Gesture and Sign

Languages
The visual gestural
medium
It is employed in many ways. Deaf
people use this medium too using a
system of gestures that work
independently of spoken language.

There are situations in which we

share with animals bodily gestures
to express our emotions for
instance raising of hair in
humans, feathers in birds, and fur
in mammals in fear. These are
mostly autonomic and involuntary.

On the other hand, there are

bodily movements that we sometimes
use deliberately along with
speech and sometimes instead of
speech such as moving hands, head
2
and torso.
 Gestures
Edward Sapir defines a gesture as "an elaborate and secret
code that is written nowhere, known to none, and understood
by all.”
A gesture is a visible bodily movement that is used in discourse as
either an utterance or as a component of an utterance involving
speech as well.
We use gestures when we get involved in discourse.

3
 Gestures
Gestures are used to

describe things,
greet and farewell,
draw attention,
show agreement
or disagreement,
give directions,
give expression to
thoughts and 4
 Types of gestures
▹ David McNeill distinguishes gestures into imagistic and non-imagistic.

▹ Imagistic gestures or iconic gestures are those in which

movements are made that are interpreted as depicting the shape
and size of an object, displaying an action of some kind, or
representing some pattern of movement.

▹ This type of gesture seems to be a reflection of the meaning of

what is said. Iconic gesture doesn't mean the same as what is said
but it may add meaning.
▹ When we trace a square in the air with a finger while saying I’m
looking for a small box.

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 Types of Gestures

▹ Non-imagistic gestures include pointing gestures and

beats.
▹ Deictic or Pointing: this type is used to point to places, things, or
people while talking. Pointing with an open hand contrasts with
pointing with the index finger. Eye-gaze and head movement are
also used in pointing. The speech and the sign combine to
accomplish successful reference to things or people around us.
▹ Pointing to a cake on a table and asking someone would you like some
cake? The same gesture can be used to point to the same table even after the cake
is gone.

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 Types of Gestures
Beats: these are short and quick movements of the hand or
fingers that have no particular meaning of their own but
accompany the rhythm of talk and are often used to emphasize
parts of what is being said.

A number of linguists have stated that gesture and language

make a unified whole. Speech and gesture complement each
other and they facilitate the expression of complex and
nuanced meanings. 7
 Types of Gestures
▹ Emblems are gestures that can stand alone and do not need
accompanied speech. Depending on culture, emblems
change, while gestures that are used alongside speech seem
to be similar across cultures.
▹ In North America the thumbs-up gesture is usually interpreted
as "good" or "ready". In many cultures, though, such as Africa
and Middle East, it is considered an obscene gesture.

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 Primary Sign Languages
▹ Primary sign languages also
called deaf sign languages are
natural human languages used 137 primary sign languages are
in communities of deaf people
listed in the recent edition of
and they are the first
languages of some group of
Ethnologue which includes:
signers.
ASL
▹ Visual-gestural medium is the Auslan
only medium used by these
languages.
BSL
DSL
▹ These are not representations FSL
of the surrounding spoken HSL
languages in the visual-
gestural medium but they are
ISL
languages in their own right. NSL
9
▹ Primary Sign Languages are mostly young languages
with their origins dating back just a few
hundred years.
▹ Nicaraguan Sign Language is more recent and emerged
in the 20th century. These language emerge in
settings where deaf people get together in a number
that can be able to form a community.

▹ Prior to the advent of urbanization coming with the

Industrial Revolution in Europe deaf people in
European countries were isolated from one another,
and the conditions were not conducive to the
emergence of a full sign language.

▹ Residential schools for the deaf were established in

the early 19th century and contributed in the
development of many others such as the BSL, FSL, ASL,
and NSL. 10
In isolated communities a high proportion of the population
is deaf usually hereditarily due to a high incidence of a
gene for deafness.

These situations lead to the emergence of sign languages

and
these are called village sign languages for instance:

▹ Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language in the island of

Martha’s Vineyard in the USA

▹ Kata Kolok Sign Language in Bali

▹ Ban Khor Sign Language in Thailand
▹ Adamorobe Sign Language in Ghana

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Village sign languages are known and used by all members of
the community, deaf and hearing.

Most deaf children are the offspring of speaking parents and

have not well been exposed to sign language from birth.

The absence of sign language input results in deaf children

developing system of home signs to communicate with the
people around them.

These systems are restricted to single families. They show

a few characteristics of language but are not fully
developed languages.

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 Phonetics and Phonology of Sign
Languages
Duality implies that the forms of signs can be analyzed as patterns
of meaningless components that are put together in various ways.
In the linguistics of sign language, the terms phonetics and
phonology are used with their use in linguistics to refer to the
structure of signs in terms of these meaningless components.

Phonetics, refers to the actual physical manifestations of the

gestures, while phonology is concerned with the system lying
behind these manifestations and what is used distinctively in it.

Most of the signs of sign languages are manual, made with the
hands
alone. There are one-handed and two-handed signs.
The second group is made up non-manual signs which are made with
a part of the body other than the hands, such as the face, eyes,
mouth, head and torso. 13
▹ Multi channel signs are the ones which involve both
manual and non –manual elements.

▹ The sign for gullible in Auslan is made with a manual

gesture (moving hand upward and holding nose between
thumb and index finger; hold is released and hand
moves downward to neutral position) which is often
accompanied by a forward tilt of the head.

▹ The facial expressions in M O U S E and ORGASM are

made using the same manual gesture, but differ in that
M O U S E is signed with a neutral expression while
ORGASM is produced with rounded lips and sucked in
cheeks. 14
 Handshape
▹ Manual signs are put into four components
1. Handshape
2. Location
3. Movement
4. Orientation

Handshape
▹ A wide range of handshapes are physically possible, not
all are used in any given sign language, though.
▹ Auslan contains 62 phonetic handshapes, of which
only about 37 are phonemic. The remainder are
variants of these 37.
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 Location
▹ Location concerns the position of the hand on or near the
body or in sign space.
▹ Most signs are formed within sign space; and it is within
this region that the hands and arms move and may come
close to or make contact with the body.
 Location
▹ A large number of distinctive locations on or near the
body are recognized in Auslan. There are 39 primary
locations, plus a number of secondary ones on the
subordinate hand. Some signs are produced in
neutral space, meaning that they are not located very
close to some part of the body.

1
7
 Movement
▹ Movement features are of two major types, primary
and secondary.
▹ Primary movement features are of path, which refer to
movement from one place to another.
▹ Secondary movements involve repeated changes
of handshape or orientation.
 Orientation
▹ Orientation concerns the direction of the palm
and fingers during the production of the sign.

▹ It could be upwards, downwards, left, right or towards

or away from the signer’s body.
 Morphology of Sign Languages
▹ Primary sign languages are similar to spoken
languages since they both show morphological
structure.
▹ They both have roots, derivational and inflectional
morphemes.

▹ Auslan has a negative derivational suffix and a

genitive suffix.

▹ Affixes are not frequent in sign languages.

▹ In a process called ablaut derivation and inflection are

expressed by a change in irregular forms in English
such as foot, feet and see, saw.
 Morphology of Sign Languages

▹ In many sign languages such as ASL, Auslan, BSL and

DTS certain verbs of movement and location show
various handshapes depending on the shape (round, flat),
domain (vehicle, human), or physical attribute (solid,
liquid), these handshapes are called classifiers.

▹ Classifiers are of three types:

▹ First, In ASL different handshapes or classifiers are used
to specify the location of money if its in the form of a
coin (round), a note (flat object), or a pile of coins (dome
shapes).

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 Morphology of Sign Languages
▹ Second, handling and instrument classifiers are used
which imitate the action of the hands on objects
produced with verbs denoting processes of handling
objects.

▹ Third, size and shape classifier handshapes that outline

the shape and size of the referent entity.

▹ In ASL there are surface handshapes that describe the

surface of objects narrow or wide, flat or round,
perimeter-shape handshapes that trace the outline of
an object, and depth and width handshapes that
specify depth and width of objects.
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 Morphology of Sign Languages
▹ Numbers in Auslan are signed by handshapes that can be
modified or substituted by handshapes for the numerals
2-9, for instance, the sign TOMORROW is signed with the
number 1 handshape, this may be replaced by the
number 2 handshape to denote TWO DAYS HENCE.

▹ Compounding is common in many sign languages

including ASL, Auslan and BSL. It is used to create
new lexemes.
▹ Parents is a compound of mother and father, furious is a
compound of think and bad, and boyfriend of boy and
friend.
▹ Compounds are signed as single units.
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 Morphology of Sign Languages

▹ Reduplication is used in many sign languages such as

ASL and Auslan in which distinguishes nouns from
verbs. The noun KEY in Auslan is made with repeated
movements while the verb LOCK involves a single
movement.

▹ Reduplication is used in ASL, Spanish sign Language and

Auslan to denote plurality of nouns.

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 Morphology of Sign Languages
▹ Pronouns exist in all sign languages and they mark first,
second and third persons and various numbers.
▹ In ASL singular pronouns are formed by pointing with
the index finger at the location of the real world
referent, location a non-present referent has been
made at in discourse.
▹ Sometimes the thumb is used instead. Two, three, four or
five referents are made with numeral handshapes
which are accompanied by movements specifying who
is included.
▹ Plural form of pronouns are made by movement of
the hand along different arcs.
▹ Possessive forms follow the same patter but use the
B handshape with the palm directed at the 25
 Sign Language Lexicon
In sign languages words
identify parts-of-
speech.

Auslan identifies nouns,

verbs, adjective,
adverbs, determiners,
auxiliary verbs,
prepositions,
conjunctions, pronouns
and interjection.
Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives,
Adverbs are open classes
and the rest are closed. 26
 Sign Language Lexicon
▹ Fingerspelling which is a system for spelling words with
the manual signs of a hand alphabet has influenced the
lexicon of ASL, BSL and Auslan through borrowings
from English. ASL uses one hand and Auslan uses both
hands.

▹ Fingerspelling is an essential part of sign languages

such as ASL, BSL and Auslan and is used in spelling
out place names, personal names, words with no sign
language equivalents.

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 Sign Language Lexicon
Fingerspelled items
have the same
meanings as the
corresponding English
words.

Some sign languages

use fingerspelling less
than others and replace
fingerspelled words
with native signs.

Idioms exist in sign

language as well. 28
 Sign Language Syntax
▹ In sign languages words can
be put together to form larger
and more complex units.

▹ In Auslan, a noun such as GIRL

can be joined by a pointing
sign that functions as a
determiner identifying the
referent, an adjective and/or
a possessive pronoun.

▹ This combination is an NP, and

there are rules on which the
order of signs making these
phrasal units is based.
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 Sign Language
Syntax
▹ Clauses are identifiable in
all primary sign languages.
▹ Auslan distinguishes
declarative, interrogative,
imperative and exclamative
clause types.
▹ In Auslan three roles can be
recognized actor, event and
undergoer.
Baby Cry
The baby is crying
Cat Love Dog
The cat loves the dog 30
 Sign Language in Linguistics
▹ Around the 20th century,
linguists considered
gesture systems of the
deaf derivatives, and
not languages on their
own.
▹ Interest in sign language
studies has grown.

▹ Similarities and
differences between
sign and spoken
languages help us
better understand each 3
1
▹ Both language forms share phonological, morphological,
lexical and syntactic structures.
▹ Sign languages like spoken ones have different dialectal,
age social, gender and religious variants.
▹ When sign language is acquired as a native language, it
is
similar to spoken language.
▹ Deaf children go through the same steps of acquiring sign
language as hearing children.

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 Sign Languages in Linguistics

▹ Psycholinguistic
investigations show similar
patterns in
comprehension and
production of signed and
spoken languages.
▹ Neurolinguistic
investigations reveal similar
patterns in brain damage
in both deaf and hearing
people. The left
hemisphere is dominant in
both spoken and sign
language processing. 33
 Sign Languages in Linguistics
▹ Signs of sign languages show a greater
degree of iconicity than do the words of
spoken languages.
▹ The fact that most deaf children are not the
offspring of deaf parents shows that they do
not acquire language as a native language.

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 Alternate Sign Languages

▹ Hearing people use

signs in communicative
situations as alternative
spoken expressions.
▹ These are used when
speech is inappropriate
or impractical.
▹ These systems are
called alternate sign
languages and are
mostly used by hearing
people.

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 Alternate Sign Languages

▹ Some alternate sign languages are highly elaborate and are

used in a wide range of communicative contexts such as
Aboriginal groups in Central Australia while some others are
restricted in context such as saw millers in British Columbia.

▹ These systems can be used in discourse but may not satisfy all
of Hockett’s design features of human language. One example
is reflexivity that these systems can not show.

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 Sign Languages in Central Australia

▹ Gesture systems for animals, directions and kin

relations are common across Australia.

▹ In Central Australian Aboriginal communities differences

are found in the control and use of sign languages
according to region, age and gender.

▹ Full sign languages are mainly used by women.

▹ All signs of the sign systems of Central
Australian Aborigines are manual and most of
them are one handed.

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 Plains Indian Sign Language
This sign language has been used as the first language of
deaf members of the communities and used as
alternative to spoken languages.
It was used as a (lingua franca) common language among
Great Plains Indians, among groups that did not share a
spoken language.

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 Plains Indian Sign Language
▹ Phonological and morphological
features are like those of
primary sign languages.
▹ Space and classifiers are used.
▹ Derivational and Inflectional
processes and affixes are
present.
▹ It has over 1000 signs.
▹ Compounding is
recognized.
▹ Contrasts with Central Australian
Sign Languages with little
relation to spoken languages of
the groups using PISL because it
emerged as a Lingua Franca
and independent of the spoken
languages.
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