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…

The article is written in the tradition of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's theory of basic color terms. According to this theory there is a universal inventory of eleven basic color categories from which the basic color terms of any given language are always drawn. The number of basic color terms varies from 2 to 11 and in a language having a fully…

Looks at patterns of conceptual encoding in American Sign Language (ASL), drawing from adults' retellings of a story. Results suggest that ASL encodes a great deal of conceptual information about motion events, significantly more than English and presumably more than most other spoken languages. (Author/VWL)

The syntax of lexical units, or signs, of American Sign Language (ASL) is analyzed. Previous areas of study concerning pauses, functional sentence perspective, theme and rheme, and topic and comment are discussed. A model is offered to depict topic-comment relationships in ASL using space, vectors, and relationship rules. (SW)

Analysis of the communicative skills of a nine-year-old deaf boy with minimal schooling showed pantomiming and gestures to be his major mode of communication. Certain semantic patterns prevailed. Use of left or right hand also had semantic correlates. Formal and idiosynacratic signs were discovered in the boy's vocabulary. (Author/PJM)

The performance of two sign language interpreters in interpreting and transliterating two English texts in 1973 and again in 1985 was analyzed. Both interpreters significantly increased their use of four linguistic features of American Sign Language: classifiers; rhetorical questions; noun-adjective word order; and nonmanual negation. (Author/CB)

A comparison of terms from the lexical domain of color naming across 10 different sign languages from 7 different sign language groups suggested that, for naming colors, sign languages follow universal patterns not dependent upon the channel of language expression and reception. (Author)

Psycholinguistic and neurological examination of the use of duality of patterning as a primary criterion for determining if a system is a (signed or spoken) language revealed the existence of duality in processes that facilitate language acquisition. (27 references) (Author/CB)

Analysis of videotapes of five trained teachers of deaf children found that the teachers did not fingerspell often, but when they did they sought to express a specific English word. Clarity of fingerspelled utterances varied greatly, ranging from whole-word gestalts to words wherein individual letters could be discerned. (Author/CB)

Outlines phonological structure and processes of American Sign Language (ASL), covering: (1) sequential phenomena found in the production of individual signs; (2) the segmental phonetic transcription system; (3) paradigmatic and syntagmatic contrasts in ASL signs; (4) similarities between ASL and spoken language phonological processes; and (5)…

A longitudinal study investigated how a hearing child of deaf parents simultaneously acquired American Sign Language and spoken English. Neither of two unique properties of signed language (personal pronouns or "negative" sign markers) facilitated acquisition of English, suggesting that children's acquisition of grammar is relatively unaffected by…

Human languages can incorporate signs without obvious physical relationship to their referents. The nature of the relationship between sign (i.e., word or sign) and referent in signed and spoken languages is discussed from cognitive and historical research perspectives, and observations are given on the biological bases of this phenomenon.…

Identifies indicators of register or style in selected portions of two lectures presented in American Sign Language, and in the interpretations of each made by two interpreters. The indicators used are speaking rate, pausing, syntax, intonation, and lexical choice. Transcripts of data are included in Appendix. (Author/LMO)

Describes single finger sign contact in data from ten different sign languages. The relative frequencies of signs using each of the four possible fingers are examined. Proposes distinctive features to explain the differences in frequency and use of these handshapes in sign languages in general. (Author/LMO)

In response to an earlier article (SLS 51) regarding duality of patterning in the evolution of language, it is suggested that all utterances of a language be coded into elementary units of meaning that could be manipulated into larger units of discourse. This method would attempt to systematize a language's constantly changing phonemic inventory.…