Past studies have identified the function of SELF as a canonical reflexive pronoun in American Sign Language (ASL). This study examines the use of SELF with fifteen hours of naturalistic ASL discourse framed by the cognitive-functionalist approach. The analysis reveals that the category of SELF is expressed in three phonological forms and exhibits…

This article focuses on the syntactic level of the grammar of Saudi Arabian Sign Language by exploring some word orders that occur in personal narratives in the language. Word order is one of the main ways in which languages indicate the main syntactic roles of subjects, verbs, and objects; others are verbal agreement and nominal case morphology.…

Hearing native signers often learn sign language as their first language and acquire features that are characteristic of sign languages but are not present in equivalent ways in English (e.g., grammatical facial expressions and the structured use of space for setting up tokens and surrogates). Previous research has indicated that bimodal…

Following a year of study of Saudi Arabian Sign Language (SASL), we are documenting our findings to provide a grammatical sketch of the language. This paper represents one part of that endeavor and focuses on a description of selected morphemes, both manual and non-manual, that have appeared in the course of data collection. While some of the…

Vincent, a hearing child of deaf parents who was fluent in ASL by the time of his first exposure to a spoken language (English) at about age 3, needed only a few months to learn the distinction between English first person pronouns and pronouns referring to other grammatical persons, but it was several years before he learned all the other…

A notable difference between signed and spoken languages is the use of nonmanual linguistic signals that co-occur with the production of signs. These nonmanual signals involve primarily the face and upper torso and are an important feature of American Sign Language (ASL). They include grammatical markers that indicate syntactic categories such as…

Describes the creation of "Sign Language Structure" and the "Dictionary of American Sign Language," including revisions of these publications and advances in the technology of recording signers conversing in American Sign Language. (five references) (JP)

This article describes efforts at the University of California, San Diego in the Education Studies Program to develop and field-test a teacher preparation program that combines best practices in bilingual education and deaf education. The training curriculum designed for this program relies on research that finds a correlation between ASL fluency…

Suggests that various parts of the grammar of American Sign Language--particularly its verb and pronoun system--give convincing evidence that such grammar cannot have derived from the grammars of spoken languages; rather the continuity is from cognitive activity expressed in gSigns toward linguistic organization both of the expressive material and…

Hearing children from deaf families, Codas, represent a relatively invisible linguistic and cultural minority. Many hearing people are unaware of the fact that American Sign Language (ASL) is a separate language with its own grammatical structure unlike that of English. This misconception has led to an emphasis on oral education for deaf people in…

Many moments that humans see naturally suggest something other than themselves. This is a legacy from the remotest time. Among animals, movements of prey and predator give each an indication of what may happen next and a basis for choosing their own actions. As species evolved, the movements that could be made and the meanings that could be…

The role of verbs in American Sign Language (ASL) is investigated. Verb mutations in ASL are very different from the kinds of grammatical deformations that occur in English, and are different from those that occur in spoken languages as a whole. (HP)

Discusses the paradigms in American Sign Language (ASL) resulting from a process called "numeral incorporation" and others in which numeral handshapes alternate to express different numerical values. Concludes that not only are the signs in the "decade" paradigm fixed units in ASL grammar, but so are all the other examples of numeral…

American Sign Language uses the face to express vital components of grammar in addition to the more universal expressions of emotion. The study of ASL facial expressions has focused mostly on the perception and categorization of various expression types by signing and nonsigning subjects. Only a few studies of the production of ASL facial…

Examines the negative modal form "can't" in French Sign Language (LSF). Contrasts the use of negation in LSF with that of American Sign language. Suggests the need for more holistic examination of signed languages. (Author/VWL)