LING 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: American Sign Language, Nicaraguan Sign Language, British Sign Language

• School: UConn
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 1010
• Professor: Akihiko Arano( T A)

Document Summary

American sign language (asl) is used by deaf people in the us and canada. It was created by young students through a combination of exposure to french sign language, several local sign languages from new england, and what they did at home. What is a language?- sign languages have these properties. Handshape: there are more than 50 fundamental handshapes that can be used in. One set of them comes from handshapes for english letters. Palm orientation: the direction that the palm is facing. Location: there are 13 locations of where you do the signs. Motion: how you move your hands or arms. In asl there is a distinction between nouns and verbs for words that can be both. It is in the number of taps: two taps for noun, one tap for verbs. With spoken language, information (like tense) can be added by adding an affix.