Sign Language Flashcards
Sign Language
A linguistics system that is perceived visually and produced through hand movements and facial expression.
Signed Language
The expression of language in the manual-visual mode.
Homesign
A gestural communication system for interactions with a deaf family member. A kind of pidgin unique to each family.
Village Sign
A sign language used by both deaf and hearing members of a community with a high incidence of deafness.
Deaf Community Sign Language
A sign language that naturally emerges whenever a group of unrelated deaf individuals is brought together to form a community
Oral-aural mode
Transmission from mouth to ear.
Manual-Visual mode
Transmission from hand to eye.
Signed English
An artificial sign language for use in the classroom that uses ASL signs in English word order. Created to bridge the gap between ASL and learning to read.
Prosody
Fluctuations of intonation, stress, and rhythm in speech.
Visual Prosody
Facial expressions and body movements that convey an extra layer of meaning in a signed language
Nonmanual Markers
Conventionalized expressions of the face and movements of the head that convey specific meanings in signed languages.
Signing Space
The three-dimensional space within arms’ reach in front of the signer.
Referential Locus
A region of the signing space that serves as a referring expression during a discourse.
Verb Agreement
The incorporation of referential loci in the signing of verbs.
Verb Aspect
The temporal flow of the event expressed by a verb. Signers modify the movement of a sign to indicate aspect.
Layering
The expression of multiple morphemes within a single sign. Give an example a single sign that expresses 5 morpheme/meanings.
Help sign with tongue protruding moving from Mike’s space to Megan’s (Mike was carelessly helping Megan).
Iconicity
The degree to which a symbol resembles its referent.
Sign Language Advantage
Observation that infants can produce their first signed word earlier than they can produce their first spoken word. Believed to occur because hand control develops earlier than mouth control.
Bimodal Bilingual
Able to communicate in both spoken and signed language. Hearing children born to deaf parents.
Codeblending
Discourse in which signed and spoken language are produced simultaneously.
Oralism
An approach to deaf education that emphasizes spoken language instruction.
Manualism
An approach to deaf education that emphasizes signed language.
Speech Reading
Perception of spoken language by observing the movements of the face, lips, and tongue.
Those who are prelingually deaf:
three reasons why the literacy skills of deaf students lag behind?
Late start in language
Poor phonological awareness
Significantly different vocabulary and grammatical structure
Culture
A system of learned behaviors and thought processes shared by a group.
Vertical Transmission
The learning of language and culture through interactions with parents and elders
Horizontal Transmission
The learning of language and culture through interactions with peers (this is usually how we learned swear words too, depending on how vociferous your parents were).
Medical Model
Deafness is a disability that needs to be remediated or eliminated whenever possible.
Cultural Model
The position that deafness is within the normal range of human variation and provides an alternative experience that is visually oriented and centered on signed language.
What are three values of ASL storytelling?
Cultural transmission of Deaf values and identity
Develops new vocabulary
Provides discourse models
What are two common themes of Deaf humor?
The Deaf community member getting the upper hand over a member of the hearing community.
Rejection of deafness as a disability.
List 4 things Klima and Bellugi (1979) discovered in their study comparing Chinese sign language and American sign language.
Forms of some signs were identical in 2 signed languages but their meanings were different.
Some forms in one language were possible in the other, but did not exist.
Some signs in one language were simply impossible in the other.
Handshapes were not always made in exactly the same way, this would be like a ‘foreign accent’ in sign language.
