Nonsigners viewing sign language are sometimes able to guess the meaning of signs by relying on the overt connection between form and meaning, or iconicity (cf. Ortega, Özyürek, & Peeters, 2020; Strickland et al., 2015). One word class in sign languages that appears to be highly iconic is classifiers: verb-like signs that can refer to location…

Acquisition of natural language has been shown to fundamentally impact both one's ability to use the first language and the ability to learn subsequent languages later in life. Sign languages offer a unique perspective on this issue because Deaf signers receive access to signed input at varying ages. The majority acquires sign language in (early)…

A review of "Sign Languages Used by Deaf People, and Psycholinguistics: A Critical Evaluation" (A. Van Uden, 1986), a book "denying that ...there is any such thing as a sign language," points out that a sign language's perceived lack of phonological and morphological rules is a more social than linguistic problem. (CB)