Sociolinguistics Symposium 14 and the standardisation of sign languages

[Angus B. Grieve-Smith]

        Thanks for writing about this, Trude!  Now I still have more
questions, but if you don't have the time, or if other people on the list
are not interested in this topic, please let me know.

On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, Trude Schermer wrote:

> Yes, this is happening in the Netherlands. The Ministery of Education
> has demanded a standardised lexicon for Sign Language of the
> Netherlands in order to recognize SLN as an official language.

1) Did the Ministry of Education give its reasoning?

> It has been agreed upon that we will create a "standard" basic lexicon
> of 2500 signs and another 2000 signs specifically for teaching
> purposes.

2) I don't know who "we" refers to.  Was this an agreement between the
Ministry and a Deaf organization, or the Instituut vor Doven, or some
other group?

> There is regional variety in the Netherlands basically between the
> North and the West/South of the country. The decisions about which
> signs will be standard are taken by deaf people from different parts
> of the country based on a set of (linguistic) criteria.

3) Is there a difference in culture or socio-economic status that
corresponds to this division?  Which region are the major cities in?  What
linguistic criteria will be used?

        Thanks again for the information.

--
                                -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
                                Linguistics Department
                                University of New Mexico
                                grvsmth at unm.edu