An Encyclopaedia of Language_08 docx

primary correspondence is °ch—/ʧ/, as in °chip; the secondary correspondence is °ch—/k/, as in °school; and there is a tertiary correspondence °ch—/ʃ/, as in °machine. The behaviour of letters can be charted (for example, °c also appears as a trailing letter in the symbol °sc, as in °scene); the structures of symbols can be charted; their ranges of values can be charted; and the correspondences can not only be charted but named. For instance: the graphophonemic analysis of °success (a stumbling-block for some spellers) is °s u c c e ss. We have two values for °c here, both rule-governed: the first °c is followed by a consonant letter (viz. the second °c), and has the value /k/; the second °c is followed by °e, and has the value /s/. The rule is that °c has the value /k/ except before the vowels ° e, °i, or °y. (More strictly, we should say that the symbol °c is subject to this rule.) Teachers use the expression ‘Hard C’ and ‘Soft C’, appropriately enough, with reference to this phenomenon. What is not usually realised is that these are not names of letters, nor names of sounds (phonemes), but names of correspondences. Naming can be extended to all correspondences and, like everything else, once named, they become easier to talk about, easier to conceptualise. (For a theoretical approach, see Haas 1970). Literacy in English, even literacy coupled with ‘good spelling’, does not imply ability to segment words into symbols (graphophonemic segmentation or analysis). Analysis of °school into °s ch oo l is far from automatic amongst those who can spell the word—to say nothing of the many who cannot. The ‘trick’ in it is the symbol °ch, with the secondary correspondence °ch—/k/ or Hard CH. Trouble with the spelling of °psychology, sometimes a stumbling-block at tertiary level, can be alleviated if the Hard CH correspondence has been learnt beforehand in its concealed position in °school and in prominent position in °chemistry. (Misspellings of °psychology include *psychycology. Note that in the correspondence °ps—/ s/, the leading letter has no phonemic value (=a ‘silent’ letter); note also that °y has a unique spelling behaviour in that it can be both a consonant symbol and a vowel symbol; spellers who, at primary level, have learned A E I O U as the five vowel letters will often resist recognising the vocalic role of °y at secondary or tertiary level.) Junction analysis. The second form of spelling analysis must be dealt with even more briefly. It concerns, not symbols (graphophonemic units) but morphemes (lexicogrammatical units). In section 4 it was pointed out that, while a subclass of orthographies gives information about the phonological realisation of morphemes, all orthographies represent the morphemes themselves. Again the starting-point can be simple and familiar. In they come we recognise the morpheme come, and we recognise the same morpheme in they are coming. But in the first case it is represented by °come (four letters), and in the second by °com (three letters). In they run we have °run (three letters), and in they are running we have °runn (four letters; readers may find the notations °com- and °runn- more comfortable). Nobody seriously suggests that we have a gamut of forms of the suffix -ing —°-ing as base-form, with by-forms °ning in °running, °-ting in °getting, °-ping in °stopping, and so on, though that is how typographical tradition in SOE breaks such words at the ends of lines. These phenomena, loss of a letter in °come/coming and gain of a letter in °run/ running, together with the change of letter in °try/tried, are the main source of change in morpheme shape in SOE. They are often treated in isolation from each other, yet they can be interestingly linked. The key concept here is the spelling junction (Mountford 1976). The unit of invariant spelling in SOE is the orthographic word. There are no interdependencies across word-space, with the exception of °a/an. Between compound lexical morphemes there are no interdependencies in any of the three states of aggregation: open °test tube, hyphened °test-tube, solid °testtube (*testube is a known error, like *lampost). If the same were true in affixation, i.e. at boundaries involving inflectional or derivational morphemes, there would be no need for the notion of spelling junctions. All junctions would be the same simple kind. But in fact, in SOE, there are ‘change’ junctions as well as ‘no-change’ junctions. Obviously when two morphemes are joined, the constituent letters can either remain unaffected or undergo some change. When there is no change, we can notate it as, for example, °jump+ing, °jump+ed, °jump+er, and call these cases plus-junctions. Plus-junctions are the commonest kind of spelling junction in SOE, and, of course, the simplest. (To write *sincerly, *likly or *beautifuly is to complicate a very simple spelling procedure.) Where there is change, we find that a great many of the changes are products of the three kinds of change junction exemplified above, which we can notate as °com×ing °run×ing °try×ed. These three are linked. It is in each case the morpheme on the left that undergoes change. The change in each case affects only the lefthand letter at the junction: in °come/coming by subtraction (E-Deletion), in °run/running by addition (Consonant-Doubling), and in °try/tried by substitution (Y- Replacement). The incidence of plus-junctions and of change-junctions and, within change-junctions, the incidence of these three main types (which are mutually exclusive) are rule-governed and conditioned by the letter categories, consonant-letter and vowel- letter. A fourth major type of change-junction is found at prefix boundaries, similarly conditioned by the letter categories, viz. Consonant-Assimilation, which likewise affects the lefthand letter at the junction, so as to change the shape of the morpheme on the left (e.g. °sub- into °sup- in °suppress, °suc- in °success). These two kinds of spelling analysis are essentially ways of talking about English spelling. One feature of the literate community in English is how bad good spellers are at helping poor spellers. One factor in this is the belief, shared by both AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF LANGUAGE 393 parties, that English spelling is unanalysable. This can only be an ironic product of the way it is taught, since any spelling system is inherently analytical. Halliday writes: ‘In speaking English, we are not normally aware of the internal structure of words; no doubt that is why the constituent morphemes have never come to be marked off from one another in writing’ (1985: 20). But the morphemes are there to be marked off in SOE, with a little technographical aid which can be converted to paedographical purposes. This is not to say that junction analysis is unproblematical; there are snags enough for the faint- hearted to take refuge in unanalysability. The same is true of graphophonemic analysis, with the important difference that this requires a phonemic notation. (This is a technography with a spelling system of graphemes in one-to-one correspondence with the phonemes (of some reference pronunciation); the script can be designed to exhibit similarity to SOE rather than general phonetic attributes.) Phonemic notations were popular in the past as paedographies in the teaching of English as L2, used in the teaching of pronunciation. Today, professionally trained teachers of English as L2 are taught a notation as a technography, to enable them to understand aspects of the phonology and grammar and to analyse pronunciation. It is noteworthy that, although this corps of English language teachers is equipped with the necessary phonemic conceptualisation, analysis of the standard spelling system does not figure much in their training: in teaching the spelling system—in contrast to teaching all other levels of the language— reliance is placed upon proficiency (control) and not on proficiency accompanied by expertise (conception). In the teaching of English as L1, this has always been the case: proficiency (more recently, assumed proficiency) has been enough, without phonemic conceptualisation at all. Even teachers of initial literacy, whose special task it is to initiate learners into, among other things, the sound/symbol correspondences of SOE, are not usually taught a phonemic notation. But it must be borne in mind that in the training of teachers of English within general education, the distinction has not yet been clearly made, at least in the UK, between teachers of English, the language of the curriculum, and teachers of literature. The two expertises are very different, as the world-wide EL2 teaching profession realised in the 1950s. Applied linguistics has been thought of much more in connection with specialised education, e.g. language teaching to adults, than with general education. Within general education, it has been thought of much more in connection with L2 teaching, e.g. for ethnic community children, than L1 teaching, much more, that is to say, in connection with bilingualism than with bimedialism—the creation of a literate linguacy. The centrolinguistic knowledge involved, particularly as regards the structure of SOE, with its high uniformity, is fundamentally the same in all of these fields. It is sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic knowledge which to a certain extent need to vary with the situation—to a certain extent, because general theory apart, one would expect language teachers of all kinds to be concerned with the learner’s total linguacy. L2 teaching is more sensitive to the learner’s existing proficiency in language than some doctrinaire methods of the past permitted; but L1 teaching, despite earnest endeavours, still teaches literacy at the expense of oracy, or oracy at the expense of literacy. (For ‘oracy’, the control of language in the medium of speech, see Wilkinson (1965); for ‘linguacy’, see Mountford (1970).) Whatever degree of language control it leads to, literacy acquisition in childhood has a massive effect on language conception. This school-acquired language conception is carried through life by the man in the street, and also, unfortunately, by the majority of men and women in the primary and secondary school classroom. Some of it may linger, too, in the linguist, who may remain, for example, unsensitised to the orthography of his own language. Albrow is exceptional in having brought linguistic theory to bear upon the spelling system of SOE. The ‘polysystemic’ approach he adopted, following Firth, led him to set up three systems to account for the data (including, pioneeringly, proper nouns); this may have deterred him from choosing as his title ‘The spelling system of English’. Another linguist, Stubbs, has written revealingly of the impact which this account of English spelling had on him: ‘ I first discovered Albrow’s short book on the English writing system some years ago, and for the first time realized tht the English spelling system was (a) more interesting than I had thought, and (b) not as odd as I had thought. I had in fact never seriously thought about it, never having realized that it could be an interesting subject’ (1980:xi). SOE is an interesting writing-system in itself. It is even more interesting when seen, as general education should enable it to be seen, in its place among the writing-systems of the world as a whole. This section has concentrated on the spelling system of SOE, something which is taught on a global scale in perhaps the oldest and certainly the largest field of applied linguistics, language (including literacy) teaching. Most of the rest of applied linguistics has to do with language use by literates; orthography design/reform and some parts of language planning have to do specifically with writing-systems. One small new area of concern, which applied linguistics has so far been shy of, is language simplification—e.g. the Plain English Campaign in the UK—and information design (see Steinberg (ed. 1986) on the USA, and Wright (1983)). This area is growing in importance: and while much of the skill called for lies in clarity of written language (beyond the bounds of this chapter), much also lies in manipulation of the full figural and spatial resources of standard orthographies. 394 LANGUAGE AND WRITING-SYSTEMS REFERENCES Abercrombie, D. (1965) ‘Writing systems’, in Studies in phonetics and linguistics, Oxford University Press, London: 86–91. Abercrombie, D. (1967) Elements of general phonetics, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Adams, V. (1973) An introduction to modern English word-formation, Longman, London. Albrow, K.H. (1972) The English writing system: notes towards a description (Schools Council Programme in Linguistics and English Teaching Papers Series 2, Volume 2), Longman, London. Beaujouan, G. (1982) ‘The transformation of the quadrivium’, in Benson, R.L. and Constable, G. (eds) Renaissance and renewal in the twelfth century, Clarendon Press, Oxford: 463–87. Bloomfield, L. (1935) Language, Allen & Unwin, London. (First published: USA 1933). Catach, N. (ed.) (1980) La ponctuation,=LangueFrançaise 45. Cohen, M. (1958) La grande invention de I’écriture et son évolution (3 vols.), Klincksieck, Paris. Coulmas, F. (1989) Writing systems of the world, Blackwell, Oxford. Coulmas, F. and Ehlich, K. (eds) (1983) Writing in focus, Mouton, Berlin, de Kerckhove, D. (1986) ‘Alphabetic literacy and brain processes’, Visible Language, 20, 3:274–93. Diringer, D. (1968) The Alphabet: a key to the history of mankind (3rd edition: 2 vols.), Hutchinson, London (first published 1949). Feldbusch, E. (1986) ‘The communicative and cognitive functions of written language’, Written Communication, 3.1:81–9. Fishman, J. (ed.) (1977) Advances in the creation and revision of writing systems, Mouton, The Hague. Francis, W.N. (1967) The English language: an introduction, English Universities Press, London. Garvin, P.L. (1954) ‘Literacy as a problem in language and culture’, in Mueller, H.J. (ed.) Report of the 5th Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Teaching, Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC: 117–29. Gelb, I.J . (1952) A study of writing, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Gold, D.L. (1977) ‘Successes and failures in the standardization and implementation of Yiddish spelling and romanization’, in Fishman (ed.) (1977):307–70. Goody, J. (1983) ‘Literacy and achievement in the Ancient World’, in Coulmas et al. (eds): 83–97. Goody, J. and Watt, I. (1968) ‘The consequences of literacy’, in Goody, J. (ed.) Literacy in traditional societies, Cambridge Universtiy Press, Cambridge: 27–68. Haas, M.R. (1956) The Thai system of writing, American Council of Learned Societies, Washington, DC. Haas, W. (ed.) (1969) Alphabets for English, Manchester University Press, Manchester. (Mont Follick Series, 1.) Haas, W. (1970) Phonographic Translation, Manchester University Press, Manchester (Mont Follick Series, 2). Haas, W. (1976) ‘Writing: the basic options’, in Haas (ed.) (1976):131–208. Haas, W. (ed.) (1976) Writing without letters, Manchester University Press, Manchester (Mont Follick Series, 4). Haas, W. (ed.) (1982) Standard languages: spoken and written, Manchester University Press, Manchester (Mont Follick Series, 5). Halliday, M.A.K. (1985) An introduction to functional grammar, Edward Arnold, London. Halliday, M.A.K., McIntosh, A. and Strevens, P. (1964) The linguistic sciences and language teaching, Longman, London. Harris, R. (1986) The origin of writing, Duckworth, London. Henze, P.B. (1977) ‘Politics and alphabets in Inner Asia’, in Fishman (ed.) (1977):371– 420. Householder, F. (1971) ‘The primacy of writing’, in Linguistic speculations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 244–64. Inoue, Kyoko (1979) ‘Japanese: a story of language and people’, in Shopen, T. (ed.) Languages and their speakers, Winthrop, Cambridge, Mass. Jensen, H. (1970) Sign, symbol and script: an account of man’s effort to write, Allen & Unwin, London. (First published in German, 1958). Linell, P. (1982) The written language bias in linguistics, Dept. of Communication Studies, University of Linköping, Linköping, Sweden. Lyons, J. (1963) Structural semantics: an analysis of part of the vocabulary of Plato, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. McIntosh, A. (1956) ‘The analysis of written Middle English’, Transactions of the Philological Society: 26–55. McIntosh, A. (1961) ‘“Graphology” and meaning’, ArchivumLinguisticum, 13:107–20. Malherbe, M. (1983) Les langages de l’humanité, Seghers, Paris. Malkiel, Y. (1965) ‘Secondary uses of letters in language’, in Romance Philology 19.1: 1–27. Martin, S.E. (1972) ‘Nonalphabetic writing systems: some observations’, in Kavanagh, J.F. and Mattingly, I.G. (eds) Language by ear and eye, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.: 81–103. Milroy, J. and Milroy, L. (1985) Authority in language: investigating language prescription and standardisation, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Mitchell, T.F. (1958) ‘Syntagmatic relations in linguistic analysis’, Transactions of the Philological Society: 101–18. Mountford, J.D. (1970) ‘Some psycholinguistic components of initial standard literacy’. The Journal of Typographic Research/Visible Language, 4.4:295–306. Mountford, J.D. (1973) ‘Writing-system: a datum in bibliographical description’, in Rawski, C. (ed.) Toward a theory of librarians hip: Papers in honour of Jesse Hauk Shera, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, N.J.: 415–49. Mountford, J.D. (1976) ‘Spelling junctions in English’, in Nickel, G. (ed.) Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of AILA, Hochschul-Verlag, Stuttgart. Mylne, V. (1979) ‘The punctuation of dialogue in eighteenth-century French and English fiction’, The Library, 6th series, 1.1:43–61. Nakanishi, A. (1980) Writing systems of the world: alphabets, syllabaries, pictograms, Tuttle, Tokyo. AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF LANGUAGE 395 Nash, R. (1983) ‘Pringlish: still more language contact in Puerto Rico’, in Kachru, B.B. (ed.) The other tongue: English across cultures, Pergamon Press, Oxford: 250–69. Naveh, J. (1982) Early history of the alphabet, Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Pike, K.L. (1947) Phonemics: a technique for reducing languages to writing, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Practical orthography of African Languages (1962) (International African Institute Memorandum 1), Oxford University Press, Oxford. Rice, F.R. (1959) The Classical Arabic writing system, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. Romaine, S. (1982) Socio-historical linguistics: its status and methodology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Rouse, R.H. and Rouse, M.A. (1982) ‘Statim invenire: schools, preachers, and new attitudes to the page’, in R.L.Benson and G.Constable (eds) Renaissance and renewal in the twelfth century, Clarendon Press, Oxford: 201–25. Sampson, G. (1985) Writing systems: a linguistic introduction, Hutchinson, London. Schmandt-Besserat, D. (1978) ‘The earliest precursor of writing’, Scientific American, June issue: 38–47. Schmandt-Besserat, D. (1981) ‘Tokens: facts and interpretations’, Visible Language, 20.3: 250–72. Scragg, D.G. (1974) A history of English spelling, Manchester University Press, Manchester (Mont Follick Series, 3). Seeley C. (ed.) (1984) Aspects of the Japanese writing system (special issue) Visible Language, 18.3. Shelton, T. (1635) Tachygraphy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Sirat, C. (1987) ‘La morphologie humaine et la direction de l’écriture’, Compte-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres: (CRAI) 9 janvier 1987. Smalley, W.A. (ed.) (1964) Orthography studies: articles on new writing systems, United Bible Society, London/North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam. Steinberg, E.R. (1986) Promoting Plain English, (special issue) Visible Language, 20.2. Stetson, R.H. (1937) ‘The phoneme and the grapheme’, in Mélanges de linguistique et de philologie offerts à Jacques van Ginneken, Klincksieck, Paris: 353–6. Street, B.V. (1985) Literacy in theory and practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Stubbs, M. (1980) Language and literacy: the sociolinguistics of reading and writing, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Stubbs, M. (1986) Educational linguistics, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Suzuki, T. (1977) ‘Writing is not language, or is it?’, Journal of Pragmatics, 1:407–20. Twine, N. (1984) ‘The adoption of punctuation in Japanese script’, Visible Language, 18.3:229–37. Uldall, H.J. (1944) ‘Speech and writing’, Acta Linguistica, 4:11–16. Vachek, J. (1979) ‘Some remarks on the stylistics of written language’, in Allerton, D.J. et al. (eds) Function and context in linguistic analysis: A Festschrift for William Haas, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 206–15. Venezky, R.L. (1970) The structure of English orthography, Mouton, The Hague. Wellisch, H.H. (1978) The conversion of scripts—its nature, history and utilization, Wiley, New York. Wilkinson, A. (1965) Spoken English, Supplement to Educational Review, University of Birmingham, Birmingham. Wright, P. (1983) ‘Technical communication: English for Very Special Purposes’, BAAL Newsletter No. 18:24–9. FURTHER READING Butler, E.H. (1951) The story of British shorthand, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, London. Chadwick, J. (1958) The decipherment of Linear B, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Cutts, M. and Maher, C. (1983) Small print: The language and layout of consumer contracts (Report to the National Consumer Council), Plain English Campaign, Stockport. Downing, J. (1967) Evaluating the Initial Teaching Alphabet, Cassell, London. Gaur, A. (1984) A history of writing, British Library, London. Gray, N. (1960) Lettering on buildings, Architectural Press, London. Gudschinsky, S.C. (1976) Literacy: the growing influence of linguistics, Mouton, The Hague. Henderson, L. (1982) Orthography and word recognition in reading, Academic Press, London. Kahn, D. (1966) The code-breakers: the story of secret writing, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London. Naveh, J. (1975) Origins of the Alphabet, Cassell, London. Newnham, R. (1971) About Chinese, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth. Ullman, B.L. (1969) Ancient writing and its influence, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. (First published: Longmans, New York, 1932). Vachek, J. (1973) Written language: general problems and problems of English, Mouton, The Hague. JOURNALS Information Design Journal (1980–) Visible Language (1967–) Written Communication (1984–) 396 LANGUAGE AND WRITING-SYSTEMS 21 SIGN LANGUAGE BENCIE WOLL 1. INTRODUCTION The term ‘sign language’ is used here to refer to any one of a large number of languages found among deaf populations throughout the world. These languages are natural, not artificially devised; they are unrelated to the spoken languages about them; they are used for a wide variety of functions; and are learned as first languages. In this chapter, their structures and relationships are presented, together with a discussion of their history and current research. Sign language-using populations are found throughout the world. Although there are some hearing populations using sign languages for social or cultural reasons—such as the Martha’s Vineyard signers of the last century (Groce 1985) and certain aboriginal groups in Australia (Kendon, 1989)—sign languages have largely been found amongst deaf populations, and have been developed by them in place of the spoken languages of hearing populations. The average incidence of pre-lingual deafness in the Western world is between 1 in 1500–2000, so, for example, in Britain, there are about 40,000 pre-lingually deaf persons. This population cannot be considered as being one of handicapped individuals; instead it is more appropriately viewed as a deaf community, parallel in most respects to minority ethnic and cultural groups, sharing a common language and culture. Four main factors have been identified as criteria for inclusion in the American deaf community (Markowicz 1979): self-identification as a member of the deaf community; language use; endogamous marital patterns; membership of social organisations. These factors are equally relevant in Britain and most other western countries; it should be emphasised, however, that audiometric measures of hearing loss appear to be irrelevant in determining an individual’s membership of the deaf community. Rather, membership is marked by the sharing of a common language, common experiences and values, and a common way of communicating with each other and with hearing people. Members of the deaf community have largely shared the experience of special education in schools for the deaf or (more recently) in units attached to ordinary schools. In the past, most education for the deaf was provided in residential schools, where deaf pupils ate, slept, studied and played together, totally isolated from their hearing counterparts. The move in education away from these special schools has been greeted with dismay by members of the deaf community, who recognise the important role of residential schools in initiating young people into the deaf community, particularly as the number of deaf persons with deaf parents is very low (about one in 20). Although for the past 100 years, the education of the deaf has been largely opposed to the use of sign languages, a great deal of signing was of necessity tolerated outside the classroom and, particularly in residential schools, this provided children with substantial opportunities for learning and communicating in sign languages. Brief mention should be made here of the so-called manual-oral controversy, which has dominated the education of the deaf from the eighteenth century onwards, but which has been fought most fiercely over the past 150 years. Educators have chosen to emphasise the integration of deaf people into hearing society by suppressing sign language, and teaching speech exclusively. There are, of course, many valid reasons for wanting to integrate deaf people into hearing society through speech: 95 per cent of parents of deaf children are hearing; parental aspirations for their children include their integration into hearing society; the native language of teachers of the deaf is English. This emphasis on integration can also be seen in the shift to the use of the term ‘hearing-impaired’, rather than ‘deaf. Suppression of sign language in schools has been enforced by punishment of children for signing, which has included holding their arms immobile at their sides, making them sit on their hands, wearing placards stating ‘I am a monkey’, or putting paper bags over their heads. The attempted suppression of sign language has had many justifications: sign language is so easy for deaf children that they will not bother learning spoken language if they are given the opportunity to sign; children’s vocal organs will atrophy if they use signing; the use of sign language will restrict deaf children to a deaf ‘ghetto’; sign language is not a true language, so children’s mental capacities will be impaired if they use it. It is striking how many of these attitudes parallel those towards other minority languages. Some educators of the deaf still express these views: ‘It should be noted that not all natural, spoken languages are equally rich as e.g. Dutch or English. There are also simple, less elaborate natural, spoken languages, such as Papiamento…; further, certain languages in Africa, India, etc. Consequently these languages are in the first instance not suitable for “higher studies”, i.e. education which contains more than the limited cultures in which these languages satisfactorily function.’ (Van Uden 1986) Other professionals working with the deaf often hold negative attitudes to sign language: ‘Signing can cope with everyday chat, but when it is necessary to get down to accurate reporting of specific terminology, signing breaks down. It hasn’t the grammar and it hasn’t the vocabulary…Signing is an aid to comprehension for deaf people, along with hearing aids, lipreading, and the pen and pencil…deaf people do not constitute a nation-within-a-nation with their own language, and cannot expect an interpreter to remove all their communication difficulties in the same way as, say, a Frenchman can enjoy interpretation at the United Nations.’ (letter from a social worker in the British Deaf News, January 1987) 2. EARLIER APPROACHES TO SIGN LANGUAGE Knowledge about sign language use among the deaf dates back nearly two thousand years in the western world, and even earlier in Chinese writings. The Mishnah (late second century), a compilation of Jewish oral law, makes several references to the use of signing by deaf people, which although unrevealing as to the form of signing used by the deaf, clearly indicates that it was regarded as a suitable means of communication in law: ‘If a man that was a deaf-mute married a woman that was of sound senses, or if a man that was of sound senses married a woman that was a deaf-mute, if he will he may put her away, and if he will he may continue the marriage. Like as he married her by signs so he may put her away by signs.’ (Yeb. 14, 1, Danby 1933:240). ‘A deaf-mute may communicate by signs and be communicated with by signs.’ (Gitt, 5, 7, Danby 1933:312) Other sources of the classical period recognised that deaf people used signs for communication, but largely gave no information about the form this communication took. Plato, in the Cratylus, refers to significant movements of head, hand and body made by the dumb, and Saint Augustine describes a deaf person who could understand others and express himself by means of gestures. One reason for the lack of information on sign form is the habitual confusion between signs and gestures. The belief that the deaf possess a universal language is still popular, and information about the enormous variety of sign languages in use is often greeted with surprise and dismay. Indeed, it is only recently that awareness that gestures are not universal has spread. Paget follows a very old tradition in proposing that a sign language ‘might be taught…to all children…If this were done in all countries… there would be a very simple international language by which the different races of mankind, including the deaf, might understand one another’ (Paget 1953; xvi, cited in Knowlson 1965). In the section below on common myths regarding sign language, these beliefs will be discussed further; one important observation, however, is that the belief in the common universality of sign languages and gestures leads to descriptions of signs as (e.g.) ‘the natural gesture of eating’, thus providing little data for the linguist. 3. ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE AND SIGN LANGUAGE A major area of concern of philosophers has been the question of how language came into being. Speech as the overt expression of language was believed to be the element of behaviour which made people human; language related directly to man’s capacity for thought. The argument over whether thinking could exist without language ran in parallel to the dispute about whether speech or language came first in man. Theories of language origin were regarded so scathingly that by the early nineteenth century, linguistic circles were beginning to refuse to discuss the topic, and disparaging terms, such as ‘Heave- Ho’, ‘Ding-Dong’ and ‘Pooh-Pooh’ were used for language origin theories. In gestural theories of language origins, gestures accompanying actions were claimed to pre-date verbal communication (as they do in ontogenetic development). Alternative 398 SIGN LANGUAGE theories saw speech developed directly from non-verbal cries, and gesture either as independent or controlled by the meanings expressed in speech. Probably the best-known philosopher concerning himself with issues of whether speech or gesture was primary was Condillac (1746). His view was that images, which were the basis of thought, were not always representable in speech and were more directly related to gestures. Because sounds had been added to gestures at an early stage, a series of spoken words was often needed to represent what had previously been a single gesture. This then presented a misleading view of thought as existing in sequential sentence-like strings, rather than as global images. Other writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were also interested in whether sign languages represented a more primitive language than speech. Diderot (1751) set out a case for considering the sign language of the deaf as a source for learning about the natural order of thought in language. Tylor, a British anthropologist (1874), discussed at length the structure of sign language and its role in the deaf community. He saw sign as a more primitive language form, albeit a very complex one. Stout (1899) considered the relation of language and thought, and following Condillac, believed that signs develop from iconic representations to cognitive symbols which gradually form a language. Like Tylor, he saw sign as a more primitive language form which those who develop speech tend to leave behind. All of these arguments had largely been lost by the beginning of the twentieth century. Saussurean linguistics, with its emphasis on the arbitrariness of the symbol-referent relationship, and the effort made by modern linguistics to force recognition of speech as the primary form of language contributed to the disappearance of interest in sign languages and its replacement by a view of the deaf as living in a world without language. As Hewes (1976) points out: ‘Impressed by the apparent arbitrariness of most spoken languages, it has been argued that such arbitrariness is an essential criterion for language or that a high degree of iconicity would interfere with understanding. The sign languages of the deaf are dismissed as crude, rudimentary, and if their users are unable to communicate except in such languages they display various serious cognitive handicaps.’ (p. 409) Bloomfield’s dismissal of sign languages as serious objects for study by linguists is a good example of this attitude: ‘Some communities have a gesture language which upon occasion they use instead of speech. Such gesture languages have been observed among the lower-class Neapolitans, among Trappist monks (who have made a vow of silence), among the Indians of our western plains…and among groups of deaf mutes. It seems certain that these gesture languages are merely developments of ordinary gestures and that any and all complicated or not immediately intelligible gestures are based on the conventions of ordinary speech. Even such an obvious transference as pointing backward to indicate past time, is probably due to a linguistic habit of using the same word for “in the rear” and “in the past”. Whatever may be the origins of the two, gesture has so long played a secondary role under the dominance of language that it has lost all traces of independent character.’ (Bloomfield 1933:39) Even more recent textbooks of linguistics have tended to ignore sign languages. The popular introductory text by Akmajian, Demers and Harnish devotes 512 pages to spoken languages, 35 to animal communication, and 5 to a discussion of studies of apes learning American Sign Language. The only references to American Sign Language itself are on page 480, where it is stated that ASL is one of a number of gestural systems; that ASL is used naturally by many people (although deaf people are never mentioned); and that ASL has a structure comparable to that of human spoken languages. 4. GESTURE AND SIGN LANGUAGE The belief in gesture and sign language as being a single universal language first appeared in post-Renaissance texts on rhetoric. The earliest English source (1644) is John Bulwer’s ‘Chirologia; or the Naturall language of the Hand. Composed of the Speaking Motions, and Discoursing Gestures thereof. Whereunto is added Chironomia: or the Art of Manuall Rhetoricke etc.’ In Chirologia, Bulwer describes hundreds of gestures of the hands and fingers. He presents the evidence of sign language as proof of the existence of this universal language: ‘A notable argument we have of this discoursing facilities of the hand is…the wonder of necessity which nature worketh in men that are borne deafe and dumbe; who can argue and dispute rhetorically by signs.’ (p. 5) AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF LANGUAGE 399 Bulwer’s interest in the deaf led to the publication of his second book, ‘Philocophus, or the Deafe and Dumbe Man’s Friend by J.B., surnamed the Chirosopher’ (London, 1648). This is the first book dedicated to any deaf person, being dedicated to two deaf brothers. In the dedication, Bulwer states: ‘What though you cannot expresse your minds in those verball contrivances of man’s invention, yet you want not speeche, who have your whole body for a tongue, having a language more naturall and significant, which is common to you with us, to wit, gesture, the generall and universal language of human nature. You already can expresse yourselves so truly by signes, from a habit you have gotten by using always signes, as we do speeche: nature also recompensing your want of speeche, in the invention of signes to expresse your conceptions. This language you speak so purely that I who was the first that made it my Darling Study to interpret the naturall richnesse of our discoursing gestures…am fully satisfied that you want nothing to be perfectly understood, your mother tongue administering sufficient utterance upon all occasions’. Twenty-five years earlier, in Spain, Juan Pablo Bonet (1620) had drawn attention to the unique position of gesture as a natural language, and developed a manual alphabet (see below) for educating the deaf. This alphabet, he claimed, was: ‘so well adapted to nature that it would seem as if this artificial language had been derived from the language of nature, or that from this, since visible actions are nature’s language.’ Dalgarno (1663), a Scottish educator, was also involved in developing a manual alphabet. He was also the first author to state clearly the distance between sign language and spoken language: ‘The deaf man has no teacher at all, and though necessity may put him upon continuing and using a few signs, yet those have no affinity to the language by which they that are about him do converse amongst themselves.’ (p. 3) In France, the Abbé de l’Epée, founder of a school for the deaf in the eighteenth century, also believed sign language to be the universal language: ‘On a souvent désiré une langage universelle, avec le secours de laquelle les hommes de toutes les nations pourraient s’entendre les uns les autres. Il me semble qu’il y a longtemps qu’elle existe, et qu’elle est entendue partout. Cela n’est pas étonnant: c’est une langue naturelle. Je parle de la langue des signes.’ [A universal language has often been wished for, with the help of which men of all nations could understand each other. It seems to me that for a long time such a language has existed. I am speaking of sign language and is everywhere understood. That is not surprising: it is a national language.] (de l’Epée 1776) The supposed identity of sign languages in different countries was emphasised well into the twentieth century. An account of the visit of a French deaf man to the school for the deaf in London is a good example: ‘As soon as Clerc beheld [the children] his face became animated; he was as agitated as a traveller of sensibility would be on meeting all of a sudden in distant regions a colony of his countrymen…Clerc approached them. He made signs and they answered him by signs. This unexpected communication caused a most delicious sensation in them and for us was a scene of expression and sensibility that gave us the most heartfelt satisfaction’. (de Ladebat 1815) While all these authors claim that sign language is universal, and identical with gesture, there is often an inherent contradiction in the position of those educators writing about sign language, since they frequently emphasise that the language of the deaf must be learned if the educator is to help the deaf; clearly this would not be necessary if sign language was truly universal. As Knowlson (1965) points out, most universalist claims for gesture are based on the author’s observation of actors, mimes or the deaf, rather than on their own attempts to communicate. Often too, authors appear to recognise that signs vary in different countries, but conclude that this represents merely a small degree of variation, rather than evidence against the universalist hypothesis. In the next section, the linguistics of sign languages will be discussed, with reference, where available, to comparative work on different sign languages. 400 SIGN LANGUAGE 5. THE LINGUISTICS OF SIGN LANGUAGES: 5.1 Phonetics and phonology in sign language At first glance, the use of the terms phonetics and phonology may seem wholly inappropriate in a discussion of sign languages, which, by definition, are not composed of sounds. The terms have been widely used in sign language research, however, because of the similarities in the organisation of sign languages and spoken languages. Other linguists have used the term ‘cherology’ (from Greek kheir—hand). Arbitrariness, and duality have, since Saussure, been regarded as defining features for all human languages. Before Stokoe (1960), signs had been regarded as unanalysable, unitary gestures, and therefore containing no level analogous to the phonological. His contribution was to recognise that ASL signs could more profitably be viewed as compositional, and thus unlike gestures. He proposed a three-part analysis of signs; unlike the predominantly sequential structure of words, signs were described as consisting of simultaneous bundles of TAB (‘tabula’: location of a sign in space), DEZ (‘designator’: the configuration of the hand), and SIG (‘signator’: movement of the hand in space). This model was generally adopted by researchers on other sign languages (Deuchar 1978; Woll, Kyle and Deuchar 1981; Brennan, Colville and Lawson 1984) with variations relating to whether there was a fourth prime of hand orientation (ORI). For example, the BSL sign RED could be described as consisting of TAB=lips; DEZ=index finger extended from fist; SIG=repeated stroking of the TAB; ORI=palm facing the body, index finger pointing upwards. Stokoe, an American structural linguist, regarded these primes as meaningless elements which combined to form all the signs in a language, in an analogous way to phonemes. In this model, signs form minimal pairs when (e.g.) one DEZ is substituted for another (Figure 29). Within this model, for any sign language, the repertoire of handshapes or locations is limited, and the available variant articulations for any prime are arbitrarily determined. So, for example, in ASL it is claimed that there is no minimal pair where two signs differ in meaning because one is located at the lips and the other at the chin, but in British Sign Language (BSL) there are such pairs. The origination of phonological research on signs in structural linguistics led to a concentration in the early years on describing inventories of elements. More recently there has been greater interest in the description of phonological processes. Even within the inventory approach, two major problems have been noted with the Stokoe phonological model: the first is that the sequentially of these bundles is not as insignificant as was assumed by Stokoe; and secondly, that there appears to be a relation between at least some of these primes and sign meanings. 5.2 Simultaneity or sequentiality While Stokoe recognised that there was sequential organisation in signs, he claimed that it was not significant at the phonological level of analysis. However, as Liddell and colleagues have observed (Liddell and Johnson 1985), in all three primes there is evidence of sequential organisation. For Figure 29 (continued) example, the BSL sign SHOWER has a handshape which changes from closed to spread fingers: in MORNING, the location changes from the contralateral side of the chest to the ipsilateral; in the sign TABLE, the hands separate in the first part of the movement; in the second part, the hands move downwards. In contrast with Stokoe’s claim, these features do seem to relate to differences in sign meanings. Given that signs have a sequential structure, that structure corresponds to phonological segments contrasting in the same way as in spoken languages, we can thus find minimal pairs of signs distinguished by sequence differences as well as the kind described by Stokoe. The BSL signs SHOWER and COPY (hand closes) can be better described as contrasting only in sequence of movement, rather than as contrasting in handshape and in movement, as would be required in the Stokoe model. 5.3 Arbitrariness in phonology The second issue mentioned in relation to phonological studies of sign language is whether there is meaning at this level. The situation in sign languages is somewhat complex, and will be discussed more fully in the section below on iconicity. Stokoe’s model described the elements of sign language phonology as if they were entirely arbitrary. For example, if we look at a number of signs in BSL located at the cheek, such as SWEET, WOMAN, EASY and CRUEL, they have no obvious meanings in common. This is also true of a selection of signs made with a fist handshape such as AGREE, CAR, MY, and STUPID. To claim that there are no connections in meaning amongst signs with shared features, however, misrepresents the evidence, as can be seen in the following examples from BSL: signs made with a handshape of little finger extended from the AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF LANGUAGE 401 first include: BAD, POISON, ILL, WRONG, END, ARGUE, CURSE, SOUR, EVIL, etc. Signs located at the forehead include: THINK, IMAGINE, DREAM, STUPID, CLEVER, WORRY, UNDERSTAND, etc. In these examples we can see that there appears to be some connection between a given handshape or location and some general meaning. Thus, duality exists, but in a form not identical to that in spoken languages. 5.4 Constraints on sign form Constraints on sign forms arise from two sources: physical limitations, and language-specific restrictions. In the first group are those constraints relating to sign production and reception. It has been noted that all locations on the body are not equally Figure 29 BSL minimal pairs 402 SIGN LANGUAGE [...]... linguistics of sign languages is an exciting new field Research on sign languages can help illuminate important issues relating to language universality and the role of medium in language structure, with the aim of answering such questions as: How arbitrary is language? How can duality of structure be realised in a language without sound? How important is simultaneity in language? Should prosodic and ‘para-linguistic’... addition of a bound form (Deuchar 1987) In ASL and FSL this is an ‘outward twisting movement of the moving hand(s) from the place where the sign is made’ (Woodward and deSantis 1977); in BSL negative incorporation ‘involves the modification of the affirmative form of a sign including a movement of upwards rotation of the hand, and change of handshape, if applicable, from a closed to an open handshape’... non-linear meanings into a linear order, and the function of a grammar in a sign language as organising non-linear meanings into both spatial and linear order Those features common to both signed and spoken languages reflect, in this view, non-modality-specific universals of language 8.1 Morphological typology American Sign Language has been described by Klima and Bellugi (1979) as an inflecting language... sign languages range from two hands modelling the shape of a tree trunk (Chinese Sign Language) to sketchings of the outline of the shape of a tree (Danish Sign Language) to the forming of the shape of a tree, with the forearm representing the trunk and the fingers the branches (British Sign Language) WOMAN in BSL is signed with the index finger grazing the cheek; in Israeli Sign Language by pinching... verbs a I ANSWER YOU b YOU ANSWER ME (left hand) BOY (right hand) SMALL ‘small boy’ or (left hand) BORN (right hand) DEAF ‘born deaf’ While opportunities for simultaneous modification are limited, because of the necessity of having two one-handed signs, there is a substantial role for non-manual behaviours occurring simultaneously with manual signs in such processes as the marking of questions and negation... signs THINK and WRITE Later illustrations show assimilation of location of the second sign to head height, assimilation of the handshape in THINK to that of WRITE, and loss of the passive left hand in WRITE 7 CONTACT WITH SPOKEN LANGUAGE All signers live amongst hearing populations using spoken languages, and have some degree of access to the language of the hearing population This contact is manifested... Order Change in American Sign Language’, in Li, C (ed.), Word Order and Word Order Change, University of Texas Press, Austin: 1–25 Groce, N (1986) Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass Hewes, G.W (1976) ‘The Current Status of the Gestural Theory of Language Origin’, in Harnad, S.R., Steklis, H.D and Lancaster, J (eds) Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech,... the history of linguistics—several of them long since abandoned by other branches of intellectual history— include: 1 Revisionist (‘palace’ or ‘Whig’) history: the insider’s view of the development and historical significance of the school to which he himself belongs This approach offers a valuable glimpse of a participant’s perception of the formation and growth of a new movement, but often overlooks... plurals in BSL: reduplication of movement, reduplication of handshape, and addition of quantity marker With a few exceptions, most signs can pluralise in only one of these ways Reduplication of movement: in pluralisation by reduplicaton of movement, speed of movement is non-significant (in contrast to inflection of verbs) and the movement is repeated with a slight shift of location for each repetition... fingerspelling, loan-translations, and mouth patterning 7.1 Fingerspelling Most deaf populations in western countries make use of fingerspelling (often confused by the public with sign language) which represents the standard written language through a series of hand configurations and movements There are many different manual alphabets (and some syllabaries) in use throughout the world, and are most comparable . gestures of the hands and fingers. He presents the evidence of sign language as proof of the existence of this universal language: ‘A notable argument we have of this discoursing facilities of the hand. same meaning). (See Table 15.) Although fingerspelling represents the words of written languages, even an AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF LANGUAGE 407 Table 15 British two-handed manual alphabet utterance. (1979) ‘Japanese: a story of language and people’, in Shopen, T. (ed.) Languages and their speakers, Winthrop, Cambridge, Mass. Jensen, H. (1970) Sign, symbol and script: an account of man’s effort