Sign Language Structure
Stokoe, Jr.
Again, the signer may have a rhetorical use for the non-signing hand. The left hand may
hold a dez used in a sign for naming a person or object while the right hand alone ‘says something’
perhaps about what another person did to the first. Some of the signs in this recital will be one-
handed anyway and some will have body tabs. In this context a sign or two which should have a
hand tab or a double dez will be understood perfectly, though the left hand is still marking an
element of previous discourse.
There is still another factor to be considered in the occurrence of one-handed signs which
were formerly, or are formally, made with two hands. Economy of effort as a principle of language
change will always be checked by need for ready intelligibility. As was noted above in connection
with shift from body tab to zero tab, the dez and sig may be sufficient to distinguish a sign from
others; but is quite possible that signers without being aware of doing so tend to drop some of the
distinguishing features of a sign when its contexts alone, or syntactic distribution, would suffice
or almost suffice to determine it. This is not simply the counterpart of the ‘*** **** **, said I’ of
Tristram Shandy although both are cases of visible symbols; but it has the features of the processes
by which languages come to tolerate numbers of homonyms which formerly were distinct
phonemically.
2.6. Although the typical signer, like a speaker of any language, may appear to be quite
conservative about neologisms, there is evidence of rapid and widespread change in the two
hundred years since the sign language was recognized, used in teaching, and partially recorded.
The difference between the methodical signs in Sicard’s Theroie (1808) and the signs now in use
in the United States is large, but still apparently evolutionary. But even in the sign data observed
in this study there is evidence of structural change. This is nowhere more apparent than in the
language’s treatment of signs which may be termed compounds and contractions.
The principle of the methodical or consciously invented sign, as noted in the Introduction
is multiple signaling of structural and semantic information. A base sign for the lexical meaning
would be followed by signals for designating the part of speech, number, gender, degree, etc.
Detailed historical studies are so far only in the planning stage, but it seems reasonable to suppose
that the methodical signs underwent considerable change as they moved from the text-book and
the systematic course in French grammar into the colloquial language. There are many signs now
in use which show this kind of origin and presumably many more not obviously so derived will be
found to have some from the same source. A direct link between the French methodical signs and
the signs used in the United States is the preservation in manuals by Long, Higgins, and others of
traditional etymologies. In addition the American sign language has or had until recently a large
toleration for compound or complex signs--which all the methodical signs had to be.
2.61. As described and illustrated in the manuals, ‘brother’ is signed ‘man-same’; that is,
the signer makes the sign for ‘man’ and immediately follows it with the sign for ‘alike‘ or ‘same':
uM ×# f /G f G f × . ‘Son’ is signed, according to the same sources, as ‘man-baby’: uM ×# f /aa gz (the
supine arms are laid together and the mimed baby is rocked). ‘Father’ is ‘man-generation before’:
uM ×# f /B a B a^< . ‘Lady’, according to the manuals, is ‘woman-polite’: A â /[5 × .
All these signs are true compounds in the terminology of this paper. Each one is not only
treated syntactically as a single sign but is often accompanied in simultaneous utterance by
speaking the single English word equivalent in meaning. Although each element of the compound
is complete with tab, dez, and sig of its own, the elements form a syntactic and semantic unit. But
these are ‘classical’ signs, their form defined, their etymology recorded, and their meaning
SASLJ, Vol. 2, No. 2 – Fall/Winter 2018
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