death of sign language

[Richard J Senghas]

Hmm.  I am not sure what distinction you are trying to make here.  Since sign languages (and here I had understood that we are talking about natural sign languages, such as ASL, BSL, Nicaraguan Sign, etc., and not signed versions of spoken languages) serve their communities the same way that spoken languages do, I had used the same endangerment/death/extinction rubrics for both sign languages and spoken languages.  (I think of signers of natural sign languages as "speakers" of their languages.)

However, the way your last query was worded makes me wonder if I had misunderstood your initial query, and that you might be talking about signed versions of spoken languages, which I would consider simply alternate modalities or codes of the spoken language, not as distinct languages.  I suppose a particular form of a signed version of a spoken language could be endangered, etc., but it seems not to fit the model as generally used.  Would Morse code versions of English (or whatever language) be considered endangered or dead if no one used Morse code anymore?

This got me thinking again about all those ritual languages that typically aren't learned in earlier childhood. I wonder if Latin would be considered endangered, since most of those of us who learned it acquired it later in school, and not as a primary language.  This is a stable pattern for this language, which has such a strong ritual role in a few religions, with analogues in other languages and religions.  I never felt the endangered/dead/extinct taxonomy worked well with such cases.

-RJS
======================================================================
Richard J. Senghas, Professor            | Sonoma State University
Anthropology                             | 1801 East Cotati Avenue
Human Development Program                | Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609
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On Mar 26, 2012, at 7:45 PM, Anthony Chong wrote:

> 
> Oh right. If there are only less than 10 users, the language is endangered. Can it apply the same to sign language? 
> I am asking because the number of signers can't be comparable to the speakers. 
> 
> 
> Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:34:16 -0700
> From: susan.fischer at RIT.EDU
> Subject: Re: death of sign language
> To: SLLING-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU
> 
> I believe that if there are were than 10 users, it is endangered but not dead.
> Susan D. Fischer
> Susan.Fischer at rit.edu
> 
> Center for Research on Language
> UCSD
> 
> 
> 
> On Mar 26, 2012, at 5:17 PM, Anthony Chong wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>  Hello all, 
> 
> I am curious. How will we be able to measure sign language death? Can we consider a language as death language if there less than 10 speakers? 
> Let me know. 
> 
> 

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