It is quite obvious when English is written it is a visual mode of conveying English. However, to the novice, it is often assumed that because Enlish is represented in a visual mode via sign, it is a language separate from English. That is why the linguists made the distiction. And to avoid a liguistically confusing environment for the deaf child, it is necessary to make these disticntions. Likewise, it cannot be assumed that a SEE signing person will be udnerstood by an ASL using individual, due to syntactical and grammatical differences. In addition, when reading a written language,the phonetic loop is employed to allow the written word to be processed in the same manner that a spoken word would be processed. Not so when processing a spatial and time oriented language such as ASL. ASL is procesessed in the way that other visual information is processed. That is why the structure has evolved to accommodate that manner of processing, and why its syntactical structure is not linear as are the sytactical structures of spoken langauges.
