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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Unusual Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist
http://nautil.us/blog/the-unusual-language-that-linguists-thought-couldnt-existIts not hard to imagine that things could have been otherwise. In principle, we could have a language in which sounds relate holistically to their meaningsa high-pitched yowl might mean finger, a guttural purr might mean dark, a yodel might mean broccoli, and so on. But there are stark advantages to duality of patterning. Try inventing a lexicon of tens of thousands of distinct noises, all of which are easily distinguished, and you will probably find yourself wishing you could simply re-use a few snippets of sound in varying arrangements....
What to make, then, of the recent discovery of a language whose words are not made from smaller, meaningless units? Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) is a new sign language emerging in a village with high rates of inherited deafness in Israels Negev Desert. According to a report led by Wendy Sandler of the University of Haifa, words in this language correspond to holistic gestures, much like the imaginary sound-based language described above, even though ABSL has a sizable vocabulary.
To linguists, this is akin to finding a planet on which matter is made up of molecules that dont decompose into atoms. ABSL contrasts sharply with other sign languages like American Sign Language (ASL), which creates words by re-combining a small collection of gestural elements such as hand shapes, movements, and hand positions.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Brickbat
(19,339 posts)actual language made for deaf people.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Specifically the Plains Indians.
It truly is a thing of beauty.
Igel
(35,300 posts)ASL at one point had gestures that weren't yet subdivided into phonemes, and instead of having a grammar was a pidgin.
U. Rochester folk have examined some of the history of sign languages, including the emergence of an SL from a sign system in, IIRC, Nicaragua (Honduras?).
Has it had time to be parsed so the phonology is learned as a language? Is it primarily a gestural system to unite deaf and hearing, or just used among the deaf?
What's the grammar like? Word formation strategies like compounding? Tense and aspect? Pronominal systems?
In the struggle for relevance, a lot of linguists take marginal data and push it too far. Even worse, naive pop sci writers take speculative claims from conclusions and abstracts and exaggerate them.