American Sign Language

Short description: Sign language used predominantly in the US

"ASL" redirects here. For other uses, see ASL (disambiguation).

"Canadian Sign Language" redirects here. For French Canadian Sign Language, see Quebec Sign Language. For the sign language specific to Canada's Atlantic provinces, see Maritime Sign Language. For the Native American sign language, see Hand Talk.

American Sign Language

Visual American Sign Language
Native to| United States, Canada
Region| Northern America
Signers| Native signers: 730,000 (2006)e25
L2 signers: 130,000 (2006)[1]

Language family

Francosign

* Mixed: LSF, Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, and Hand Talk
* American Sign Language

Dialects|

* Protactile
* Black American Sign Language
* see Varieties of American Sign Language

Writing system

| none widely accepted
si5s (ASLwrite), ASL-phabet, Stokoe notation, SignWriting
Official status

Official language in

| none

Recognised minority
language in

through legislation: Canada (federal); Saskatchewan (provincial); Ontario (provincial) only in domains of: legislation, education and judiciary proceedings.[2] through resolutions: Alberta, Manitoba.
45 US states and DC formally recognize ASL in state law; Five states recognize ASL for educational foreign language requirements, but have not formally recognized ASL as a language.[3][4]

Language codes
ISO 639-3| `ase`
Glottolog| `asli1244` ASL family[5]
`amer1248` ASL proper[6]

Areas where ASL or a dialect or derivative is the national sign language

Areas where ASL is in significant use alongside another sign language

Map of the North American Francosign languages. ASL covers the regions enclosed by the dashed line.

American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language[7] that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features.[8] Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology.

ASL originated in the early 19th century in the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of language contact. Since then, ASL use has been propagated widely by schools for the deaf and deaf community organizations. Despite its wide use, no accurate count of ASL users has been taken. Reliable estimates for American ASL users range from 250,000 to 500,000 persons, including a number of children of deaf adults (CODA) and other hearing individuals.

Signs in ASL have a number of phonemic components, such as movement of the face, the torso, and the hands. ASL is not a form of pantomime, although iconicity plays a larger role in ASL than in spoken languages. English loan words are often borrowed through fingerspelling, although ASL grammar is unrelated to that of English. ASL has verbal agreement and aspectual marking and has a productive system of forming agglutinative classifiers. Many linguists believe ASL to be a subject–verb–object language. However, there are several other proposals to account for ASL word order.

## Contents

* 1 Classification
* 2 History
* 3 Population
* 4 Geographic distribution
* 5 Regional variation
* 5.1 Sign production
* 5.2 Sign variants
* 5.3 History and implications
* 6 Varieties
* 7 Stigma
* 8 Writing systems
* 9 Phonology
* 10 Grammar
* 10.1 Morphology
* 10.1.1 Fingerspelling
* 10.2 Syntax
* 11 Iconicity
* 12 See also
* 13 Notes
* 14 References
* 15 Bibliography
* 16 External links

## Classification

File:American Sign Language demo - Travis Dougherty.ogv

ASL emerged as a language in the American School for the Deaf (ASD), founded by Thomas Gallaudet in 1817,[9]: 7 which brought together Old French Sign Language, various village sign languages, and home sign systems. ASL was created in that situation by language contact.[10]: 11 [lower-alpha 1] ASL is influenced by its forerunners, yet linguistically distinct.[9]: 7

The influence of French Sign Language (LSF) on ASL is readily apparent; for example, it has been found that about 58% of signs in modern ASL are cognate to Old French Sign Language signs.[9]: 7 [10]: 14 However, that is far less than the standard 80% measure used to determine whether related languages are actually dialects.[10]: 14 That suggests nascent ASL was highly affected by the other signing systems brought by the ASD students although the school's original director, Laurent Clerc, taught in LSF.[9]: 7 [10]: 14 In fact, Clerc reported that he often learned the students' signs rather than conveying LSF:[10]: 14

> I see, however, and I say it with regret, that any efforts that we have made or may still be making, to do better than, we have inadvertently fallen somewhat back of Abbé de l'Épée. Some of us have learned and still learn signs from uneducated pupils, instead of learning them from well instructed and experienced teachers.

— Clerc, 1852, from Woodward 1978:336

It has been proposed that ASL is a creole in which LSF is the superstrate language and the native village sign languages are substrate languages.[11]: 493 However, more recent research has shown that modern ASL does not share many of the structural features that characterize creole languages.[11]: 501 ASL may have begun as a creole and then undergone structural change over time, but it is also possible that it was never a creole-type language.[11]: 501 There are modality-specific reasons that signed languages tend towards agglutination, such as the ability to simultaneously convey information via the face, head, torso, and other body parts. That might override creole characteristics such as the tendency towards isolating morphology.[11]: 502 Additionally, Clerc and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet may have used an artificially constructed form of manually coded language in instruction rather than true LSF.[11]: 497

Although the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia share English as a common oral and written language, ASL is not mutually intelligible with either British Sign Language (BSL) or Auslan.[12]: 68 All three languages show degrees of borrowing from English, but that alone is not sufficient for cross-language comprehension.[12]: 68 It has been found that a relatively high percentage (37–44%) of ASL signs have similar translations in Auslan, which for oral languages would suggest that they belong to the same language family.[12]: 69 However, that does not seem justified historically for ASL and Auslan, and it is likely that the resemblance is caused by the higher degree of iconicity in sign languages in general as well as contact with English.[12]: 70

American Sign Language is growing in popularity in many states. Many high school and university students desire to take it as a foreign language, but until recently, it was usually not considered a creditable foreign language elective. ASL users, however, have a very distinct culture, and they interact very differently when they talk. Their facial expressions and hand movements reflect what they are communicating. They also have their own sentence structure, which sets the language apart.[13]

American Sign Language is now being accepted by many colleges as a language eligible for foreign language course credit;[14] many states are making it mandatory to accept it as such.[15] In some states however, this is only true with regard to high school coursework.

## History

A sign language interpreter at a presentation

Prior to the birth of ASL, sign language had been used by various communities in the United States.[9]: 5 In the United States, as elsewhere in the world, hearing families with deaf children have historically employed ad hoc home sign, which often reaches much higher levels of sophistication than gestures used by hearing people in spoken conversation.[9]: 5 As early as 1541 at first contact by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, there were reports that the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains widely spoke a sign language to communicate across vast national and linguistic lines.[16]: 80

In the 19th century, a "triangle" of village sign languages developed in New England: one in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts; one in Henniker, New Hampshire, and one in Sandy River Valley, Maine.[17] Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL), which was particularly important for the history of ASL, was used mainly in Chilmark, Massachusetts.[9]: 5–6 Due to intermarriage in the original community of English settlers of the 1690s, and the recessive nature of genetic deafness, Chilmark had a high 4% rate of genetic deafness.[9]: 5–6 MVSL was used even by hearing residents whenever a deaf person was present,[9]: 5–6 and also in some situations where spoken language would be ineffective or inappropriate, such as during church sermons or between boats at sea.[18]

ASL is thought to have originated in the American School for the Deaf (ASD), founded in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817.[9]: 4 Originally known as The American Asylum, At Hartford, For The Education And Instruction Of The Deaf And Dumb, the school was founded by the Yale graduate and divinity student Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet.[19][20] Gallaudet, inspired by his success in demonstrating the learning abilities of a young deaf girl Alice Cogswell, traveled to Europe in order to learn deaf pedagogy from European institutions.[19] Ultimately, Gallaudet chose to adopt the methods of the French Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris, and convinced Laurent Clerc, an assistant to the school's founder Charles-Michel de l'Épée, to accompany him back to the United States.[19][lower-alpha 2] Upon his return, Gallaudet founded the ASD on April 15, 1817.[19]

The largest group of students during the first seven decades of the school were from Martha's Vineyard, and they brought MVSL with them.[10]: 10 There were also 44 students from around Henniker, New Hampshire, and 27 from the Sandy River valley in Maine, each of which had their own village sign language.[10]: 11 [lower-alpha 3] Other students brought knowledge of their own home signs.[10]: 11 Laurent Clerc, the first teacher at ASD, taught using French Sign Language (LSF), which itself had developed in the Parisian school for the deaf established in 1755.[9]: 7 From that situation of language contact, a new language emerged, now known as ASL.[9]: 7

American Sign Language Convention of March 2008 in Austin, Texas

More schools for the deaf were founded after ASD, and knowledge of ASL spread to those schools.[9]: 7 In addition, the rise of Deaf community organizations bolstered the continued use of ASL.[9]: 8 Societies such as the National Association of the Deaf and the National Fraternal Society of the Deaf held national conventions that attracted signers from across the country.[10]: 13 All of that contributed to ASL's wide use over a large geographical area, atypical of a sign language.[10]: 14 [10]: 12

While oralism, an approach to educating deaf students focusing on oral language, had previously been used in American schools, the Milan Congress made it dominant and effectively banned the use of sign languages at schools in the United States and Europe. However, the efforts of Deaf advocates and educators, more lenient enforcement of the Congress's mandate, and the use of ASL in religious education and proselytism ensured greater use and documentation compared to European sign languages, albeit more influenced by fingerspelled loanwords and borrowed idioms from English as students were societally pressured to achieve fluency in spoken language.[23] Nevertheless, oralism remained the predominant method of deaf education up to the 1950s.[24] Linguists did not consider sign language to be true "language" but as something inferior.[24] Recognition of the legitimacy of ASL was achieved by William Stokoe, a linguist who arrived at Gallaudet University in 1955 when that was still the dominant assumption.[24] Aided by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Stokoe argued for manualism, the use of sign language in deaf education.[24][25] Stokoe noted that sign language shares the important features that oral languages have as a means of communication, and even devised a transcription system for ASL.[24] In doing so, Stokoe revolutionized both deaf education and linguistics.[24] In the 1960s, ASL was sometimes referred to as "Ameslan", but that term is now considered obsolete.[26]

## Population

Counting the number of ASL signers is difficult because ASL users have never been counted by the American census.[27]: 1 [lower-alpha 4] The ultimate source for current estimates of the number of ASL users in the United States is a report for the National Census of the Deaf Population (NCDP) by Schein and Delk (1974).[27]: 17 Based on a 1972 survey of the NCDP, Schein and Delk provided estimates consistent with a signing population between 250,000 and 500,000.[27]: 26 The survey did not distinguish between ASL and other forms of signing; in fact, the name "ASL" was not yet in widespread use.[27]: 18

Incorrect figures are sometimes cited for the population of ASL users in the United States based on misunderstandings of known statistics.[27]: 20 Demographics of the deaf population have been confused with those of ASL use since adults who become deaf late in life rarely use ASL in the home.[27]: 21 That accounts for currently-cited estimations that are greater than 500,000; such mistaken estimations can reach as high as 15,000,000.[27]: 1, 21 A 100,000-person lower bound has been cited for ASL users; the source of that figure is unclear, but it may be an estimate of prelingual deafness, which is correlated with but not equivalent to signing.[27]: 22

ASL is sometimes incorrectly cited as the third- or fourth-most-spoken language in the United States.[27]: 15, 22 Those figures misquote Schein and Delk (1974), who actually concluded that ASL speakers constituted the third-largest population "requiring an interpreter in court".[27]: 15, 22 Although that would make ASL the third-most used language among monolinguals other than English, it does not imply that it is the fourth-most-spoken language in the United States since speakers of other languages may also speak English.[27]: 21–22

## Geographic distribution

ASL is used throughout Anglo-America.[10]: 12 That contrasts with Europe, where a variety of sign languages are used within the same continent.[10]: 12 The unique situation of ASL seems to have been caused by the proliferation of ASL through schools influenced by the American School for the Deaf, wherein ASL originated, and the rise of community organizations for the Deaf.[10]: 12–14

Throughout West Africa, ASL-based sign languages are signed by educated Deaf adults.[28]: 410 Such languages, imported by boarding schools, are often considered by associations to be the official sign languages of their countries and are named accordingly, such as Nigerian Sign Language and Ghanaian Sign Language.[28]: 410 Such signing systems are found in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Liberia, Mauritania, Mali, Nigeria, and Togo.[28]: 406 Due to lack of data, it is still an open question how similar those sign languages are to the variety of ASL used in America.[28]: 411

In addition to the aforementioned West African countries, ASL is reported to be used as a first language in Barbados, Bolivia, Cambodia[29] (alongside Cambodian Sign Language), the Central African Republic, Chad, China (Hong Kong), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, the Philippines, Singapore, and Zimbabwe.[1] ASL is also used as a lingua franca throughout the deaf world, widely learned as a second language.[1]

## Regional variation

### Sign production

Sign production can often vary according to location. Signers from the South tend to sign with more flow and ease. Native signers from New York have been reported as signing comparatively quicker and sharper. Sign production of native Californian signers has also been reported as being fast. Research on that phenomenon often concludes that the fast-paced production for signers from the coasts could be due to the fast-paced nature of living in large metropolitan areas. That conclusion also supports how the ease with which Southerners sign could be caused by the easygoing environment of the South in comparison to that of the coasts.[30]

Sign production can also vary depending on age and native language. For example, sign production of letters may vary in older signers. Slight differences in finger spelling production can be a signal of age. Additionally, signers who learned American Sign Language as a second language vary in production. For Deaf signers who learned a different sign language before learning American Sign Language, qualities of their native language may show in their ASL production. Some examples of that varied production include fingerspelling towards the body, instead of away from it, and signing certain movement from bottom to top, instead of top to bottom. Hearing people who learn American Sign Language also have noticeable differences in signing production. The most notable production difference of hearing people learning American Sign Language is their rhythm and arm posture.[31]

### Sign variants

Most popularly, there are variants of the signs for English words such as "birthday", "pizza", "Halloween", "early", and "soon", just a sample of the most commonly recognized signs with variants based on regional change. The sign for "school" is commonly varied between black and white signers; the variants used by black signers are sometimes called Black American Sign Language.[32] Social variation is also found between citation forms and forms used by Deaf gay men for words such as "pain" and "protest".[33]

### History and implications

The prevalence of residential Deaf schools can account for much of the regional variance of signs and sign productions across the United States. Deaf schools often serve students of the state in which the school resides. That limited access to signers from other regions, combined with the residential quality of Deaf Schools promoted specific use of certain sign variants. Native signers did not have much access to signers from other regions during the beginning years of their education. It is hypothesized that because of that seclusion, certain variants of a sign prevailed over others due to the choice of variant used by the student of the school/signers in the community.

However, American Sign Language does not appear to be vastly varied in comparison to other signed languages. That is because when Deaf education was beginning in the United States, many educators flocked to the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, whose central location for the first generation of educators in Deaf education to learn American Sign Language allows ASL to be more standardized than its variant.[32]

## Varieties

Variants of ABOUT in Canadian ASL

File:About- General sign.ogv

About – General sign (Canadian ASL)[34]

File:About- Atlantic Variation.ogv

About – Atlantic Variation (Canadian ASL)[34]

File:About- Ontario Variation.ogv

About – Ontario Variation (Canadian ASL)[34]

Varieties of ASL are found throughout the world. There is little difficulty in comprehension among the varieties of the United States and Canada.[1]

> Just as there are accents in speech, there are regional accents in sign. People from the South sign slower than people in the North—even people from northern and southern Indiana have different styles.

— Walker, Lou Ann (1987). A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family. New York: HarperPerennial. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-06-091425-7. https://archive.org/details/lossforwordsstor00walk/page/31.

Mutual intelligibility among those ASL varieties is high, and the variation is primarily lexical.[1] For example, there are three different words for English about in Canadian ASL; the standard way, and two regional variations (Atlantic and Ontario).[34] Variation may also be phonological, meaning that the same sign may be signed in a different way depending on the region. For example, an extremely common type of variation is between the handshapes /1/, /L/, and /5/ in signs with one handshape.[35]

There is also a distinct variety of ASL used by the Black Deaf community.[1] Black ASL evolved as a result of racially segregated schools in some states, which included the residential schools for the deaf.[36]: 4 Black ASL differs from standard ASL in vocabulary, phonology, and some grammatical structure.[1][36]: 4 While African American English (AAE) is generally viewed as more innovating than standard English, Black ASL is more conservative than standard ASL, preserving older forms of many signs.[36]: 4 Black sign language speakers use more two-handed signs than in mainstream ASL, are less likely to show assimilatory lowering of signs produced on the forehead (e.g. KNOW) and use a wider signing space.[36]: 4 Modern Black ASL borrows a number of idioms from AAE; for instance, the AAE idiom "I feel you" is calqued into Black ASL.[36]: 10

ASL is used internationally as a lingua franca, and a number of closely related sign languages derived from ASL are used in many different countries.[1] Even so, there have been varying degrees of divergence from standard ASL in those imported ASL varieties. Bolivian Sign Language is reported to be a dialect of ASL, no more divergent than other acknowledged dialects.[37] On the other hand, it is also known that some imported ASL varieties have diverged to the extent of being separate languages. For example, Malaysian Sign Language, which has ASL origins, is no longer mutually comprehensible with ASL and must be considered its own language.[38] For some imported ASL varieties, such as those used in West Africa, it is still an open question how similar they are to American ASL.[28]: 411

When communicating with hearing English speakers, ASL-speakers often use what is commonly called Pidgin Signed English (PSE) or 'contact signing', a blend of English structure with ASL vocabulary.[1][39] Various types of PSE exist, ranging from highly English-influenced PSE (practically relexified English) to PSE which is quite close to ASL lexically and grammatically, but may alter some subtle features of ASL grammar.[39] Fingerspelling may be used more often in PSE than it is normally used in ASL.[40] There have been some constructed sign languages, known as Manually Coded English (MCE), which match English grammar exactly and simply replace spoken words with signs; those systems are not considered to be varieties of ASL.[1][39]

Tactile ASL (TASL) is a variety of ASL used throughout the United States by and with the deaf-blind.[1] It is particularly common among those with Usher's syndrome.[1] It results in deafness from birth followed by loss of vision later in life; consequently, those with Usher's syndrome often grow up in the Deaf community using ASL, and later transition to TASL.[41] TASL differs from ASL in that signs are produced by touching the palms, and there are some grammatical differences from standard ASL in order to compensate for the lack of nonmanual signing.[1]

ASL changes over time and from generation to generation. The sign for telephone has changed as the shape of phones and the manner of holding them have changed.[42] The development of telephones with screens has also changed ASL, encouraging the use of signs that can be seen on small screens.[42]

## Stigma

In 2013, the White House published a response to a petition that gained over 37,000 signatures to officially recognize American Sign Language as a community language and a language of instruction in schools. The response is titled "there shouldn't be any stigma about American Sign Language" and addressed that ASL is a vital language for the Deaf and hard of hearing. Stigmas associated with sign languages and the use of sign for educating children often lead to the absence of sign during periods in children's lives when they can access languages most effectively.[43] Scholars such as Beth S. Benedict advocate not only for bilingualism (using ASL and English training) but also for early childhood intervention for children who are deaf. York University psychologist Ellen Bialystok has also campaigned for bilingualism, arguing that those who are bilingual acquire cognitive skills that may help to prevent dementia later in life.[44]

Most children born to deaf parents are hearing.[45]: 192 Known as CODAs ("Children of Deaf Adults"), they are often more culturally Deaf than deaf children, most of whom are born to hearing parents.[45]: 192 Unlike many deaf children, CODAs acquire ASL as well as Deaf cultural values and behaviors from birth.[45]: 192 Such bilingual hearing children may be mistakenly labeled as being "slow learners" or as having "language difficulties" because of preferential attitudes towards spoken language.[45]: 195

## Writing systems

The ASL phrase "American Sign Language", written in Stokoe notation

Although there is no well-established writing system for ASL,[46] written sign language dates back almost two centuries. The first systematic writing system for a sign language seems to be that of Roch-Ambroise Auguste Bébian, developed in 1825.[47]: 153 However, written sign language remained marginal among the public.[47]: 154 In the 1960s, linguist William Stokoe created Stokoe notation specifically for ASL. It is alphabetic, with a letter or diacritic for every phonemic (distinctive) hand shape, orientation, motion, and position, though it lacks any representation of facial expression, and is better suited for individual words than for extended passages of text.[48] Stokoe used that system for his 1965 A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles.[49]

The ASL phrase "American Sign Language", written in SignWriting

SignWriting, proposed in 1974 by Valerie Sutton,[47]: 154 is the first writing system to gain use among the public and the first writing system for sign languages to be included in the Unicode Standard.[50] SignWriting consists of more than 5000 distinct iconic graphs/glyphs.[47]: 154 Currently, it is in use in many schools for the Deaf, particularly in Brazil, and has been used in International Sign forums with speakers and researchers in more than 40 countries, including Brazil, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Tunisia, and the United States. Sutton SignWriting has both a printed and an electronically produced form so that persons can use the system anywhere that oral languages are written (personal letters, newspapers, and media, academic research). The systematic examination of the International Sign Writing Alphabet (ISWA) as an equivalent usage structure to the International Phonetic Alphabet for spoken languages has been proposed.[51] According to some researchers, SignWriting is not a phonemic orthography and does not have a one-to-one map from phonological forms to written forms.[47]: 163 That assertion has been disputed, and the process for each country to look at the ISWA and create a phonemic/morphemic assignment of features of each sign language was proposed by researchers Msc. Roberto Cesar Reis da Costa and Madson Barreto in a thesis forum on June 23, 2014.[52] The SignWriting community has an open project on Wikimedia Labs to support the various Wikimedia projects on Wikimedia Incubator[53] and elsewhere involving SignWriting. The ASL Wikipedia request was marked as eligible in 2008[54] and the test ASL Wikipedia has 50 articles written in ASL using SignWriting.

The most widely used transcription system among academics is HamNoSys, developed at the University of Hamburg.[47]: 155 Based on Stokoe Notation, HamNoSys was expanded to about 200 graphs in order to allow transcription of any sign language.[47]: 155 Phonological features are usually indicated with single symbols, though the group of features that make up a handshape is indicated collectively with a symbol.[47]: 155

Several additional candidates for written ASL have appeared over the years, including SignFont, ASL-phabet, and Si5s.

Comparison of ASL writing systems: Sutton SignWriting, Si5s, Stokoe notation, SignFont, and ASLphabet

For English-speaking audiences, ASL is often glossed using English words. Such glosses are typically all-capitalized and are arranged in ASL order. For example, the ASL sentence DOG NOW CHASE>IX=3 CAT, meaning "the dog is chasing the cat", uses NOW to mark ASL progressive aspect and shows ASL verbal inflection for the third person (>IX=3). However, glossing is not used to write the language for speakers of ASL.[46]

## Phonology

Distinctive features in ASL

Phonemic handshape /2/
[+ closed thumb][9]: 12

Phonemic handshape /3/
[− closed thumb][9]: 12

Each sign in ASL is composed of a number of distinctive components, generally referred to as parameters. A sign may use one hand or both. All signs can be described using the five parameters involved in signed languages, which are handshape, movement, palm orientation, location and nonmanual markers.[9]: 10 Just as phonemes of sound distinguish meaning in spoken languages, those parameters are the phonemes that distinguish meaning in signed languages like ASL.[55] Changing any one of them may change the meaning of a sign, as illustrated by the ASL signs THINK and DISAPPOINTED:

THINK[9]: 10 | Handshape  | Closed fist with index finger extended

|

Orientation  | Facing signer's body
Location  | Tip of finger in contact with forehead
Movement  | Unidirectional single contacting movement
DISAPPOINTED[9]: 10 | Handshape  | (as for THINK)

|

Orientation  | (as for THINK)
Location  | Tip of finger in contact with chin
Movement  | (as for THINK)

There are also meaningful nonmanual signals in ASL,[9]: 49 which may include movement of the eyebrows, the cheeks, the nose, the head, the torso, and the eyes.[9]: 49

William Stokoe proposed that such components are analogous to the phonemes of spoken languages.[47]: 601:15 [lower-alpha 5] There has also been a proposal that they are analogous to classes like place and manner of articulation.[47]: 601:15 As in spoken languages, those phonological units can be split into distinctive features.[9]: 12 For instance, the handshapes /2/ and /3/ are distinguished by the presence or absence of the feature [± closed thumb], as illustrated to the right.[9]: 12 ASL has processes of allophony and phonotactic restrictions.[9]: 12, 19 There is ongoing research into whether ASL has an analog of syllables in spoken language.[9]: 1

## Grammar

Two men and a woman signing

### Morphology

ASL has a rich system of verbal inflection, which involves both grammatical aspect: how the action of verbs flows in time—and agreement marking.[9]: 27–28 Aspect can be marked by changing the manner of movement of the verb; for example, continuous aspect is marked by incorporating rhythmic, circular movement, while punctual aspect is achieved by modifying the sign so that it has a stationary hand position.[9]: 27–28 Verbs may agree with both the subject and the object, and are marked for number and reciprocity.[9]: 28 Reciprocity is indicated by using two one-handed signs; for example, the sign SHOOT, made with an L-shaped handshape with inward movement of the thumb, inflects to SHOOT[reciprocal], articulated by having two L-shaped hands "shooting" at each other.[9]: 29

ASL has a productive system of classifiers, which are used to classify objects and their movement in space.[9]: 26 For example, a rabbit running downhill would use a classifier consisting of a bent V classifier handshape with a downhill-directed path; if the rabbit is hopping, the path is executed with a bouncy manner.[9]: 26 In general, classifiers are composed of a "classifier handshape" bound to a "movement root".[9]: 26 The classifier handshape represents the object as a whole, incorporating such attributes as surface, depth, and shape, and is usually very iconic.[56] The movement root consists of a path, a direction and a manner.[9]: 26

In linguistics, there are two primary ways of changing the form of a word: derivation and inflection. Derivation involves creating new words by adding something to an existing word, while inflection involves changing the form of a word to convey grammatical information without altering its fundamental meaning or category.

For example, adding the suffix "-ship" to the noun "friend" creates the new word "friendship", which has a different meaning than the original word. Inflection, on the other hand, involves modifying a word's form to indicate grammatical features such as tense, number, gender, person, case, and degree of comparison.

In American Sign Language (ASL), inflection is conveyed through facial expressions, body movements, and other non-manual markers. For instance, to indicate past tense in ASL, one might sign the present tense of a verb (such as "walk"), and then add a facial expression and head tilt to signify that the action occurred in the past (i.e., "walked").

According to the book Linguistics of American Sign Language, ASL signs have two main components: hold segments and movement segments. Hold segments consist of hand-shape, location, orientation, and non-manual features, while movement segments possess similar features.

Morphology is the study of how languages form words by using smaller units to construct larger units. The smallest meaningful unit in a language is known as a "morpheme", with some morphemes able to stand alone as independent units (free morphemes), while others must occur with other morphemes (bound morphemes).

For example, the plural "-s" and third person "-s" in English are bound morphemes. In ASL, the 3 handshape in signs like THREE-WEEKS and THREE-MONTHS are also bound morphemes.

Affixes, which are morphemes added to words to create new words or modify their meanings, are part of the derivational process. For example, in English, prefixes like "re-" and suffixes like "-able" are affixes. In ASL, affixation can be used to modify the sign for CHAIR to indicate different types of chairs. The inflectional process, on the other hand, adds grammatical information to existing units.

By studying morphemes and how they can be combined or modified, linguists gain insight into the underlying structure of language and the creative ways in which it can be used to express meaning. Understanding morphology is essential to understanding how languages are built and how new signs or words can be formed.

Furthermore, understanding morphology has practical applications in language learning and teaching. For example, teaching students the basic morphological structures of a language can help them to better understand the language's grammar and syntax, and can also aid in their acquisition of new vocabulary.

In summary, morphology is an essential component of language and provides valuable insights into the structure and function of languages. By understanding the morphological processes involved in language formation, we can gain a deeper understanding of how languages work and how they can be effectively taught and learned.

#### Fingerspelling

The American manual alphabet and numbers

American Sign Language possesses a set of 26 signs known as the American manual alphabet, which can be used to spell out words from the English language.[57] It is rather a representation of the English alphabet, and not a unique alphabet of ASL, although commonly labeled as the "ASL alphabet".[58] It is borrowed from French Sign Language (LSF), as much of ASL is derived from LSF.[59][60] Such signs make use of the 19 handshapes of ASL. For example, the signs for 'p' and 'k' use the same handshape but different orientations. A common misconception is that ASL consists only of fingerspelling; although such a method (Rochester Method) has been used, it is not ASL.[40]

Fingerspelling is a form of borrowing, a linguistic process wherein words from one language are incorporated into another.[40] In ASL, fingerspelling is used for proper nouns and for technical terms with no native ASL equivalent.[40] There are also some other loan words which are fingerspelled, either very short English words or abbreviations of longer English words, e.g. O-N from English 'on', and A-P-T from English 'apartment'.[40] Fingerspelling may also be used to emphasize a word that would normally be signed otherwise.[40]

### Syntax

ASL is a subject–verb–object (SVO) language, but various phenomena affect that basic word order.[61] Basic SVO sentences are signed without any pauses:[32]

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

However, other word orders may also occur since ASL allows the topic of a sentence to be moved to sentence-initial position, a phenomenon known as topicalization.[62] In object–subject–verb (OSV) sentences, the object is topicalized, marked by a forward head-tilt and a pause:[63]

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

Besides, word orders can be obtained through the phenomenon of subject copy in which the subject is repeated at the end of the sentence, accompanied by head nodding for clarification or emphasis:[32]

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

ASL also allows null subject sentences whose subject is implied, rather than stated explicitly. Subjects can be copied even in a null subject sentence, and the subject is then omitted from its original position, yielding a verb–object–subject (VOS) construction:[63]

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

Topicalization, accompanied with a null subject and a subject copy, can produce yet another word order, object–verb–subject (OVS).

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

Those properties of ASL allow it a variety of word orders, leading many to question which is the true, underlying, "basic" order. There are several other proposals that attempt to account for the flexibility of word order in ASL. One proposal is that languages like ASL are best described with a topic–comment structure whose words are ordered by their importance in the sentence, rather than by their syntactic properties.[64] Another hypothesis is that ASL exhibits free word order, in which syntax is not encoded in word order but can be encoded by other means such as head nods, eyebrow movement, and body position.[61]

## Iconicity

Common misconceptions are that signs are iconically self-explanatory, that they are a transparent imitation of what they mean, or even that they are pantomime.[65] In fact, many signs bear no resemblance to their referent because they were originally arbitrary symbols, or their iconicity has been obscured over time.[65] Even so, in ASL iconicity plays a significant role; a high percentage of signs resemble their referents in some way.[66] That may be because the medium of sign, three-dimensional space, naturally allows more iconicity than oral language.[65]

In the era of the influential linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, it was assumed that the mapping between form and meaning in language must be completely arbitrary.[66] Although onomatopoeia is a clear exception, since words like "choo-choo" bear clear resemblance to the sounds that they mimic, the Saussurean approach was to treat them as marginal exceptions.[67] ASL, with its significant inventory of iconic signs, directly challenges that theory.[68]

Research on acquisition of pronouns in ASL has shown that children do not always take advantage of the iconic properties of signs when they interpret their meaning.[69] It has been found that when children acquire the pronoun "you", the iconicity of the point (at the child) is often confused, being treated more like a name.[70] That is a similar finding to research in oral languages on pronoun acquisition. It has also been found that iconicity of signs does not affect immediate memory and recall; less iconic signs are remembered just as well as highly-iconic signs.[71]

## See also

* American Sign Language grammar
* American Sign Language literature
* Baby sign language
* Bimodal bilingualism
* Great ape language, of which ASL has been one attempted mode
* Inspirisles
* Legal recognition of sign languages
* Pointing
* Sign name
* ASL interpreting
* Billingual-Bicultural Education

## Notes

1. ↑ In particular, Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, Henniker Sign Language, and Sandy River Valley Sign Language were brought to the school by students. They, in turn, appear to have been influenced by early British Sign Language and did not involve input from indigenous Native American sign systems. See Padden (2010:11), Lane, Pillard & French (2000:17), and Johnson & Schembri (2007:68).
2. ↑ The Abbé Charles-Michel de l'Épée, founder of the Parisian school Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris, was the first to acknowledge that sign language could be used to educate the deaf. An oft-repeated folk tale states that while visiting a parishioner, Épee met two deaf daughters conversing with each other using LSF. The mother explained that her daughters were being educated privately by means of pictures. Épée is said to have been inspired by those deaf children when he established the first educational institution for the deaf.[21]
3. ↑ Whereas deafness was genetically recessive on Martha's Vineyard, it was dominant in Henniker. On the one hand, this dominance likely aided the development of sign language in Henniker since families would be more likely to have the critical mass of deaf people necessary for the propagation of signing. On the other hand, in Martha's Vineyard the deaf were more likely to have more hearing relatives, which may have fostered a sense of shared identity that led to more inter-group communication than in Henniker.[22]
4. ↑ Although some surveys of smaller scope measure ASL use, such as the California Department of Education recording ASL use in the home when children begin school, ASL use in the general American population has not been directly measured. See Mitchell et al. (2006:1).
5. ↑ Stokoe himself termed them cheremes, but other linguists have referred to them as phonemes. See Bahan (1996:11).

## References

1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `e25`
2. ↑ Province of Ontario (2007). "Bill 213: An Act to recognize sign language as an official language in Ontario". http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/bills/bills_detail.do?locale=en&BillID=1619&isCurrent=false&BillStagePrintId=.
3. ↑ ((Education Policy Counsel at National Association of the Deaf)). "States that Recognize American Sign Language as a Foreign Language". https://www.nad.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/List_States_Recognizing_ASL.pdf.
4. ↑ "D.C. Law 14-50. American Sign Language Recognition Act of 2001.". Council of the District of Columbia. 2001-10-26. https://code.dccouncil.gov/us/dc/council/laws/14-50.
5. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "ASLic". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/asli1244.
6. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "American Sign Language". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/amer1248.
7. ↑ About American Sign Language , Deaf Research Library, Karen Nakamura
8. ↑ "American Sign Language" (in en). 2015-08-18. https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/american-sign-language.
9. ↑ 9.00 9.01 9.02 9.03 9.04 9.05 9.06 9.07 9.08 9.09 9.10 9.11 9.12 9.13 9.14 9.15 9.16 9.17 9.18 9.19 9.20 9.21 9.22 9.23 9.24 9.25 9.26 9.27 9.28 9.29 9.30 9.31 9.32 Bahan (1996)
10. ↑ 10.00 10.01 10.02 10.03 10.04 10.05 10.06 10.07 10.08 10.09 10.10 10.11 10.12 10.13 Padden (2010)
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 Kegl (2008)
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Johnson & Schembri (2007)
13. ↑ "ASL as a Foreign Language Fact Sheet". http://www.unm.edu/~wilcox/UNM/facts.html.
14. ↑ Wilcox Phd, Sherman (May 2016). "Universities That Accept ASL In Fulfillment Of Foreign Language Requirements.". http://www.unm.edu/~wilcox/UNM/univlist.html.
15. ↑ Burke, Sheila (April 26, 2017). "Bill Passes Requiring Sign Language Students Receive Credit". https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/tennessee/articles/2017-04-26/tennessee-passes-sign-language-bill.
16. ↑ Ceil Lucas, 1995, The Sociolinguistics of the Deaf Community
17. ↑ Lane, Pillard & French (2000:17)
18. ↑ Groce, Nora Ellen (1985). Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-27041-1. https://archive.org/details/everyoneherespok00groc_0. Retrieved 21 October 2010. "everyone here sign."
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 "A Brief History of ASD". American School for the Deaf. n.d.. http://www.asd-1817.org/page.cfm?p=429.
20. ↑ "A Brief History Of The American Asylum, At Hartford, For The Education And Instruction Of The Deaf And Dumb". 1893. http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/lib/detail.html?id=1371.
21. ↑ See:
* Ruben, Robert J. (2005). "Sign language: Its history and contribution to the understanding of the biological nature of language". Acta Oto-Laryngologica 125 (5): 464–7. doi:10.1080/00016480510026287. PMID 16092534.
* Padden, Carol A. (2001). Folk Explanation in Language Survival in: Deaf World: A Historical Reader and Primary Sourcebook, Lois Bragg, Ed.. New York: New York University Press. pp. 107–108. ISBN 978-0-8147-9853-9.
22. ↑ See Lane, Pillard & French (2000:39).
23. ↑ Shaw & Delaporte 2015, p. xii-xiv.
24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 24.5 Armstrong & Karchmer (2002)
25. ↑ Stokoe, William C. 1960. Sign Language Structure: An Outline of the Visual Communication Systems of the American Deaf , Studies in linguistics: Occasional papers (No. 8). Buffalo: Dept. of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Buffalo.
26. ↑ "American Sign Language, ASL or Ameslan". Handspeak.com. http://www.handspeak.com/byte/a/index.php?byte=ameslan.
27. ↑ 27.00 27.01 27.02 27.03 27.04 27.05 27.06 27.07 27.08 27.09 27.10 Mitchell et al. (2006)
28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 28.3 28.4 Nyst (2010)
29. ↑ Benoit Duchateau-Arminjon, 2013, Healing Cambodia One Child at a Time, p. 180.
30. ↑ Rogelio, Contreras (November 15, 2002). "Regional, Cultural, and Sociolinguistic Variation of ASL in the United States". http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/sociolinguisticvariationofasl.htm.
31. ↑ Gallaudet Department of Linguistics (2017-09-16), Do sign languages have accents?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gli3akhYOSo, retrieved 2018-04-27
32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 32.2 32.3 Valli, Clayton (2005). Linguistics of American Sign Language: An Introduction. Washington, D.C.: Clerc Books. p. 169. ISBN 978-1-56368-283-4.
33. ↑ Blau, Shane (2017). "Indexing Gay Identities in American Sign Language". Sign Language Studies 18 (1): 5–40. doi:10.1353/sls.2017.0019.
34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 34.2 34.3 Bailey & Dolby (2002:1–2)
35. ↑ Lucas, Bayley & Valli (2003:36)
36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 36.2 36.3 36.4 Solomon (2010)
37. ↑ Bolivian Sign Language at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
38. ↑ Hurlbut (2003, 7. Conclusion)
39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 39.2 Nakamura, Karen (2008). "About ASL". Deaf Resource Library. http://www.deaflibrary.org/asl.html.
40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 40.2 40.3 40.4 40.5 Costello (2008:xxv)
41. ↑ Collins (2004:33)
42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 Morris, Amanda (2022-07-26). "How Sign Language Evolves as Our World Does" (in en-US). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/26/us/american-sign-language-changes.html.
43. ↑ Newman, Aaron J.; Bavelier, Daphne; Corina, David; Jezzard, Peter; Neville, Helen J. (2002). "A critical period for right hemisphere recruitment in American Sign Language processing". Nature Neuroscience 5 (1): 76–80. doi:10.1038/nn775. PMID 11753419.
44. ↑ Denworth, Ldyia (2014). I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey through the Science of Sound and Language. US: Penguin Group. pp. 293. ISBN 978-0-525-95379-1.
45. ↑ 45.0 45.1 45.2 45.3 Bishop & Hicks (2005)
46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 Supalla & Cripps (2011, ASL Gloss as an Intermediary Writing System)
47. ↑ 47.00 47.01 47.02 47.03 47.04 47.05 47.06 47.07 47.08 47.09 van der Hulst & Channon (2010)
48. ↑ Armstrong, David F., and Michael A. Karchmer. "William C. Stokoe and the Study of Signed Languages." Sign Language Studies 9.4 (2009): 389-397. Academic Search Premier. Web. 7 June 2012.
49. ↑ Stokoe, William C.; Dorothy C. Casterline; Carl G. Croneberg. 1965. A dictionary of American sign languages on linguistic principles. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet College Press
50. ↑ Everson, Michael; Slevinski, Stephen; Sutton, Valerie. "Proposal for encoding Sutton SignWriting in the UCS". http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n4342.pdf.
51. ↑ Charles Butler, Center for Sutton Movement Writing, 2014
52. ↑ "SignWriting Symposium Presentation 32". signwriting.org. http://www.signwriting.org/symposium/presentation0032.html.
53. ↑ "Test wikis of sign languages". incubator.wikimedia.org. https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Incubator:Test_wikis_of_sign_languages.
54. ↑ "Request for ASL Wikipedia". meta.wikimedia.org. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_American_Sign_Language_2.
55. ↑ Baker, Anne; van den Bogaerde, Beppie; Pfau, Roland; Schermer, Trude (2016). The Linguistics of Sign Languages : An Introduction. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027212306.
56. ↑ Valli & Lucas (2000:86)
57. ↑ Costello (2008:xxiv)
58. ↑ "Sign language alphabets". https://www.handspeak.com/learn/212/.
59. ↑ "What Is American Sign Language (ASL)? | NIDCD" (in en). 2021-10-29. https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/american-sign-language.
60. ↑ "The Many Languages of Sign Language" (in en-US). 2021-09-23. https://www.littlepassports.com/blog/world-community/the-many-languages-of-sign-language/.
61. ↑ 61.0 61.1 Neidle, Carol (2000). The Syntax of American Sign Language: Functional Categories and Hierarchical Structures. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-262-14067-6. https://archive.org/details/syntaxofamerican00caro/page/59.
62. ↑ Valli, Clayton (2005). Linguistics of American Sign Language: An Introduction. Washington, D.C.: Clerc Books. p. 85. ISBN 978-1-56368-283-4.
63. ↑ 63.0 63.1 Valli, Clayton (2005). Linguistics of American Sign Language: An Introduction. Washington, D.C.: Clerc Books. p. 86. ISBN 978-1-56368-283-4.
64. ↑ Lillo-Martin, Diane (November 1986). "Two Kinds of Null Arguments in American Sign Language". Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4 (4): 415. doi:10.1007/bf00134469.
65. ↑ 65.0 65.1 65.2 Costello (2008:xxiii)
66. ↑ 66.0 66.1 Liddell (2002:60)
67. ↑ Liddell (2002:61)
68. ↑ Liddell (2002:62)
69. ↑ Thompson, Robin L.; Vinson, David P.; Vigliocco, Gabriella (March 2009). "The Link Between Form and Meaning in American Sign Language: Lexical Processing Effects". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 35 (2): 550–557. doi:10.1037/a0014547. ISSN 0278-7393. PMID 19271866.
70. ↑ Petitto, Laura A. (1987). "On the autonomy of language and gesture: Evidence from the acquisition of personal pronouns in American sign language". Cognition 27 (1): 1–52. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(87)90034-5. PMID 3691016.
71. ↑ Klima & Bellugi (1979:27)

## Bibliography

* Armstrong, David; Karchmer, Michael (2002), "William C. Stokoe and the Study of Signed Languages", in Armstrong, David; Karchmer, Michael; Van Cleve, John, The Study of Signed Languages, Gallaudet University, pp. xi–xix, ISBN 978-1-56368-123-3, https://books.google.com/books?id=Pc-Rcg2-L0UC&q=William+C.+Stokoe+and+the+Study+of+Signed+Languages, retrieved November 25, 2012
* Bahan, Benjamin (1996). Non-Manual Realization of Agreement in American Sign Language. Boston University. http://louis-xiv.bu.edu/pub/asl/disserts/Bahan96.pdf. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
* Bailey, Carol; Dolby, Kathy (2002). The Canadian dictionary of ASL. Edmonton, AB: The University of Alberta Press. ISBN 978-0888643001. https://archive.org/details/canadiandictiona00bail.
* Bishop, Michele; Hicks, Sherry (2005). "Orange Eyes: Bimodal Bilingualism in Hearing Adults from Deaf Families". Sign Language Studies 5 (2): 188–230. doi:10.1353/sls.2005.0001.
* Collins, Steven (2004). Adverbial Morphemes in Tactile American Sign Language. Union Institute & University.
* Costello, Elaine (2008). American Sign Language Dictionary. Random House. ISBN 978-0375426162. https://archive.org/details/randomhousewebst00elai_0. Retrieved November 26, 2012.
* Hurlbut, Hope (2003), "A Preliminary Survey of the Signed Languages of Malaysia", in Baker, Anne; van den Bogaerde, Beppie, Cross-linguistic perspectives in sign language research: selected papers from TISLR, Hamburg: Signum Verlag, pp. 31–46, http://www.signwriting.org/archive/docs6/sw0593_SignLanguages_Malaysia_Hurlbut.pdf, retrieved December 3, 2012
* Johnson, Trevor; Schembri, Adam (2007). Australian Sign Language (Auslan): An introduction to sign language linguistics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521540568. https://books.google.com/books?id=dnxDgCvEnJoC&q=asl+bsl+mutually+intelligible&pg=PA68. Retrieved November 27, 2012.
* Kegl, Judy (2008). "The Case of Signed Languages in the Context of Pidgin and Creole Studies". in Kouwenberg, Silvia; Singler, John. The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-0521540568. https://books.google.com/books?id=AyFK3L-U_PIC&q=ASL+creole&pg=PA493. Retrieved November 27, 2012.
* Klima, Edward S.; Bellugi, Ursula (1979). The signs of language. Boston: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-80796-9. https://archive.org/details/signsoflanguage00klim_0.
* Lane, Harlan; Pillard, Richard; French, Mary (2000). "Origins of the American Deaf-World". Sign Language Studies 1 (1): 17–44. doi:10.1353/sls.2000.0003.
* Liddell, Scott (2002), "Modality Effects and Conflicting Agendas", in Armstrong, David; Karchmer, Michael; Van Cleve, John, The Study of Signed Languages, Gallaudet University, pp. xi–xix, ISBN 978-1-56368-123-3, https://books.google.com/books?id=Pc-Rcg2-L0UC&q=William+C.+Stokoe+and+the+Study+of+Signed+Languages, retrieved November 26, 2012
* Lucas, Ceil; Bayley, Robert; Valli, Clayton (2003). What's your sign for pizza?: An introduction to variation in American Sign Language. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. ISBN 978-1563681448.
* Mitchell, Ross; Young, Travas; Bachleda, Bellamie; Karchmer, Michael (2006). "How Many People Use ASL in the United States?: Why Estimates Need Updating". Sign Language Studies 6 (3). ISSN 0302-1475. http://research.gallaudet.edu/Publications/ASL_Users.pdf. Retrieved November 27, 2012.
* Nyst, Victoria (2010), "Sign languages in West Africa", in Brentari, Diane, Sign Languages, Cambridge University Press, pp. 405–432, ISBN 978-0-521-88370-2
* Padden, Carol (2010), "Sign Language Geography", in Mathur, Gaurav; Napoli, Donna, Deaf Around the World, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 19–37, ISBN 978-0199732531, http://communication.ucsd.edu/cpadden/sites/default/files/Padden SL Geography.pdf, retrieved November 25, 2012
* Shaw, Emily; Delaporte, Yves (2015). A historical and etymological dictionary of American Sign Language : the origin and evolution of more than 500 signs. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. ISBN 978-1-56368-622-1. OCLC 915119757.
* Solomon, Andrea (2010). Cultural and Sociolinguistic Features of the Black Deaf Community (Honors Thesis). Carnegie Mellon University. http://repository.cmu.edu/hsshonors/62/. Retrieved December 4, 2012.
* Supalla, Samuel; Cripps, Jody (2011). "Toward Universal Design in Reading Instruction". Bilingual Basics 12 (2). http://www.towson.edu/asld/documents/SupallaCripps_FNL_000.pdf. Retrieved January 5, 2012.
* Valli, Clayton; Lucas, Ceil (2000). Linguistics of American Sign Language. Gallaudet University Press. ISBN 978-1-56368-097-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=mfS3GlTLAUMC. Retrieved December 2, 2012.
* van der Hulst, Harry; Channon, Rachel (2010), "Notation systems", in Brentari, Diane, Sign Languages, Cambridge University Press, pp. 151–172, ISBN 978-0-521-88370-2

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* Zia–Santa Ana Pueblos
* Western Keres
* Acoma Pueblo
* Laguna Pueblo

Maiduan|

* Konkow
* Maidu
* Nisenan

* Chico

Muskogean|

* Alabama
* Chickasaw
* Choctaw
* Koasati
* Mikasuki
* Muscogee

* Apalachee

Palaihnihan|

* Achumawi

* Atsugewi

Plateau Penutian|

* Nez Perce
* Sahaptin

* Klamath
* Molala

Pomoan|

* Central Pomo
* Eastern Pomo
* Kashaya
* Southeastern Pomo
* Southern Pomo

* Northeastern Pomo
* Northern Pomo

Salishan|

* Coeur d'Alene
* Columbia-Moses
* Halkomelem
* Klallam
* Lushootseed
* Nooksack
* North Straits Salish
* Okanagan
* Salish
* Thompson
* Twana

* Cowlitz
* Lower Chehalis
* Quinault
* Tillamook
* Upper Chehalis

Siouan|

* Assiniboine
* Crow
* Dakota
* Hidatsa
* Kansa
* Lakota
* Mandan
* Omaha–Ponca
* Quapaw
* Stoney
* Winnebago

* Biloxi
* Catawba
* Chiwere
* Mitchigamea
* Moneton
* Ofo
* Tutelo-Saponi
* Woccon

Tanoan|

* Jemez
* Kiowa
* Picuris
* Southern Tiwa
* Taos
* Tewa

* Piro Pueblo

Tsimshianic|

* Coast Tsimshian

Uto-Aztecan|

* Comanche
* Hopi
* Ivilyuat
* Kawaiisu
* Kitanemuk
* Luiseño
* Mono
* Northern Paiute
* O'odham
* Serrano
* Shoshoni
* Timbisha
* Tübatulabal
* Ute-Chemehuevi
* Yaqui

* Cupeño
* Tongva

Wakashan|

* Makah

Wintuan|

* Nomlaki
* Patwin
* Wintu

Yuk-Utian|

* Central Sierra Miwok
* Southern Sierra Miwok
* Tule-Kaweah Yokuts
* Valley Yokuts

* Bay Miwok
* Buena Vista Yokuts
* Coast Miwok
* Gashowu Yokuts
* Kings River Yokuts
* Lake Miwok
* Northern Sierra Miwok
* Palewyami
* Plains Miwok

Yuman–
Cochimí|

* Cocopah
* Havasupai–Hualapai
* Ipai
* Kumeyaay
* Maricopa
* Mojave
* Quechan
* Tiipai
* Yavapai

Others|

| Isolates|

* Haida
* Karuk
* Kutenai
* Siuslaw
* Washo
* Yuchi
* Zuni

* Chitimacha
* Tonkawa

|

Mixed or Trade
Languages|

* Chinook Jargon
* Michif

* Mohawk Dutch

Manual Indigenous
languages|

| Hand Talk|

* Anishinaabe Sign Language
* Blackfoot Sign Language
* Cheyenne Sign Language
* Cree Sign Language
* Navajo Sign Language

* Plateau Sign Language

|

Isolates|

* Hawai'i Sign Language
* Inuk Sign Language
* Keresan Pueblo
* Navajo Family Sign Language

Oral settler
languages|

| French|

* Louisiana
* Métis
* Missouri
* Muskrat
* New England

|

German|

* Pennsylvania Dutch
* Hutterite
* Plautdietsch
* Bernese
* Alsatian
* Texas

Spanish|

* Caló (Chicano)
* Isleño
* New Mexican
* Puerto Rican

Manual settler
languages|

| Francosign|

* American Sign Language
* Black American Sign Language
* Pro-Tactile American Sign Language
* Puerto Rican Sign Language

|

BANZSL|

* Samoan Sign Language

Kentish|

* Martha's Vineyard Sign Language

Isolates|

* Sandy River Valley Sign Language
* Henniker Sign Language

Immigrant languages
(number of speakers
in 2010 in millions)|

* Spanish (37)
* Varieties of Chinese (3)
* French (2)
* Tagalog (1.6)
* Vietnamese (1.4)
* German (1.1)
* Korean (1.1)
* Arabic (0.9)
* Russian (0.9)
* Italian (0.7)
* Portuguese (0.7)
* Polish (0.6)
* Hindi (0.6)
* Persian (0.4)
* Urdu (0.4)
* Gujarati (0.4)
* Japanese (0.4)
* Greek (0.3)
* Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language in the United States (0.3)
* Armenian (0.2)
* Khmer (0.2)
* Hmong (0.2)
* Hebrew (0.2)
* Laotian (0.2)
* Yiddish (0.2)

* v
* t
* e

Languages of California

Indigenous|

| Algic|

* Wiyot
* Yurok

|

Athabaskan|

* Tolowa
* Hupa
* Mattole
* Cahto
* Wailaki

Chumashan|

* Obispeño
* Island Chumash
* Purisimeño
* Ineseño
* Barbareño
* Ventureño

Ohlone|

* Karkin
* Chochenyo
* Ramaytush
* Tamyen
* Awaswas
* Mutsun
* Rumsen
* Chalon

Hokan|

* Chimariko
* Karuk
* Achomawi
* Atsugewi
* Northeastern Pomo
* Eastern Pomo
* Southeastern Pomo
* Northern Pomo
* Central Pomo
* Southern Pomo
* Kashaya
* Washo
* Mojave
* Kumeyaay
* Yana
* Yahi

Penutian|

* Klamath-Mudoc
* Yokuts
* Buena Vista Yokuts
* Gashowu Yokuts
* Kings River Yokuts
* Palewyami
* Tule-Kaweah Yokuts
* Valley Yokuts
* Wintu
* Bay Miwok
* Coast Miwok
* Lake Miwok
* Plains Miwok
* Central Sierra Miwok
* Northern Sierra Miwok
* Southern Sierra Miwok
* Valley Maidu
* Northeast Maidu
* Northwest Maidu
* Nisenan

Shastan|

* Konomihu
* New River Shasta
* Okwanuchu
* Shasta

Uto Aztecan|

* Cahuilla
* Cupeño
* Kawaiisu
* Kitanemuk
* Luiseño-Juaneño
* Mono
* Northern Paiute
* Panamint
* Serrano
* Tataviam
* Tongva
* Tübatulabal
* Ute

Wintuan|

* Nomlaki
* Patwin
* Southern Patwin
* Wintu

Yukian|

* Yuki, Wappo

Language isolates
and Unclassified|

* Esselen, Chimariko, Karuk, Salinan, Takelma
Plains Sign Talk

Non-Indigenous|

| Indo-European|

* American English
* California English
* Chicano English
* Spanish
* Armenian
* Punjabi
* Russian

|

Asian|

* Chinese
* Korean
* Tagalog
* Vietnamese

Francosign|

* American Sign Language

Italics indicate extinct languages

Template:Languages of Montana

* v
* t
* e

Languages of Oklahoma

Indigenous|

* Alabama*
* Arapaho
* Caddo
* Cayuga
* Cherokee
* Cheyenne
* Chickasaw
* Chiwere (Iowa and Otoe)
* Choctaw
* Comanche
* Delaware
* Hitchiti-Mikasuki
* Kansa
* Koasati
* Mescalero-Chiricahua Apache
* Mesquakie (Fox, Kickapoo, and Sauk)
* Muscogee
* Osage
* Ottawa
* Pawnee
* Plains Apache
* Ponca
* Potawatomi
* Quapaw
* Seneca
* Shawnee
* Tonkawa
* Wichita
* Wyandot
* Yuchi

Sign languages|

* American Sign Language
* Black American Sign Language
* Plains Sign Talk

Non-Indigenous|

* English
* German
* Spanish
* Vietnamese

Italics indicate extinct languages * indicates extinct language in Oklahoma but still spoken elsewhere

* v
* t
* e

Languages of Alaska

Indigenous|

* Aleut
* Alutiiq
* Central Yupik
* Siberian Yupik
* Inupiaq
* Tlingit
* Eyak
* Ahtna
* Denaʼina
* Deg Xinag
* Holikachuk
* Upper Kuskokwim
* Koyukon
* Lower Tanana
* Tanacross
* Upper Tanana
* Tsetsaut
* Hän
* Gwichʼin
* Haida
* Tsimshian

Sign languages|

* American Sign Language
* Inuk Sign Language

Non-Indigenous|

* English
* Spanish
* Ninilchik
* Tagalog
* Russian

Template:Languages of Hawaii Template:Languages of Quebec Template:Languages of British Columbia Template:Languages of Yukon Template:Languages of Nunavut Template:French Sign Language languages

* v
* t
* e

Sign language

* List of sign languages
* List by number of signers

Language families[a]|

Sign languages by family

Aboriginal
Australian|

* Eltye eltyarrenke
* Iltyeme iltyeme
* Rdaka rdaka
* Manjiljarra
* Warlmanpa
* Warramunga
* Mudburra
* Ngada
* Umpila
* Western Desert
* Western Torres Strait Islander
* Yan-nhaŋu
* Yir Yoront
* Yolŋu
* Djingili
* Meriam
* Miriwoong
* Worora Kinship

Arab Sign|

* Egyptian
* Kuwaiti
* Libyan
* Qatari Unified
* Yemeni

| Iraqi–
Levantine|

* Iraqi
* Levantine Arabic
* Jordanian
* Lebanese
* Palestinian
* Syrian

|

Possible|

* Emirati
* Saudi
* Omani

BANZSL|

* Auslan
* Papua New Guinean
* BSL
* Northern Ireland
* Fijian
* MSL
* NZSL
* Sāmoan
* SASL

| Swedish|

* EriSL
* Finland-Swedish
* Portuguese
* Teckenspråk
* Viittomakieli

|

Francosign|

* Proto-LSF

* Algerian
* DSGS
* Eesti viipekeel
* Irish
* Australian-Irish
* Libras
* Lithuanian
* LSC
* LSV
* LSCh
* LSF
* Romanian

Amslanic|

* American
* Black ASL
* Protactile
* BIM
* Bolivian
* Burmese
* Cambodian
* Costa Rican
* Dominican
* Greek
* Cypriot
* Jamaican
* Kuala Lumpur
* Panamanian
* Philippine
* Puerto Rican
* Quebec
* Singapore

| BISINDO|

* Jakarta
* Yogyakarta

|

Francophone African|

* Ethiopian
* Chadian
* Ghanaian
* Guinean
* LaSiMa
* Moroccan
* Nigerian
* Sierra Leonean

Austro-
Hungarian|

* Czech
* Hungarian
* ÖGS
* Slovak
* Ukrainian (УЖМ/USL)

| Russian|

* Bulgarian (БЖЕ)
* Georgian
* Latvian
* Mongolian
* Russian (РЖЯ)

|

Yugoslav|

* HZJ
* Kosovar
* Serbian
* Slovenian
* Yugoslav

Old Belgian|

* VGT
* LSFB

Danish|

* Malagasy
* Táknmál
* Tegnspråk
* Tegnsprog
* Teknmál

Dutch|

* NGT
* Gambian

Italian|

* LIS
* Tunisian

Mexican|

* LSM
* LESHO

Viet-Thai|

* Hai Phong
* Hanoi
* Ho Chi Minh
* Thai

Germanosign|

* DGS
* PJM
* Shassi

Indo-Pakistani
Sign|

* Bangalore-Madras
* Beluchistan
* Bengali
* Bombay
* Calcutta
* Delhi
* Nepali
* North West Frontier Province
* Punjab-Sindh

Kentish|

* Old Kentish

| Chilmark|

* Chilmark

* MVSL

Meemul Tziij|

* Highland Maya
* Nohya

Original Thai Sign|

* Chiangmai
* Hai Phong
* Old Bangkok

Paget Gorman|

* Namibian
* Diyari
* Jaralde
* Kalkutungu
* Pitha Pitha
* Warluwara

Paraguayan-
Uruguayan Sign|

* Paraguay
* Uruguay

Plains Sign Talk|

* Hand Talk
* Anishinaabe
* Apsáalooke
* Arikara
* Chaticks si Chaticks
* Cheyenne
* Coahuilteco
* Dane-zaa
* Diné
* Hinono'eino
* Hiraacá
* Icāk
* Karankawa
* Liksiyu
* Maagiadawa
* Meciciya ka pekiskwakehk
* Nakota
* Ni Mii Puu
* Niimíipuu
* Niitsítapi
* Nųmą́khų́·ki
* Nʉmʉnʉʉ
* Omaha
* Palus
* Piipaash
* Ppáⁿkka
* Schitsu'umsh
* Shiwinna
* Sioux
* Taos
* Tickanwa•tic
* Tháumgá
* Tsuu T'ina
* Umatilla
* Wazhazhe
* Wichita
* Wíyut'a / Wíblut'e
* Wyandot

| Plateau|

* A'aninin
* Kalispel
* ʾa·qanⱡiⱡⱡitnam
* Nesilextcl'n
* Secwepemcékst
* Sqeliz

|

Providencia–
Cayman Sign|

* Provisle
* Old Cayman (Guyanese)

Japanese Sign|

* Japanese
* Korean
* Taiwanese

Chinese Sign|

* Chinese

| Shanghai|

* Shanghai

* Hong Kong
* Macau

Isolates|

* Afghan
* Al-Sayyid Bedouin
* Albanian
* Amami Oshima
* Armenian
* Armenian Women's
* Belizean
* Bhutanese
* Bökyi lagda
* Bribri
* Brunca
* Bura
* Chatino
* Cuban
* Diné Family
* Dogon
* Ecuadorian
* Eritrean
* Enga
* Ghandruk
* Ghardaia
* Guatemalan
* Guinea-Bissau
* Henniker
* Hoailona ʻŌlelo
* Inuit
* Atgangmuurniq
* Ussersuataarneq
* Jhankot
* Jumla
* Ka'apor
* Kajana
* Kafr Qasim
* Kata Kolok
* Kenyan
* Somali
* Keresign
* Kisindo
* Konchri Sain
* Lyons
* Macedonian
* Maltese
* Magannar Hannu
* Mardin
* Mauritian
* M'bour
* Miyakubo
* Mossi
* Mozambican
* Mumu kasa
* Nicaraguan
* Old Costa Rican
* Ottoman
* Pasa kidd
* Penang
* Persian
* Peruvian
* Rennellese
* Rwandan
* Sandy River
* Salvadoran
* Spanish
* Tebul
* Trinidad and Tobago
* Turkish
* Ugandan
* Venezuelan
* West African
* Adasl
* Burasl
* Mofu-Gudur
* Nanabinsl
* Yoruban
* Zambian

Other groupings|

* Ethiopian languages
* Laotian languages
* Sri Lankan languages
* Sudanese languages
* Tanzanian languages (7+)[b]

* International Sign

By region[a]|

Sign languages by region

Oceania|

Australia
Auslan
Australian-Irish
Eltye eltyarrenke
Far North Queensland Indigenous
Iltyeme iltyeme
Rdaka rdaka
Manjiljarra
Warlmanpa
Warramunga
Mudburra
Ngada
Umpila
Western Desert
Western Torres Strait Islander
Yir Yoront
Yolŋu

Hawaii (USA)
Haoilona ʻŌlelo
Samoa and American Samoa
Samoan
New Zealand
NZSL

Asia|

Bengal
Bengali
Cambodia
Cambodian
China
Chinese
Hong Kong
HKSL
Indonesia
Indonesian
Kata Kolok (Benkala, Balinese)
India
Alipur
Bengali
Indo-Pakistani
Naga
Iran
Persian
Iraq
Iraqi
Kurdish
Israel
Al-Sayyid Bedouin
Ghardaia
Israeli
Kafr Qasem
Japan
Amami Oshima
Japanese
Miyakubo
Korea
Korean
Laos
Laotian
Malaysia
Malaysian
Penang
Selangor
Mongolia
Mongolian
Nepal
Ghandruk
Jhankot
Jumla
Nepalese
Philippines
Philippine
Saudi Arabia
Saudi
Singapore
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan
Taiwan
Taiwanese
Tajikistan
Russian
Tibet
Bökyi lagda
Thailand
Bangkok
Chiangmai
Thai
Ban Khor (Pasa kidd)
Vietnam
Vietnamese

Africa|

Algeria
Algerian
Ghardaia
Cameroon
Maroua
Ghana
Adamorobe
Nanabin
Ivory Coast
Bouakako (LaSiBo)
Kenya
Kenyan
Mali
Tebul
Bamako (LaSiMa)
Nigeria
Bura
Magannar Hannu
Senegal
Mbour
Somalia & Djibouti
Somali
South Africa
South African
Tanzania
Tanzanian
Uganda
Ugandan
Zambia
Zambian

North America|

Plains Sign Talk
Canada
American

Protactile
Blackfoot
Cree
Ojibwa
MSL
Quebec
Atgangmuurniq
Plateau
Greenland
Ussersuataarneq
Mexico
Chatino
Mayan
Mexican
United States
American

Black American
Protactile
Blackfeet
Cree
Cheyenne
Ojibwa
Keresign
Martha's Vineyard
Navajo
Navajo Family
Sandy River Valley
Henniker

Central and
South America

Argentina
Argentine
Belize
Belizean
Bolivia
Bolivian
Brazil
Libras
Ka'apor
Cayman
Old Cayman
Chile
Chilean
Colombia
Colombian
Provisle
Costa Rica
Bribri
Brunca
Old Costa Rican
New Costa Rican
Cuba
Cuban
Ecuador
Ecuadorian
Guatemalan
Guatemalan
Mayan
Haiti
Haitian
Honduras
Honduran
Nicaragua
Nicaraguan
Panama
Chiriqui
Panamanian
Paraguay
Paraguayan
Peru
Peruvian
Sivia
El Salvador
Salvadoran
Old Salvadoran
Uruguay
Uruguayan
Venezuela
Venezuelan

Europe|

Armenia
Armenian
Austria
Austrian
Belgium
Flemish
French Belgian
United Kingdom
British
Croatia
Croatian
Denmark
Danish
Teknmál
Netherlands
Dutch
Estonia
Estonian
Finland
Finnish
France
Ghardaia
French
Lyons
Germany
German
Greece
Greek
Hungary
Hungarian
Iceland
Icelandic
Ireland
Irish
Italy
Italian
Kosovo
Kosovar
Lithuania
Lithuanian
Moldova
Russian
North Macedonia
Macedonian
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Norway
Norwegian
Poland
Polish
Portugal
Portuguese
Russia
Russian
Slovenia
Slovenian
Spain
Catalan
Spanish
Valencian
Sweden
Swedish
Switzerland
Swiss
Turkey
Central Taurus
Mardin
Turkish
Ukraine
Ukrainian

International|

* International Sign
* Makaton
* Monastic
* Signalong

ASL|

* Grammar
* Idioms
* Literature
* Profanity
* Name signs

Extinct
languages|

* Chilmark
* Diyari
* Jaralde
* Kalkutungu
* Henniker Sign Language
* Martha's Vineyard
* Old French
* Old Kent
* Plateau Sign Language
* Pitha Pitha
* Sandy River Valley Sign Language
* Warluwara

Linguistics|

* Grammar (ASL)
* Bimodal bilingualism
* Cherology
* Handshape / Location / Orientation / Movement / Expression
* Mouthing
* Sign names

Fingerspelling|

* American
* British (two-handed)
* Catalan
* Chilean
* French
* Hungarian
* Irish
* Japanese
* Korean
* Polish
* Russian
* Serbo-Croatian
* Spanish
* Ukrainian

Writing|

* ASL-phabet
* Hamburg Notation System

| Stokoe notation|

* Stokoe notation

| SignWriting|

* SignWriting

| si5s|

* si5s
* ASLwrite ()

|

Language
contact|

* Contact sign
* Indian Signing System
* Initialized sign
* Manually coded English
* Manually coded language in South Africa
* Manually Coded Malay
* Mouthing
* Paget Gorman Sign System
* Signed Dutch
* Signed French
* Signed German
* Signed Italian
* Signed Japanese
* Signed Polish
* Signed Spanish
* Signing Exact English
* Tecknad svenska

* Bilingual–bicultural education
* Manually coded language

Media|

* Films (list)
* Television programmes (list)

Persons|

* Jabbar Baghtcheban
* Johanna Berglind
* Pär Aron Borg
* Thomas Braidwood
* Laurent Clerc
* Abbé de l'Épée
* Roger Fouts
* Valerie Sutton
* Thomas Gallaudet
* Abbe Sicard
* William Stokoe
* Pierre Pélissier

Organisations|

* Association of Visual Language Interpreters of Canada
* International Center on Deafness and the Arts
* Mimics and Gesture Theatre
* World Association of Sign Language Interpreters

Miscellaneous|

* Baby sign language
* CHCI chimpanzee center (Washoe, Loulis)
* Open Outcry
* Legal recognition
* Military hand and arm signals
* Monastic sign languages
* Tactile signing
* Tic-tac (betting)

^a Sign-language names reflect the region of origin. Natural sign languages are not related to the spoken language used in the same region. For example, French Sign Language originated in France, but is not related to French. Conversely, ASL and BSL both originated in English-speaking countries but are not related to each other; ASL however is related to French Sign Language. ^b Denotes the number (if known) of languages within the family. No further information is given on these languages.

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Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American Sign Language. Read more

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