Writing Signed Languages
In Support of Adopting an ASL Writing System

by
Amy Rosenberg
Master's Thesis, University of Kansas
Department of Linguistics, 1999

...back to Table of Contents....
Introduction Chapter 5, Part 1 Appendix B
Chapter 1 Chapter 5, Part 2 Appendix C
Chapter 2 Chapter 6 Appendix D & E
Chapter 3 Summary & Bibliography Appendix F
Chapter 4 Appendix A Appendix G


Chapter 4
The Language: American Sign Language


Signed languages, like ASL, are used by some as a first language and others non-natively but as the primary language of communication. This is not to be confused with spoken language-based systems like Signed Exact English (SEE). Natural Signed languages have histories, dialects, and their own systems. Still, there are many reasons why the general population, and even academics doubt that Signed systems are language. The main reason is the medium in which the language is realized. Because most people are only well acquainted with spoken language, sound is the medium they consider appropriate for language.

American Sign Language was considered gestural communication, but not full language until the 1960's. Those who observe signing, but who have no access to its meaning and who do not have the tools to analyze it linguistically, might miss the language on first glance. Instead, they may perceive an indiscriminate combination of hands, face and body gesturing in a way which seems discernible. They may feel certain that if they just watch carefully, the message will become clear to them. Furthermore, as they watch the signers face move, they may imagine that he is mouthing the English words for what he is signing. Some might argue that too much fingerspelling of English words occurs, therefore ASL must have a spoken counterpart. Perusing the few available ASL dictionaries, which all rely on English to look up signs and their definitions, one finds that ASL has less than 10,000 different items in its lexicon.

The work of William Stokoe, the father of Sign Language Linguistics, has helped to change many people's views on ASL and Signed language in general. ASL, like any other language, changes over time and it is used natively. It is infinitely expressive and productive. Deaf people have Sign poetry and there are plays performed in ASL. The Deaf use their language to discuss language, to joke and pun and to educate on any subject. Yet, even as more linguists and more of the general public become aware of the idea of ASL as a language as full as and distinct from English, an enormous difference between spoken language and ASL remains. ASL is not pervasively written.

Like spoken languages which can be divided into phonology, morphology and syntactic components, American Sign Language can be divided into equivalent parts, although not based on sound distinctions. Sign languages occur in a visual-spatial medium as opposed to a sound-based medium. Signs are made up of smaller components similar to the phonemes of spoken language, which utilize distinctive features, and are sometimes called parameters (Valli and Lucas 1992: 18). Their parameters include handshape, location, movement, palm orientation and sometimes non-manual signs, and each parameter consists of a bundle of primes.

There are various estimates regarding the number of primes for each of the above-mentioned parameters. Handshape is a key characteristic of almost any sign. There are around forty-one distinct handshapes used in ASL...*Footnote 5: See Appendix C.... Each of these handshapes can also be considered in terms of the openness of the hand, the number of fingers extended, the manner in which the fingers are held and the orientation of the palm. A handshape may be closed, open/extended vertical or open/extended horizontal (Valli and Lucas 1992).

Another parameter, location, refers to the placement of the hands and arms in front of the signer. The location of a given sign can be anywhere from the top of the head to the hip area and from the signer's furthest reach right to furthest reach left. Signs rarely occur behind the signer or much below the signer's waist. Stokoe et al. (1965) recognized twelve basic locations within this signing space. The neutral sign space, in front of the middle area of the chest, is where most two-handed signs are made. Because of this, the location of many two-handed signs refers to the location on the non-dominant hand with which the dominant hand is in contact. Unless both hands are symmetrical in a two-handed sign, one hand is dominant and can form any number of handshapes while the non-dominant hand will maintain one of seven basic handshapes generally attributed to the passive hand (Valli and Lucas 1992: 5). See Figure 2.

Figure 2:
Basic Handshapes of the Non-Dominant Hand


In terms of movement parameters, one might expect the largest number of possibilities. Stokoe et al. (1965) postulated twenty-six separate and distinguishing movements possible in the sign space including the opening or closing of a hand. Most of these fall into five general categories: vertical actions, sideways actions, horizontal actions, rotary actions, interactions of hands, and the movements of individual hands. Stokoe et al. (1965) claimed that any sign could be described by the simultaneous production of various parameters. Another conception of the basic units of any given sign views each lexical item as a series of movements and holds. In each unit of a sign, movement or hold, the handshape, location, orientation and nonmanual sign features are bundles of articulatory features, representing the relevant parameters of a given sign.

Using movement, one can derive nouns from ASL verbs. In general, this process occurs when a movement is added to the verb, making it a noun. For example, the verb "sit" involves two hands, both "h" hands...*Footnote 6... , signed in the neutral sign space. The palm of the left hand faces in and the fingers point right. The palm of the right hand faces down and the fingers point forward. The right extended fingers move from slightly above the left hand to resting on top of the fingers of the left hand. To derive the noun "chair," the movement is changed to a quick double movement parallel to the slower singular movement observable in the verb "to sit."

*Footnote 6: An "h" hand refers to a handshape made when the forefinger and middle finger are extended.


Sign morphology also occurs at the level of handshape, location or movement. ASL morphology includes compound formation, numeral incorporation, classifiers and loan signs. ASL syntax is quite distinct from English in terms of word order, and ASL grammar is often realized morphosyntactically, meaning that verbs often morphologically encode meaning such as subject, object, agreement and temporality. In other words, in many English sentences in which separate lexical items are required, in ASL there is one highly inflected lexical item (a verb).

There are three kinds of verbs in ASL which take both a subject and an object. The first kind, plain verbs function similarly to English verbs in that both the subject and the object are signed separately from the verb. The second kind of verb can inflect for the object but not the subject. A third kind includes both the subject and the object in their agreement. The verb "know" is a plain verb in ASL, and the signer must sign separately, "I", "know" and "you", but to sign "I will help you" involves only two signed lexical items, "I" and "help-you." Furthermore, "I say 'no' to you" involves only one lexical item, the verb "say (or answer) 'no'" inflected for both subject and object.

Figure 3: Types of Verbs

The drawings demonstrating a.) "I know you" b.)"Should I help you?" and c.)"I say no to you" are from a.) Fant 1994 and b.) and c.) from Smith, Lentz and Mikos 1988.


ASL verbs also inflect for temporality. Different movements can be applied to a base form of any verb to signify the temporal aspect. For example, whereas in English one would say, "He studied for a long period of time," in ASL two lexical items would suffice: "he" and an inflected form of the verb "studied"(Valli and Lucas 1992: 106). See Figure 4.

Figure 4: Temporality in Verbs

...back to Table of Contents....
Introduction Chapter 5, Part 1 Appendix B
Chapter 1 Chapter 5, Part 2 Appendix C
Chapter 2 Chapter 6 Appendix D & E
Chapter 3 Summary & Bibliography Appendix F
Chapter 4 Appendix A Appendix G

Write to the author...

Amy Rosenberg
amy_nemiccolo@yahoo.com