Differences - sign language & local spoken language

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Jane B.

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Many of you have probably seen the posts from me where I can't get over why American Sign Language follows French grammar rather than English in a country where English is the major spoken language. I know the, I guess you would call it consultant, for the development was from France but they knew most in the US spoke English.

So, how closely does the sign language for other countries that speak other than American English follow the grammar etc. of the local spoken language?
 
I guess I'm confused why you keep wanting to try and compare a spoken language to a signed language

but I was still interested in the question and looked around a bit and found this: About ASL

-discusses some on ASL linguistics and also a bit about Old French Sign Language
 
dogmom said:
I guess I'm confused why you keep wanting to try and compare a spoken language to a signed language

but I was still interested in the question and looked around a bit and found this: About ASL

-discusses some on ASL linguistics and also a bit about Old French Sign Language
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Because to me as a person that grew up in the hearing world and am still there (although completely deaf in one ear and profound in the other) it seems natural that both ways of expressing language in a country would be very similar rather than as completely different as ASL and spoken American English.
 
I would agree, but I can't answer the foreign language question because I don't know a foreign sign language. You would have to look up those language symantics.
 
I think that ASL follows the type of grammar that naturally develops when a manual language comes into being. Much moreso than French or any other spoken language. Yes, originally it was the sign language used in France that they brought over, which was one of the early seeds of ASL (lots of home signs from all over the country gathered together was another big contribution) but I think mainly that just means that we see a portion of ASL *vocabulary* in common with LSF.

But if you're getting more deeply into ASL, you're diverging so starkly from the grammar of *any* spoken language, it seems irrelevant to worry about French vs Enlish. For example, if you're using classifiers to describe that a huge number of people came to an event, you're setting locations up in space and using motions and handshapes that communicate the action of people swarming to the event. You're dropping grammatical structures from spoken language completely and communicating in a way that is much more natural for someone communicating manually.

I went to a presentation on BSL once, and during the Q and A asked about comparative grammar between ASL and BSL. The speaker thought about it for a minute and just started in with examples. I have not studied this subject (comparative grammar) but it seemed (to me, to the speaker, and I think as far as the general impression in the audience) that the grammars were pretty similar.

If anyone does have any good references on comparative grammars between different signed languages, esp if ASL is one of them, I'd love to know about them.
 
Jane B. said:
Many of you have probably seen the posts from me where I can't get over why American Sign Language follows French grammar rather than English in a country where English is the major spoken language. I know the, I guess you would call it consultant, for the development was from France but they knew most in the US spoke English.

So, how closely does the sign language for other countries that speak other than American English follow the grammar etc. of the local spoken language?
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Your persistent thinking along this line makes me want to go off topic and ask you just where you are going now that you have a serious hearing loss. Your honest answer, if you chose to answer would determine whether or not I should continue to read anything you say here.
 
Tousi said:
Your persistent thinking along this line makes me want to go off topic and ask you just where you are going now that you have a serious hearing loss. Your honest answer, if you chose to answer would determine whether or not I should continue to read anything you say here.
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What's the problem with it? It is a legitimate question.
 
Jane B. said:
Many of you have probably seen the posts from me where I can't get over why American Sign Language follows French grammar rather than English in a country where English is the major spoken language. I know the, I guess you would call it consultant, for the development was from France but they knew most in the US spoke English.
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ASL is not quite the same as LSF but syntactically - it makes sense. ASL is a visual language. ASL following a verbal language makes absolutely no sense for people who can't hear. don't think of ASL as a french language just because it follows french grammar. it's not really quite the same. from the very beginning, it has morphed into American Sign Language.

if you have trouble using ASL in ASL format... that's ok. it's fine if PSE/SEE works the best for you. I sign in PSE/ASL and I'm still learning how to sign in ASL fully.

Jane B. said:
So, how closely does the sign language for other countries that speak other than American English follow the grammar etc. of the local spoken language?
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trust me - you will like ASL better than foreign sign languages (except LSQ/LSF/LSFS). foreign sign languages such as chinese, japanese, etc. are dependent on speech while ASL isn't. many foreign sign languages have same signs for many things. that's just terrible. that's why it's dependent on speech.
 
Tousi said:
Who said it wasn't? I went off topic. Besides, I question the legitimacy. Go take a nap.
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Just because you have nothing to contribute doesn't mean you can take the thread off topic. The OP posted a good question and deserves an answer.
 
VacationGuy234 said:
Just because you have nothing to contribute doesn't mean you can take the thread off topic. The OP posted a good question and deserves an answer.
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and you aren't contributing anything either.

ssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh........
 
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It isn't that hard to understand.

A "grammar" is a set of rules for using a language. These rules guide users in the correct speaking or signing of a language.

Who decides what is correct and incorrect grammar?

The grammar of a language is decided by the group of people who use the language. New grammar rules come into existence when enough members of the group have spoken (signed) their language a particular way often enough and long enough that it would seem odd to speak the language in some other way.

If you don't want to seem odd to others in your group, you've got to speak (sign) a language according to the rules which have been developed by the community which uses the language.

American Sign Language is tied to the Deaf Community. We use our language in a certain way. That "certain way" is what constitutes ASL grammar.

American Sign Language has its own grammar system, separate from that of English.

What this means is ASL grammar has its own rules for phonology, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics.

In general, ASL sentences follow a "TOPIC" "COMMENT" arrangement. Another name for a "comment" is the term "predicate." A predicate is simply a word or phrase that says something about a topic. In general, the subject of a sentence is your topic. The predicate is your comment.

When discussing past and future events we tend to establish a time-frame before the rest of the sentence.

That gives us a "TIME" "TOPIC" "COMMENT" structure.

For example:
or "WEEK-PAST Pro1 WASH MY CAR "

[The "Pro1" term means to use a first-person pronoun. A first-person pronoun means "I or me." So "Pro1" is just a fancy way of saying "I" or "me." In the above example you would simply point at yourself to mean "Pro1."]

Quite often ASL signers will use the object of their sentence as the topic. For example:

"MY CAR, I WASH WEEK-PAST"
[Note: The eyebrows are raised and the head is tilted slightly forward during the "MY CAR" portion of that sentence.]

Using the object of your sentence as the topic of the sentence is called "topicalization." In this example, "my car" becomes the subject instead of "me." The fact that "I washed it last week" becomes the comment.

There is more than one sign for "WASH." Washing a car or a window is different from the generic sign for "WASH" to wash-in-a-machine, or to wash a dish. The real issue here isn't so much the order of the words as it is choosing appropriate ASL sign to accurately represent the concept.

There are a number of "correct" variations of word order in American Sign Language (Humphries & Padden, 1992).
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American Sign Language (ASL)
 
see, here's something I was thinking about this that Jane wrote

".....expressing language in a country would be very similar rather than as completely different as ASL and spoken American English. "


......BUT- ASL and English -are - completely different. Why should they be the same? The two don't parallel and you keep trying to put them there.
Why should English - spoken or written - be the standard to which other languages used in America, are held?
Seems that the original question is an ethnocentric one.
 
dogmom said:
Why should English - spoken or written - be the standard to which other languages used in America, are held?
Seems that the original question is an ethnocentric one.
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Not that I'm big on the English language as a standard, but I think the point is whether be easier for non-deaf to embrace it were it more like their native language.

Still, that is NOT the original question of the thread. The original question is how closely other sign languages follow their native language. If they do follow it more closely, it would be interesting to know if more non-deaf embrace it there.
 
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