Natural Sign Languages

Aditya PutriAditya Wardhana

Eka RambeHery Yanti

Laila QodariahZainah

Lyanthinova Gloria

Sign language A language used by many hearing impaired people

and by some who communicate with hearing

impaired people, which makes use of movements of the hands, arms, body,

head, face, eyes, and mouth to communicate

meanings.

Phonology

Formational ElementsCombining Formational ElementsProsody

In order to have sentences, one must have words, and words pronounced as a series of sounds. What about sign languages?

Formational Elements:

the list of hand shapes, locations and movements

They are comparable to

the list of consonants and

vowels in spoken

language.

Combining Formational Elements

A sequence of two hand shapes is prohibitedin the native sign of ASL and other sign lan-

guages Assimilation process:• greenback and beanbag

The nasal sound [n] often assimilates the labial

place of articulation from the [b] that fol-lows it:

gree(m)back, bea(m)bag. • oversleep made from two words sleep and sunrise

The word OVER-SLEEPmade from the two wordsSLEEP and SUNRISE.

The ASL compound the hand configuration ofSLEEP borrows a fea-ture from the following signSUNRISE.

Prosody: a collective term for variations in loudness, pitch and speech rhythm.

Sign languages employ facial

expressions, body postures and

rhythmic devices in similar way and for similar functions.

MorphologyWord

Formation

Verb Agreement

Classified Construction

Word Formation

Vocabulary of sign languages is purely iconic: there is one-to-one relationship between the form of a word or concept and its meaning.The ASL sign for airplane looks something like an airplane; the sign for give looks something like the act of handing something to someone.

Verb AgreementSign language verbs agree in person and in number with their subject and object.

Time-Subject-Verb-Object or Time-Subject-Verb for word

order. That is, when discussing past and future

events a time-frame is established before the rest of

the sentence, for example: WEEK-PAST I WASH MY

CAR. The active voice is in

Subject-Verb-Object word order:

BOY THROW BALL. The passive voice is in

Object, Subject-Verb word order: BALL BOY

THROW.

Classifier Constructions

Classifiers are signs that use hand shapes that are associated with specific categories

(classes) of size, shape, or usage.

Syntax

Recursion

Word Order

Sign Language and Universal Grammar

Recursionwe can put sentences inside other sentences and these can be Generated inside sentences.

Examples:Mary helped George.Cathy knew that Mary helped George.John believed that Cathy knew that Mary helped George.In English, recursion is often used to create ex-pressions that modify or change the meaning of one of the elements of the sentence. For exam-ple, to take the word nails and give it a more specific meaning, we could use an object relative clause such as that Dan bought, as in Hand me the nails that Dan bought.

Word Order

Sign Language and Universal Grammar

Language as an Art Form: Sign Language Poetry

The fact that poetry arises in deaf community teaches us:

the desire and ability to mold the formational elements of language into an artistic expression of

its content is a hallmark of human culture.

Wim Emmerik

Sign language poets use:

reiterative use of hand shapebasic hand shape with extended

index finger

sound is unnecessary, not only for communicative use of language

but for artistic use of language as well.

Summing UpSign languages are full linguistic systems that share with spoken languages defining characteristics of human language.

Sign languages use hand shape, location and movement that can be combined to create meaningful morphemes and words

Like spoken languages, sign languages have the power to express the full range of human experience, including poetry.