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Chapter Five - Coggle Diagram
Chapter Five
Sign language in history
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ASL signs have evolved to become more fluid movements over time. The old sign for HOME was EAT+SLEEP, but it has now evolved to one sign with similar handshapes to the only sign.
60% of signs in the early 1800s originated from French signs that were brought over by Gallaudet and Clerc.
One of the oldest signs is that for DEAF INSTITUTION where it is signed with two hands in the I handshape being tapped together.
Deaf students would enter school not knowing they had names because they were raised in hearing families.
People used to think that sign language did not have internal structure and could not be broken down
The grand-daughter of AGB wrote a letter to the editor protesting the research into sign language was a waste of money and cruel to have speech training go backward because the deaf didn't need sign language.
People rejected Stokoe's research because he was not deaf even though his research proved that ASL was in fact an language completely independent of English
ASL studies
Stokoe proposed that the independent parts of a sign were handshape, location, and movement. There were 19 basic symbols for handshapes, 12 symbols for location, and 24 symbols for movement.
Ten years after that, it was decided that hand orientation was needed to differentiate some signs like SHORT and TRAIN
Some signs are the same in a lot of ways, but completely different in one parameter. EX: STAY v. SAME, CHURCH v. DUTY.
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Syntax in English uses voice inflections or punctuation, but ASL uses facial expressions and body behavior
ASL has 3 types of questions: Yes/no where your eyebrows go up, WH/How where your eyebrows go down. Rhetorical also use WH/How
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ASL as a language
"Mime and gestures are not used, although they are valued." (p. 102). Sometimes hearing people think signing is simply a form of mime due to the use of iconic signs, but I thought this quote was interesting because some classifiers are used to enhance the visual aspect of the language. Sure, I could fingerspell something like Ball, but it is much better to show it.
Facial expressions enhance gestures, this is not only true for ASL, but in regular gestures that the everyday person who uses spoken language does.
Stokoe argued that language is done by the brain, the mouth is just the way it came out.
Gestures are silent, so they don't alert prey to one's presence. It is also spacial.
Sign language is thought to have preceded spoken language. It is likely that people used their hands to help locate things or ask for directions.
Spoken language has tongue placement, lip placement, voice is on or off and vowels/consonants while sign language has handshape, position of hand, orientation of hand, and hold/movement
What, exactly, is ASL?
A visual language: people uses their eyes instead of their ears. It is carefully structured to fit the capabilities of the eyes.
A gestural language: pieces of ASL use the hands, arms, body, face, eyes, and head to form concepts.
ASL is not: oral, universal, written, or all iconic. It is not signed English nor does it have the same structure as it.
ASL is not broken English, a belief that comes from the direct translation of signs into English words keeping ASL word order.
ASL is not related to English. It does not have a written form and it is not code for English. This means it cannot be translated word for word into English