Mary's Take (Linguistics and More)

  The signs are meaningful: Understanding the linguistics of sign language (Part 3) I have encountered people who have asked me questions such as “How do you understand the different gestures in sign language?” This question does not come as a surprise to me. I would have asked the same if I were in their “shoes”. In this blogpost, we shall consider the morphology of sign language. Sign languages operate in the visual-gestural modality and the movement of the hands produces meaningful structures. In other words, when the phonological parameters of the signs are altered, the meaning is altered as well. To read more on the phonology of signs, check out my blog post https://medgronah.blogspot.com/2020/09/on-face-and-body-internal-structure-of.html   Morphology is the study of the smallest meaningful units in language and of how  those meaningful units are used to build new words or signs (1). That is, morphology considers how words are formed, and how languages combin...

  African sign languages are not American product: Indigenous African Deaf People and indigenous African Sign Languages As an African sign linguist, I have been bombarded with comments such as, “ Oh if you sign research on sign languages in Ghana, then you must know ASL ”; “ I guess all Deaf people in Africa know ASL because of Andrew Forster ” etc. These comments come from people who genuinely have not taken time to study the dynamics of African sign languages. I must comment that American Sign Language (ASL) has strongly influenced sign languages on the African continent and most urban sign languages used in Africa (with connections to ASL) are believed to be mutually intelligible (of some sort) to ASL. In other words, there are lexical and grammatical similarities in some of these urban sign languages (which I term foreign-based African sign languages).   This post is intended to highlight the indigenous African Deaf people and their sign languages. For more information ...

  Indigenous African Sign Languages Anytime I speak about my research to non-linguists, I have had to explain that Ghanaian Sign Language (GSL) and Adamorobe Sign Language are different sign languages used in Ghana.  Sign languages have been shown to exhibit typological differences at distinct levels of linguistic analysis. Linguistic typological study is aimed at classifying different languages according to their properties and structure. One typological classification being urban sign languages and rural sign languages (significant part of this post is culled from Edward  (Forthcoming)) . Typologically, sign languages are classified as urban and rural sign languages. Urban sign languages are the language of the Deaf community in urban Africa (and also the language for Deaf education). Rural (village) sign language used only in local communities. Urban sign languages are used by deaf dominant community in Africa (and few hearing signers such as interpreters, teachers...