Sign Language
By: Shannon Chesna
ASL
 American Sign Language uses signs
in visual or spatial form.
 Independent of English
 Derived from French Sign Language
 5 parameters of signs
 Hand configuration, place articulation,
movement, orientation (palm up or
down), and facial expression
Differences from Spoken Language
 Most spoken languages are arbitrary

No relationship between set of sounds and the object that
the sound represents
 Example: catepillar (big word for small object)
 ASL is mainly iconic

The signs represent the objects
 Example: tree (forearm upright with hand spread)

Even though these signs may represent something, they
are not always transparent in meaning.
 Klima and Bellugi performed a study where results showed
that only 10% of iconic symbols were identified by hearing
observers.
Differences cont.
 Frishberg claimed that the level of iconicity
has declined in the past 200 years.
 To become more conventionalized
 Example: Home used to be the signs eat
followed by sleep. Now it is cupping your hand
and touching two places on your cheek.
 ASL is now a “dual system of reference”
 Part iconic and part arbitrary
Differences cont.
 In spoken languages there are just 1 serial
stream of phonemes (sequential)
 Sign Language can have multiple things
going on at the same time (simultaneous)
 ASL has its own morphology (rules for
creation of words), phonetics (rules for
hand shapes), and grammar that are unlike
spoken languages
Differences cont.
 Spoken languages have sound as
basic “building block” for emotion or
feeling
 Sign language is visual so it relies on
facial expressions and movement to
convey emotion
Similarities to Spoken Language
 Morphology
 Distinctions from first and second person are
differentiated by movement
 Ex: ask me- movement of sign towards self and
ask you- movement of sign away from self
 Reciprocity is whether the subject is the cause
or recipient of the object or if it is mutual
 Ex: They pinched each other- sign with
movement back and forth across signers body
 English uses the distinction with pronouns
Similarities
 English uses subject-verb-object by
word order
 ASL sometimes uses this with verbs
that need a direct object, they are
signed subject-object-verb.
Similarities
 ASL uses spatial processes to indicate
certain nouns
 Ex: He said he hit him, and then fell
down.
 In English this is ambiguous but because
ASL uses these spatial processes, it is a
clear interpretation.
Error similarities
 Thompson, Emmory, and Gollan
Study
 Found the “tip of the finger” experiences
to be similar to “tip of the tongue”
experience.
 Signers were more likely to retrieve a
target sign’s hand configuration and place
of articulation than its movement.
 Results provide evidence that parameters are
independent
Error similarities
 Slip of the tongue errors occur in sign
language as well however slips of
hand
 Ex: Deaf woman
 Points to possibility that both types of
languages take form because of basic
cognitive limits on how or how much
linguistic information may be structure or
used.
Syntax
 Primarily conveyed through a
combination of word order and nonmanual features
 Pro-drop and doesn’t have a capula
(linking ‘to be’ verb)
 Ex: My hair is wet. Signs- MY HAIR WET.
Syntactic word order
 Places Adj. after noun
 Ex: I have brown dog=DOG BROWN I HAVE
 Adv. Occur before verbs
 Ex: I enter the house quietly= HOUSE I QUIET
ENTER
 Modal verbs come after main verb of clause
 Ex: I can go to the store for you.= FOR YOU,
STORE I GO CAN
Syntax
 Negation
 Ex: I don’t have any dogs= DOG I HAVE NONE
 Questions
 Ex: What are you eating?= YOU EAT [WHAT?]
 Raised eyebrows are used for rhetorical
questions
 Subject pronoun tags
 Ex: The boy fell down=BOY FALL
Syntax
 Conjunctions
 “and” does not exist in ASL instead there
are two sentences combined by a short
pause. “or” and “but” often signed with
slight shoulder twist
 Ex: I have two Cats and they are named
Billy and Bob.= CAT TWO I HAVE. NAME BI-L-L-Y B-O-B