such as teach, and complex words, such as teach+er. Knowing English entails understanding the internal structure of its complex words , as well as the ability to create and understand new complex words that exploit those same kinds of internal structures. The study of the internal structure of words is called morphology . For example, given a new verb scaff, as in The purpose of this machine is to scaff computers against viruses, we can also create or analyze the internal structure of the word scaffer and can deduce something about its meaning in the sentence, The company purchased several expensive scaffers last year. We would also immediately judge the nonce word *er+scaff to be impossible in English. Speakers of English know the form and function of the meaningful word component-er, and they know that it is a suffix rather than a prefix. Although users of a language are usually not conscious of their linguistic knowledge , their use of ...

  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 ...

  The discovery of these sign language properties brings to light observations about spoken language that seem to be determined by the modality alone, such as the tendency to string linguistic information out linearly, and the generally arbitrary nature of the lexicon and grammar. Before research on sign language, such characteristics were thought to be properties of language universally.  In the light of sign language research, we may suggest that these properties are artefacts of the oral–aural modality. Our work is cut out for us. An important goal of future research must be to develop models of language that explain the clustering of characteristics found in sign languages , as well as the fact that they conform to more general linguistic universals . In developing such models, we are charged with an equally important task: explaining precisely what it is about the spoken language modality that makes it different from sign language. Only by examining these two natural ...

  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...

A context for the future investigation of the relationship between language and cognition is an existing fundamental dispute about the nature of the language faculty . At one extreme is the strong Chomskyan view that language is an “organ,” innately specified, and both computationally and neurologically divorced from other aspects of cognition. Other scholars argue that the experience of the child acquiring language plays a stronger role in determining language form . Jackendoff in 1997 develops a theory according to which language is the outcome of a combination of factors, some specific to language (and possibly genetically specified), and others that tap more general concepts and knowledge about the world. We now turn to certain outstanding questions about sign language that bear on this controversy. When they are seriously addressed, we believe the answers will lead us to a far deeper understanding of the language capacity than would have been possible without sign language re...