3 - The Grammar of Sign Language

Abstract

This chapter discusses the grammar of sign language (SL). It focuses mainly on the research on the sign language of the deaf in Israel. The SLs of the deaf, the American Indian Sign Language, and SLs used by some monastic orders are all different languages; even the SL used by the deaf in one country may at times be in part incomprehensible to those in another one. However, various SLs also have many features in common, particularly in comparison to spoken languages. SLs appear to be almost entirely devoid of the usual type of inflection. Apparently, being basically an iconic language, SL did not naturally create suffixes and prefixes, which do not convey isolable bits of meaning but typically modulate the meaning of other lexical items. Only those SLs that were modified by outside influences have such bound morphemes. There is an absence of what might be call parts of speech in SLs. The lack of inflections and classification of signs into grammatical categories, taken together with the paucity of function words and with other omissions, serve to give SL a somewhat telegraphic appearance.