This article analyzes the construction of sign names in an emerging sign language from Mexico, the Yucatec Maya Sign Language (YMSL). Data comes from elicited interviews as well as natural interactions collected by the authors and signers from two different villages, Chicán and Nohkop. Despite YMSL being an isolate language, sign name construction…

This article discusses the occurrence of voids in the intersection between Hebrew and Israeli Sign Language (ISL). Using Weizman's classification of voids (2010, 2016) in our analysis, we have discovered that languages that employ visual and auditory modalities make use of an additional category of voids: modality-induced voids. Our corpus…

This article examines sign languages that belong to a complex of indigenous sign languages in Mesoamerica that K'iche'an Maya people of Guatemala refer to collectively as Meemul Tziij. It explains the relationship between the Meemul Tziij variety of the Yukatek Maya village of Chican (state of Yucatan, Mexico) and the hitherto undescribed Meemul…

An examination of the linguistics of American Sign Language (ASL) establishes beyond a doubt that ASL is a natural language distinct from English and provides insight into how the abstract cognitive system called language finds expression in the signed modality. (CB)

Examines the educational purposes of foreign-language requirements and asserts that the study of American Sign Language meets these goals in ways in which other "languages" (English dialects, computer languages) do not. (CB)