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<DIV>08/07/03</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Hi Polly,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>one point of Defence you could use, is the fact that Auslan (Australian Sign Language) is recognised as a language. ASL is older then Auslan, so that must also be a language!!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Antony<BR> </DIV>
<DIV id=IncrediOriginalMessage><I>-------Original Message-------</I></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV id=receivestrings>
<DIV dir=ltr style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt" <i><B>From:</B></I> <A href="mailto:SW-L@ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA">SignWriting List</A></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt" <i><B>Date:</B></I> Tuesday, July 08, 2003 14:14:41</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt" <i><B>To:</B></I> <A href="mailto:SW-L@ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA">SW-L@ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA</A></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt" <i><B>Subject:</B></I> Re: Looking for an article for my students</DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>>> Hi,<BR>>> I am a hearing teacher who teaches ASL at Kentwood High School in<BR>>> Washington state. I am tired of defending the fact that ASL is a<BR>>> language. Do you have statistics that show how many world languages<BR>>> have no written form? <BR><BR>Polly,<BR><BR>How about English? Oh, sure, today we write English. But, was that always<BR>the case?<BR><BR>In medieval times, most people were quite illiterate, so that never stopped<BR>any of them from talking. Still, English back then was written from time to<BR>time.<BR><BR>We know that at some point, English was written using runes, a system<BR>imported from the Scandinavian countries in the 5th century AD (according to<BR>my Encylopaedia Britannica.) That's around the time that the Anglo-Saxons<BR>conquered England. But, very few examples of written Old English (beyond<BR>family names) exist today. In time, the writing system shifted over to the<BR>Latin alphabet, with some modifications. While there seems to have been<BR>some level of literature in Northumbria by the time of the Viking invasions<BR>in the 800's, it is not clear to me that there was much of anything in terms<BR>of literature back in the fifth century. Therefore, you might be looking at<BR>a couple of hundred years of language evolution (from other languages, no<BR>less) before any "literature" appeared.<BR><BR>The first writing in the phonetic coding sense, as I understand it, was<BR>developed by the Sumerians to replace a pictorial system. I think it fair<BR>to say, then, that the Sumerians were already talking before they developed<BR>their orthographic system.<BR><BR>Then there are all those neolithic cultures not only way back when, but<BR>continuing to this present day. Do Amazonian rain forest tribes have a<BR>written system?<BR><BR>Polly, any spoken language can be represented by a phonetic coding system,<BR>regardless of whether or not the actual speakers are familiar with the<BR>writing code. We can use the Roman alphabet to capture most of Chinese,<BR>even if literate Chinese use an entirely different system.<BR><BR>Is music a language? Decidedly not, but it can be recorded through a<BR>notational system. So, the fact that you can write it does not make it a<BR>language.<BR><BR>And, the fact that a speaker is not able to write his language does not mean<BR>that you can't write his language.<BR><BR>Therefore, the ability of SignWriting to record ASL does not demonstrate<BR>whether or not ASL is a language (as opposed to some kind of less<BR>sophisticated communication system.) Rather, the test is whether ASL is<BR>rule governed with the richness, complexity and flexibility that<BR>characterizes other human languages (spoken or signed.) On that score, the<BR>literature is extensive.<BR><BR>The confusion, I think, comes from two sources: 1) Many hearing educators<BR>foist a signed version of English on Deaf people, and therefore, with some<BR>accuracy, argue that sign language is not a distinct language. However, we<BR>ought not to confuse ASL with Signed English. 2) Many "scholars" who should<BR>know better are too quick to label communication systems (chimp signing,<BR>wolf howling, even home-signs) as "languages". So, cut to the chase. Is<BR>ASL as rich and diverse and rule-dominated as, say, English? Is it<BR>acceptable to use a prepositional phrase, but somehow a mark of inferior<BR>thinking to use a locative verb instead?<BR><BR>Back in the days when racial prejudice affected Western society linguistic<BR>analysis, similar questions were raised about certain creole languages. So,<BR>it's the same old battle -- just the actors have changed.<BR><BR>-- James Shepard-Kel <BR>. </TD></TR>
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