Linguistics Stack Exchange
Linguistics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [sign-languages]

Questions about languages that use visual transmitted sign patterns, mostly used by deaf people.

There are lot of sign languages described, taught, and studied around the world. New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) was made the third official language of New Zealand in 2006, being the first sign language with that status.

For the American Sign Language (ASL) there is an own tag .

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Does lip movement in Turkish sign language have a grammatical feature?

Apart from manuals, also nonmanuals; such as head tilt or head shake have grammatical features in Turkish sign languages. They appear while asking questions or giving negation. Some lip movements are seen while people sign. I know that they do this…
Serpil Karabüklü
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When people converse in sign language, why do they make whispering sounds?

Recently in the bus I sat next to two persons conversing* in sign language. In their conversation, they were not only using gestures and mimics for expressing what they wanted to say but also were constantly making whispering sounds all the time…
Bruder Lustig
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Do two deaf persons from different countries understand each other?

While listening to this podcast about saving dying languages. A question came to my mind: Does a deaf person from France understand a deaf person from Russia or any other country?
kvfi
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What role does fingerspelling play in sign language?

It's my understanding that sign languages combine a mix of directly signing words with fingerspelling words using a manual alphabet. What exactly is the role of fingerspelling? Is it only used to spell words that don't have a corresponding sign, or…
jrdioko
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What Sign Language developed among orphans/homeless children using the environment as a base for the signs?

I remember in one of my linguistics classes, a rather complex sign language (perhaps in Brazil, if I recall correctly) exists among, I believe, deaf children homeless children/orphans on the street. I believe that researchers, for quite a while, had…
rintaun
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Are there "mixed languages" that are neither wholly oral or signed ?

As we all know, most languages of the world are spoken orally. And there is a number of signed languages, mostly used by Deaf people. But are there any languages which use both modality at once ? Are there any languages that require both gesture…
Typhon
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Do sign languages have words?

In order to better understand the meaning of the concept of "words", I'm wondering if signed language has the concept of words, or if not, what their concept is for the "signs" they create (maybe they are just called signs instead of words, or…
Lance
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Idioms in Sign Languages

Do sign languages have their own idioms, or do they just have direct translations of idioms from spoken languages? Can you give some examples of idioms in sign language?
julia
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British Sign Language symbol identification

At the start of this video for learning British Sign Language, there is a sign which I don't recognise. With the index finger of the non-dominant hand, the signer is pulling their eyebrow down while quirking the other eyebrow up. The signer…
Patrick Stevens
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sign languages and mute people

Wikipedia has a lot of information about sign languages spoken around the world and references them as being spoken by deaf people. What I don't understand is, why wouldn't such languages also be used by mute people (people who are unable to produce…
Jack Maddington
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