LING 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 34: American Sign Language, British Sign Language, Manually Coded Language
Sign Language
• Sign languages are full human languages that are equal in every cognitive way to spoken
languages
• This means we can ask the same questions of sign languages that we have been asking of
spoken languages
• What is different about spoken and sign languages is their modality
o Modality: the sensory channel through which the signals of the language are sent
and received
o Spoken languages primarily use the auditory-vocal channel, so the vocal tract
creates sound signals received by the ear and processed through the auditory
perception
o Sign languages primarily use the visual-manual channel, so the hands create visual
signals received by the eye and processed through perception
o *Unsolved debate among linguists regarding whether or not modality has an effect
on grammar
Misconceptions about sign language
1. There is only one sign language
o There are over 200 signed languages in use in the world
2. Sign languages are related to the languages spoken in the same society
o American Sign Language (ASL) is not a signed form of American English (as is the
case with other signed/ spoken languages in the same region).
o British Sign Language is also not the signed form of British English. While American
and British English are mutually intelligble, ASL and BSL are not
Do signs depict their referents?
• Common misconception that there is only one sign language often comes from the
mistaken belief that signs are iconic: you can figure out what it means from how it looks
o There are many signs in ASL you can guess, but many you cannot
o 1979 study found that fewer than 10% of signs in ASL are iconic. The vast majority of
signs have an arbitrary association between the sign and its meaning
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LING 1010 Full Course Notes
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