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From:
Ulrike Zeshan Date: Mon Aug 2, 1999 3:26 am Subject: Re: Acronyms for Signed Languages | |
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Note that the political border between India and Pakistan is not a language border or even a dialect border between the sign language varieties on both sides. Even though there are dialect boundaries, they do certainly not coincide with the political border between India and Pakistan. In particular, sign language varieties in Pakistan and (at least) North-Western India are the same, with more variation in other parts of India, but probably still at the dialect level. I therefore use the term IPSL (Indopakistan Sign Language), as Angus has noted before. It may well turn out that sign language varieties in Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are also similar enough to be classified as dialects, but this cannot be ascertained yet. Just a general comment about the list: For many countries on the list it is an open question whether the sign language there is confined to the political borders or extends over several countries. For example, sign language in Saudi Arabia seems to be quite similar to sign language varieties in neighboring Arabic countries (informal observation). So in this sense all such Acronyms, as far as they are based on political countries, are preliminary. Ulrike Zeshan ----------------------------------------- Ulrike Zeshan Research Centre for Linguistic Typology The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia ph. +61-2-62495108 fax +61-2-62490332 ---------------------------------------- |
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