SASL Newsletter - Spring 2017 Issue Issue 5 - Spring 2017 | Page 3

I feel strongly that Mabel is a classic oral deaf person. She took advantage of the fact that
she internalized English as a spoken language when she was hearing up to the age of five. I
sympathized with Mabel for having to act like a hearing person when she was not. Her access to
language was evidently limited. The fact that Bell, on his deathbed, did not speak to Mabel is
understandable as Bell was so incapacitated that he could not speak or move his mouth (Gray,
2006; Mackay, 1997). While Mabel was defiant about ASL and fingerspelling, it is likely that she
has some rudimentary knowledge of the language and communication alternatives. Bell was a
fluent signer and had interacted with many signing deaf people for most of his life. Mabel could not
help but be exposed to signed and fingerspelled vocabularies. Expressing 'No' in ASL was thus
plausible. In any case, Bell's communication with Mabel surpassed the ideologies that were raging
at the time.
As part of understanding Bell's 'last dying words' with his wife, it is important to discuss
fingerspelling and how fingerspelled words can undergo lexicalization. At present, deaf people
express 'no' in the lexicalized fingerspelling form meaning that it looks like a sign, but it began as
N-O. According to the book, "Sign Language Archaeology: Understanding the Historical Roots of
American Sign Language" by Ted Supalla and Patricia Clark (2014), the full fingerspelling of N-O
and its lexicalized form were actually used in the early 1900s, approximately at the same time of
Bell’s death (see the images below).
An example of full fingerspelling by Robert MacGregor in 1913
Reproduced from Sign Language Archaeology: Understanding the Historical Roots of American Sign Language by Ted Supalla and Patricia Clark
(2014, p. 109) <> Images of MacGregor signing extracted from The Preservation of American Sign Language: The Complete Historical Collection
by Sign Media, Inc., 2003. Reproduced with permission of Sign Media, Inc.
An example of lexicalized
fingerspelling in 1923
Source: Higgins, 1923, p. 99
The Power of ASL
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Spring 2017 – Issue 5