Variation occurs in sign languages, just as in spoken languages. Lexical variation is very common and has been related to individual schools for the deaf, so-called "schoolization," rather than only to region or other common sociolinguistic factors, such as gender, social class, etc. (Baker et al. 2016). This study investigates lexical…

Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) is an extinct village sign language hypothesized to be a sister of British Sign Language (BSL) and a significant contributor to early American Sign Language (ASL) (Groce 1985). After the last deaf MVSL signer died, signs were elicited from five hearing signers. This study analyzes that data through a series…

Variation in language has been acknowledged as central to the characterization of spoken and written discourse. Speakers' ability to change and adjust language according to the communicative circumstances is a prominent factor that demonstrates their linguistic literacy and skill. Nonetheless, few studies have explored the characterization of…

The development of a considerable body of literature on British Sign Language (BSL) now permits analyzing and describing the sociolinguistic history of the language. An impressive amount of sociolinguistic information on BSL pertaining to the United Kingdom (UK) provides rich material for such analysis, but, until now, very little BSL research has…

Name sign systems have been described in many deaf communities around the world. The most frequent name sign types are associated with an individual's appearance, for example, a signers' hairstyle, clothes, and physical features such as height, weight, etc. However, a recent study that examined name signs in Swedish Sign Language, for example,…

This paper examines recent lexical expansion in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) in the context of change in the status of the language and ongoing contact with other (spoken and signed) languages. We categorised 917 new signs documented in the past five years according to their source, semantic field, and sign formation mechanism(s), both…

To date, studies that investigate lexical overlap in signed languages have mainly considered the relationships between deaf community signed languages. The alternate sign languages of Indigenous Australia provide an opportunity to take another perspective -- they are perhaps amongst the oldest known sign languages in the world, their main users…

Children's acquisition of directional verbs in sign languages has received a lot of attention, but less is known about the sociocultural process of using these verbs, especially in the context of emerging sign languages in diverse language ecologies. Directional verbs are a common grammatical phenomenon of many sign languages in which some verbs…

Bimodal bilingualism involves the use of a sign language and a spoken language, and offers a unique opportunity to explore the cognitive effects of growing up bilingual. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between bimodal bilingualism and executive function (EF) in hearing children who are native users of a sign language. We…

Picturebooks are powerful educational tools, both for their content and their contributions to the literacy development of children. In New Zealand bilingual picturebooks featuring Te Reo Maori and New Zealand English have increased in number since the 1980s when Te Reo Maori gained official status and revitalisation efforts burgeoned. More…

Sign languages present particular challenges to language assessors in relation to variation in signs, weakly defined citation forms, and a general lack of standard-setting work even in long-established measures of productive sign proficiency. The present article addresses and explores these issues via a mixed-methods study of a human-rated…

In this paper, I discuss methodological and ethical issues that arose in the process of documenting lexical variation in Yucatec Maya Sign Languages (YMSLs). YMSLs are indigenous sign languages used by deaf and hearing people in Yucatec Maya villages with a high incidence of deafness in the peninsula of Yucatán, Mexico. The documentation of rural…

Most FLP research focuses on intrafamily communication (1FLP) and how this is impacted by larger contexts. But what happens when different multilingual families interact intensively on a daily basis? This article analyses language use during a holiday in India in and between four deaf-hearing befriended families, and how this evolved over the…

Maritime Sign Language (MSL) is a Canadian, minority sign language that originally stems from British Sign Language (BSL). Currently used by elderly Deaf people in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland (and Labrador), it is a moribund language, having undergone language shift to American Sign Language (ASL). MSL is…

In 1924 Jabbar Baghcheban created a manual system that employed the phonetic characteristics of spoken Persian and Perso-Arabic orthography for use in the education of deaf students (Ibrahimi 2007). This article is a first exploration of variation and change in this system as it has evolved into the Iranian manual alphabet. Data on the…