In a Dialogue section of the "Journal of Sociolinguistics" (vol. 26, no. 1), author pairs introduce a number of themes and debates in sign language sociolinguistics, explore why these are debates; how the debates are situated within sociolinguistics as a whole; and how spoken language sociolinguistics does or does not have similar…

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…

Grammars of signed languages tend to be based on grammars established for written languages, particularly the written language in use in the surrounding hearing community of a sign language. Such grammars presuppose categories of discrete elements which are combined into various sorts of structures. Recent analyses of signed languages go beyond…