Is it possible to identify sign languages by their prosody, that
is, the rhythm and stress of sign production, and then determine if
they are related to each other or other sign languages? If so,
reasoned authors Donna Jo Napoli, Mark Mai, and Nicholas Gaw,
perhaps they could offer such identification as a new way to
typologize, or categorize sign languages by their structural
features. Their new collaboration "Primary Movement in Sign
Languages: A Study of Six Languages" traces the process and
findings from this unique investigation.
Resolving on the direction of movement as the prosodic factor to
track, they began their research by comparing five sign languages:
American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language (BSL), Italian
Sign Language (LIS), French Sign Language (LSF), and Australian
Sign Language (Auslan). They soon discovered that the languages in
their study clustered with respect to several characteristics along
genetic lines, with BSL and Auslan contrasting with LSF, LIS, and
ASL. They learned that sign languages with the same geographic
origin evolved differently when relocated, and they isolated
differences in each individual sign language. They compared four of
these established sign languages with the newly emerging Nicaraguan
Sign Language (NSL), with the exception of ASL due to their past
close contact, thereby validating their work as the first study to
identify sign language relationships without depending on
grammar.
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