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American Sign Language

About: American Sign Language is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3190 publications have been published within this topic receiving 79790 citations. The topic is also known as: ASL & ase.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
01 Sep 1975-Language
TL;DR: The authors examines some historical processes in ASL and shows that there is a strong tendency for signs to change in the direction of arbitrariness, rather than maintaining a level of iconicity.
Abstract: Grammarians since Saussure have insisted that language symbols are arbitrary, though conventionalized, in form. Sign languages in general, however, and American Sign Language (ASL) in particular, have been noted for their pantomimic or iconic nature. This paper examines some historical processes in ASL, and shows that there is a strong tendency for signs to change in the direction of arbitrariness, rather than maintaining a level of iconicity. Changes at the formational level can be seen as contributing to language-internal consistency, at the expense of transparency.*

492 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Results suggest that the early acquisition of a natural language is important in the expression of the strong bias for these areas to mediate language, independently of the form of the language.
Abstract: Cerebral organization during sentence processing in English and in American Sign Language (ASL) was characterized by employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 4 T. Effects of deafness, age of language acquisition, and bilingualism were assessed by comparing results from (i) normally hearing, monolingual, native speakers of English, (ii) congenitally, genetically deaf, native signers of ASL who learned English late and through the visual modality, and (iii) normally hearing bilinguals who were native signers of ASL and speakers of English. All groups, hearing and deaf, processing their native language, English or ASL, displayed strong and repeated activation within classical language areas of the left hemisphere. Deaf subjects reading English did not display activation in these regions. These results suggest that the early acquisition of a natural language is important in the expression of the strong bias for these areas to mediate language, independently of the form of the language. In addition, native signers, hearing and deaf, displayed extensive activation of homologous areas within the right hemisphere, indicating that the specific processing requirements of the language also in part determine the organization of the language systems of the brain.

490 citations

Book
01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: Inside Deaf Culture as discussed by the authors is an absorbing story of the changing life of a community, revealing historical events and forces that have shaped the ways that deaf people define themselves today, and relates deaf people's search for a voice of their own, and their proud self-discovery and self-description as a flourishing culture.
Abstract: In this absorbing story of the changing life of a community, the authors of "Deaf in America" reveal historical events and forces that have shaped the ways that Deaf people define themselves today. "Inside Deaf Culture" relates Deaf people's search for a voice of their own, and their proud self-discovery and self-description as a flourishing culture. Padden and Humphries show how the nineteenth-century schools for the deaf, with their denigration of sign language and their insistence on oralist teaching, shaped the lives of Deaf people for generations to come. They describe how Deaf culture and art thrived in mid-twentieth century Deaf clubs and Deaf theatre, and profile controversial contemporary technologies. Most triumphant is the story of the survival of the rich and complex language American Sign Language, long misunderstood but finally recently recognized by a hearing world that could not conceive of language in a form other than speech. In a moving conclusion, the authors describe their own very different pathways into the Deaf community, and reveal the confidence and anxiety of the people of this tenuous community as it faces the future. "Inside Deaf Culture" celebrates the experience of a minority culture--its common past, present debates, and promise for the future. From these pages emerge clear and bold voices, speaking out from inside this once silenced community.

468 citations

Book
01 Feb 2001
TL;DR: This work presents a model of iconicity in signed and spoken languages using the analogue-building model of linguistic iconicity and describes the superposition of metaphors in an American Sign Language poem as a source domain.
Abstract: 1. A glimpse of the material 2. Motivation and linguistic theory 3. Iconicity defined and demonstrated 4. The analogue-building model of linguistic iconicity 5. Survey of iconicity in signed and spoken languages 6. Metaphor in American Sign Language: the double mapping 7. Many metaphors in a single sign 8. The vertical scale as source domain 9. Verb agreement paths in American Sign Language 10. Complex superposition of metaphors in an American Sign Language poem 11. The future of signed-language research Appendices References Index.

436 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: There was a significant delay on ToM tasks in deaf children of hearing parents, who typically demonstrate language delays, regardless of whether they used spoken English or ASL.
Abstract: Theory-of-mind (ToM) abilities were studied in 176 deaf children aged 3 years 11 months to 8 years 3 months who use either American Sign Language (ASL) or oral English, with hearing parents or deaf parents. A battery of tasks tapping understanding of false belief and knowledge state and language skills, ASL or English, was given to each child. There was a significant delay on ToM tasks in deaf children of hearing parents, who typically demonstrate language delays, regardless of whether they used spoken English or ASL. In contrast, deaf children from deaf families performed identically to same-aged hearing controls (N=42). Both vocabulary and understanding syntactic complements were significant independent predictors of success on verbal and low-verbal ToM tasks.

436 citations


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Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
2023105
2022267
2021143
2020176
2019113
2018143