Is Sign Language a Language? (long)

[Kathy H.]

Dear Raymond,

I would like to make some responses to your posting to the list.  First of
all, I commend you for contacting the list for help.  I think it was a
prudent thing to do.  Second of all, do not let one person ª±  opinions
prevent you from recognizing sign languages as true languages.

You made the comment about ensuring that sign language is  ϟ narguably a
language m    Obviously, someone is arguing against it!  However, that doesn ª²
mean anything about the validity of the arguments or about the truth of the
status of sign languages.

So you have some idea of who is writing this, I have an M.A. in Linguistics
and a certificate to teach English as a second language from the University
of Florida.  I am currently a Ph.D. student at Purdue University, majoring
in Linguistics, specifically phonology.  I will be writing my dissertation
on a particular aspect of sign language phonology.  At this point, let me
say that I have a list of signs which are starting to show a structural
pattern within the language.  Whether this is enough for you to listen to
me, I don ª²  know.

I would like to respond to some of the lady ª±  comments.  (I ª>  responding in
the same order as your e-mail.)

Language does not have to be based on sounds of human speech.  As the lady
says later on, language is in the brain.

I ª>  not sure why the lady is insisting on Oxbridge.  Is Oxbridge an  œ× ral
only m  type of institution?  Are cochlear implants performed at Oxbridge?

--[THE DEAF COMMUNITY WILL NEVER ACHIEVE "EQUALITY" WITH HEARING PEOPLE IF
THEY CONTINUE TO SEGREGATE, ISOLATE AND EXCLUDE THEMSELVES FROM GENERAL
CULTURE AND GENERAL SOCIETY AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE]

Sub-cultures exist in society.  If the deaf or Deaf community is
segregating, isolating, and excluding themselves from general culture and
general society, it is no different from any other sub-culture.  Sometimes
we partake of the general culture, and sometimes we partake of our
sub-cultures.  We are multi-faceted people who adjust to our surroundings,
including adjusting our forms of communication.  Many languages have
different phonetic forms to express this, such as the French  υ ous m  vs.
 œ² u m    Immigrants and foreigners switch languages depending on the situation
at hand.  The deaf/Deaf are behaving like hearing people in this regard.

I am not aware of the deaf community segregating, isolating, and excluding
itself from the English language.  Instead, they are doing the sensible
thing:  choosing to communicate in the easiest way.  When I want to
communicate with a hearing person who is standing next to me, I don ª²  write
notes.  We use our voices.  Why?  It ª±  easier.  It ª±  faster.  We don ª²  lose
prosodic information (intonation, emotion).  That is, it ª±  more accurate.
For people who can ª²  hear or can ª²  hear well, signing can convey more
information than spoken forms and can do it more accurately.  Also, with
deaf individuals, when I have brought up the topic of writing American Sign
Language, some have wondered why they would need that since they write in
English.  That isn ª²  exclusion.

-- [THEY ARE NOT TELLING THE GOVERNMENT THAT BSL IS A METHOD OF
COMMUNICATION SIMILAR TO THAT WHICH WAS USED BY HOMO ERECTUS PRIOR TO THE
DEVELOPMENT OF SPEECH BY HOMO SAPIENS.]

The lady writes as if she knows what form of communication homo erectus used
prior to speech.  This information is not available for us to discover,
inspect, or know.

Sign languages are based on underlying phonemic codes.  If they were merely
pantomime, a person untrained in its use would be able to understand it,
just as one can watch a mime and understand the message.  However, this is
not the case with sign languages.  An untrained person cannot watch sign
language and understand it.  A trained person who is a non-native signer
will still miss nuances, just as foreigners do not understand the nuances of
English.

--[THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN "INDIGENOUS SIGN LANGUAGE" BECAUSE OVER 90%
OF DEAF PEOPLE ARE BORN TO HEARING PARENTS AND HEARING FAMILIES.]

This leaves the other 10% or so to acquire sign language as infants--as a
natural language.

--[IT WOULD BE MUCH BETTER TO IMPROVE ACCESS TO ENGLISH FOR DEAF
INDIVIDUALS, NOT ACCESS TO THEIR OWN LANGUAGE OF BSL FOR WHICH THEY DO NOT
NEED ANY "IMPROVED ACCESS."]

If the lady were among only deaf people who were communicating only in BSL,
she would need an interpreter if she wanted to understand the topics of
discussion.  (Note that she called BSL a language.)

--What you learned, dear Philocophus, is the underlying phonetic-phonemic
CODE of the English language, the basis for all human language. What you use
in your own everyday life is SIGNED English communication, because language
is in your brain, not "on your hands."

Language is in the brain, not on the hands.  Very true.  Neither is it in
the mouth.  Because language is in the brain, it does not matter the
modality through which it is expressed.  It is still language.

--The FACT is that the professional field of linguistics does not, and never
has, "recognized" a PURELY mimetic-visual form of communication as a
"language."

 œë ommunication m  is not exactly the same as  œ_ anguage m    Cats, dogs, and
horses communicate yet they are not using true language.  If communication
and language were the same, then pantomime, which is a form of
communication, would be a language.

--The word "language" is derived from the Latin "lingua," meaning "tongue."

Sign languages use the tongue.

--Human beings switched over to LINGUISTIC processing about 30 million years
ago, when homo erectus died out and homo sapiensis appeared WITH THE ABILITY
TO SPEAK because of the sudden appearance of the hyoid bone in the human
throat (to this day, no one knows how this happened, but it did  o  the
current best explanation is in Genesis in the story of Adam and Eve).

The lady writes this as if she knows: 1) that human beings switched over to
linguistic processing from something which wasn ª²  linguistic; 2) that this
switch occurred about 30 million years ago; 3) that homo erectus died out
and homo sapiensis appeared about 30 million years ago; and 4) that the
hyoid bone in the human throat appeared suddenly.  None of these can be
proven or substantiated.  (Carbon dating is suspect.)  If her comment about
the best explanation being in the Genesis story is correct, then none of
these are even true (except for the hyoid bone appearing suddenly which
would have occurred when God created man from the dust of the ground).

--In terms of "deaf people," THEY ALL HAVE the reserved area in their brains
for human speech-sound-based (phonetic-phonemic) language.

The auditory portion of the brain in hearing people is activated by sign
language in deaf people.  (See neurolinguistic work by Neville.)

--HOWEVER, THEY CAN BE TAUGHT THE PHONETIC-PHONEMIC CODE ON WHICH THAT
LANGUAGE IS BASED. And after they learn that code, they TRANSITION from
being an "ape" to a HUMAN BEING.

They never were  œß pes m    To all the deaf/Deaf people who read the lady ª±
words, I apologize for the inference and comparison concerning apes.  A
human being is a human being, regardless of individual differences in
ability to hear, to see, to walk, to think, etc.

--BSL, just like "ASL" DOES NOT HAVE an underlying phonetic-phonemic code.
It is PURELY gestural and PURELY mimetic.

This is not true, Raymond.  If ASL and BSL were purely gestural and mimetic,
the lady would be able to understand it.  If it were true, I myself would be
able to understand everything that my deaf/Deaf colleagues were  œ esturing,
 m
yet I don ª²  because I don ª²  understand the grammatical aspects, the
adverbial modifiers, the marking of conditionals and relative clauses, the
tense markers, which are all there; I just can ª²  grasp them all in a
conversation, just as spoken language second language learners cannot grasp
everything that is spoken.  Signing is not pantomime.  It has structure.

--It is the kind of communication you engaged in, and which ALL human beings
engage in, before they fully learn the phonetic-phonemic code of their
community's HUMAN language. [Why do you think chimpanzees can function in
"sign language" but can never learn the phonetic-phonemic code of HUMAN
languages?]

This is not true, either.  If it were true, then there would be no
difference in the gestures between infants/toddlers and the sign language of
deaf adults.

I ª>  not sure what is meant by chimpanzees  œ˜ unctioning m  in sign language.  I
do, however, know someone who was part of a project using sign language with
a gorilla.  This person, according to my understanding, quit the project
because the gorilla wasn ª²  really signing a language; that is, there was a
difference between the signing of the gorilla and the signing of deaf
people.

--Now, if you WISH TO REMOVE the entire phonetic-phonemic code of the human
language of English that is in your brain, then I invite you to do so,
before you assert that PURELY gestural-mimetic communication is some kind of
"language" recognized by professional linguists. In fact, that form of
communication is a "First Articulation Only" form of human communication
that is ONLY "recognized" by the field of Semiotics.

Deaf patients with Parkinson ª±  disease and deaf patients with aphasia have
been studied.  The results compare with hearing people and their language
disorders.  (See work by Poizner, Emmorey, others)

--You and the other people in the deaf community in Britain are
misunderstanding some very important things, and transmitting misinformation
to government officials who have no idea what is going on.

What is the lady ª±  motive?  Does she work for a cochlear implant company?
Does she teach cued speech?  Is she bitter against linguists because she
prefers semiotics?

--ENGLISH can be spoken, heard, read, and written. It can also be
represented in many other ways, such as in semaphore, fingerspelling,
alphabetic characters, lipreading (speechreading), Cued English, Braille,
and a HUGE number of codes. BUT, language is IN YOUR BRAIN, not on the
surface and not in the "codes" you may be seeing, feeling, or otherwise
perceiving.

If English can be represented in many other ways, including signed English,
then signing is a valid mode of linguistic expression (since English is
linguistic).  French and Mandarin can also be represented in writing and in
other non-vocal ways.  This means that the mode of representation does not
determine the language.  Signing, then, as a valid mode of linguistic
expression, does not have to be English.  It could be another language.  It
could be ASL or BSL or JSL (Japan) or SLN (The Netherlands) or any of the
sign languages around the world.  If language is in the head, then its form
of expression does not determine its "languageness".

--You, Raymond, have that code stored PERMANENTLY in your own brain, in the
reserved section for human language, and you use that code all the time to
produce words, grammar and syntax. Once that code is in the brain of a human
being, it cannot be removed or erased.

Since no one knows the details and specifics of language in the brain, it
seems premature to state that it cannot be erased.  Aphasia and other
language problems do occur.

--That is why apes can learn BSL, but they can't learn English.

I think that the person I know who was involved in the gorilla project would
disagree with apes learning sign language.

--What you are "thinking" about is wrong. You are forgetting the fact that
the ONLY REASON any deaf person anywhere "needs signs" is that the person is
unable to lipread every person on Earth accurately, and the person has no
ability to supplement their lipreading with auditory information. [Those who
DO have that ability -- hard of hearing people -- (the VAST majority of the
hearing impaired community) obviously don't need and don't use any kind of
"sign-assistance" to communicate with anyone else].

Perhaps the lady can explain to me why I know hard-of-hearing people who use
sign language.

--In the 1960s and thereafter, and ONLY IN THE UNITED STATES, and starting
ONLY AT A PLACE THAT IS NOT A REGULAR UNIVERSITY,

What is a  ϡ egular m  university?  Actually, I believe Gallaudet was only a
college at that time.

--There has never been any such verification, proof or evidence of any such
thing. There is also no such thing as "ASL Linguistics" or "BSL Linguistics"
or any other relationship between "Linguistics" and the non-English
(non-spoken language) forms of "pure visual-gestural-mimetic signing."

Raymond, I am studying ASL linguistics.  There is such a thing.  I also
believe that the relationship between spoken languages and sign languages is
much closer than perhaps previously considered.

--Now, Raymond, go see some "professional Linguists" and give them this
email message and ask them to read it.

(Here is your permission to send her e-mail to the list.)

Why does the lady insist on preferring Oxbridge?  What is there about
Oxbridge that we ought to know?  I ªÖ e never heard of Oxbridge.

--Ask your professional Linguists in Britain whether PANTOMIME is
"recognized" in the field of Linguistics as a "language."

This is irrelevant because sign language is not based on pantomime.

-- And after the professional Linguists stop laughing at you,

We are not laughing at you.  Your questions and concerns are valid.  It is
with pleasure that we share with you what we know about sign language and
its status as a true language.

--then ask them WHEN (what point in time in human history) ALL human beings
designated as homo sapiens (including "deaf" homo sapiens) developed the
ability and the brain structure to communicate in DOUBLE ARTICULATION
HUMAN-ONLY languages such as English.

Nobody knows the answer to this question, not even the lady.
(unless one goes back to Genesis, in which case it might be about six
thousand years ago)

--[Since when is a DICTIONARY an academic linguistics publication? (and it
is wrong, since signs ARE IN MOTION and cannot be accurately depicted in a
printed "dictionary.")

Just because signs are in motion does not mean that they cannot be depicted
accurately in print.  We seem to capture enough acoustic information in
print that we are able to decode written messages, although this is not
exactly what we ª° e doing.  We are not encoding in print the speech signal,
which includes pitch variations and devoicing and aspiration, etc., which
are not represented in the written version.  English encodes morpho-phonemic
information which is sufficient for the message to be decoded by a native
user of the language.  This is certainly possible, then, for sign languages
as well.

It is more reasonable to take three-dimensional visual signals (sign
language) and convert them into two-dimensional visual print than it is to
take three-dimensional acoustic signals (spoken language) and convert them
into two-dimensional visual print.  At least with sign language, the visual
modality remains the visual modality.  Writing spoken languages is done
across modalities (auditory to visual).  Yet the latter occurs every day.
Therefore, the former is also possible.

Attempts have been made at writing sign language, but from what I understand
of them, they have not been based on a solid linguistic foundation for the
language.  [This is an area (writing sign language) that I ª>  interested in
continuing once I have finished graduate school.]

If a sign language dictionary is  Ϟ rong m  because signs are in motion and
cannot be accurately depicted in print, then spoken language dictionaries
are wrong because acoustic waveforms are in motion, which is, after all, how
spoken languages are conveyed, and moving waveforms cannot be depicted in
print.

--Wilbur, Ronnie B. 1987. American Sign Language: Linguistic and applied
dimensions. Boston: Little Brown and Co. [Hearing, Interpreter, BIASED,
using the deaf community for his own income and status]

Raymond, the lady doesn ª²  know what she is talking about.  She does not know
Ronnie ª±  interpreting abilities, her biases or lack thereof, her
relationship with the deaf community, etc.  She also apparently doesn ª²  know
that Ronnie is a  œ± he m  and not a  œ¬ e m

Okay, I concede:  Ronnie IS hearing.  :)

I ª>  not sure how the comments the lady makes justify  œ² hrowing out m  the
research.  There are times when a person ª±  work can be discredited, but a
statement such as  ϧ fter Gallaudet University was forced to shut down their
propaganda center called Gallaudet University Press, these people began to
publish through Cambridge University Press m  is not related to the results of
research.  It is not the publisher who conducts the research.  A budget
constraint can  œ˜ orce m  a shut down.  This is not relevant to the research
results, and it does not negate them.

--1.) Is this individual prelingually deaf? If not, she has an "etic"
(outside, surface) not an "emic" (inside, real) perspective.

This is why linguists conduct field work.  This is why a good linguist
develops a good relationship with native users of the language.  The
linguist can see predictable patterns in the language which the native user
cannot perceive.  (Did you know that voiceless stops in English are
aspirated when they occur at the beginning of stressed syllables, as in
 œˆ at, m  but not when they occur in the onset of a stressed syllable that
begins with [s], as in  ϱ pat m    A native English speaker is not aware of the
difference unless trained to hear it.)  The native user can give the  œÞ mic m
native perspective which the linguist does not have (unless it is the
linguist ª±  native language as well).  The two of them working together can
provide good linguistic data and information.

--3.) Can this individual independently determine whether a deaf person is
using the sign-assisted lipread version of the ENGLISH language, or whether
the deaf individual is using the language of signs only?

This is easy to do.  Signed versions of English differ in word order and
tense and aspect marking and adverbial marking and syntactic clause marking,
etc., than ASL and BSL.

--These "sign language researchers and linguists" are looking ONLY AT SIGNS.
They are not aware of how a deaf person is actually taught. They completely
ignore the fact that all of their "research subjects" have been taught the
phonetic code of spoken language, at various levels of achievement.

I ª>  not sure how this relates to the status of sign language as true
language.  If I am taught the phonemic code of French at age 5 or 15, this
is irrelevant to the status of English as a language.  Learning the phonemic
code of English is irrelevant to the status of BSL or ASL.

Phonemic codes do not apply universally.  They are language specific.

By learning a phonemic code early in life, one is better equipped to learn a
second or third phonemic code later.  It is important that a child start
acquiring language early in life, regardless of what that language is.  It
is important that a child HAVE a phonemic code before it is too late to
acquire one.  Because teaching speech is such an arduous process, it is
better for the deaf child to learn sign language while the language
acquisition mechanisms are in order.  Adding a second language, such as
English, is then helped because there is already a language in place.
Children can acquire second languages easily enough, given adequate input.
The delay for deaf children can be attributed to lack of adequate auditory
input and vocal tract muscle control (probably due to a lack of auditory
feedback).

--They have NO IDEA that deaf individuals with high intelligence, such as
you Raymond, are processing VERBAL language in their brains, even though
these same individuals are using "signs" outwardly and on the surface.

This is not relevant for the status of sign language as a true language.  I
know a true ASL/English bilingual deaf person.  She is fourth generation
Deaf.  She is fluent in ASL.  She is fluent in English (speech and writing).
  She forbids me to sign while I ª>  talking to her because she says there is
a conflict between the two modalities.

Signed English doesn ª²  work because the signing doesn ª²  carry all of the
information that spoken English does.  It ª±  not actually a true linguistic
system.  Pidgin signed English creates a conflict between the correct
English and the grammatically incorrect pidgin signing.

The earlier a complete linguistic system is acquired, the better the chances
are for the child ª±  linguistic system to fully develop.  Adding, then, a
second language (such as English) is easier than trying to learn a first
language too late.

--THESE "SIGN LANGUAGE LINGUISTS" ARE IN A PATTERN OF ADVOCATING FOR
PRELINGUALLY DEAF INDIVIDUALS TO REMAIN IN A PRELINGUAL STATE... IN THEIR
"NATURAL STATE" SO THEY CAN ALL BE "RESEARCHED."

If one is interested in prelingual states, one studies infants.

--Those who were properly taught, such as the students of Colin Sayer, have
extensive VERBAL language ability in their left cerebral hemisphere.  Those
who were not properly taught have language deficits, and are partially still
PRELINGUISTIC.

In order for something to be  œˆ roper, m  there must be a standard against
which it is compared.  The implication is that some students have been
improperly taught.  While this is possibly the case, it doesn ª²  address the
issue of what is proper.  If normal hearing speech is the standard, then
normal hearing children aren ª²  taught properly at all; they acquire language
through natural developmental and maturational stages, as long as the
linguistic input is adequate.  By definition, deaf children do not have the
same degree of linguistic input through auditory channels.  Hence, the term
 œ² aught m  plays a role.  If deaf children must be taught to speak, this is
not the natural way to learn a language.  However, if such a child is given
adequate sign language input, he or she will acquire a linguistic system
naturally.  English can be taught as a second language, building on the
foundation of the child ª±  first language.

--10.) Ask this hearing "sign language linguist" what XXX is going to do for
a job in the future, when all deaf children receive cochlear implants before
age 1.

Cochlear implants are used for only certain types of hearing loss.  Not all
deaf children are candidates for cochlear implants.

--In the field of Linguistics, the term NATURAL LANGUAGE refers to spoken
languages, such as English.

Natural languages are languages that humans use that children acquire
naturally, as opposed to written language, which is invented and taught, not
natural, or to computer languages, which are also man-made.

-- ÿÿ NGLISH is definitely a "true linguistic language" even when it is
lipread, and even when the lipreading is assisted by "signs." It is still
the ENGLISH language.

I sincerely doubt that a child could learn a language which was merely
lipread with no other input.  Conduct a little test:  for 24 hours, you and
the people you ª° e with do not communicate with each other except through
mouthing the words.  Carry on normal conversations this way.  Discuss
abstract ideas.  It would be an interesting experiment.  Lipreading does not
involve an entire linguistic system.

[Raymond wrote:]
Is there a difference between the terms "sign language" and "signed
language" which you use? If so, what is the difference from a linguist's
persective?

I ª>  not aware of any official use for the two terms.  I sometimes wonder
which one to use.  I ªÖ e been leaning toward  œ± ign language m  over  œ± igned
language m  because the latter can imply a language, such as English, which is
converted into manual signs.  Granted,  ϱ igned language m  parallels  ϱ poken
language m  better.  I think that  ϱ ign language m  is becoming a compound in my
mind.

Thank you for contacting this list for more information instead of basing
your decisions on one person ª±  opinions.  I hope that the replies you
receive will be beneficial to you.

Kathryn Hansen

[More knowledgeable sign language linguists are welcome to comment on and
make corrections to my statements.]


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