Sign Language Archaeology

Chapter 1 Introducing Sign Language Archeology

Our challenge in researching and understanding the history of ASL is a gap in our knowledge extending from the introduction of sign language in America from its French roots to the modern documentation of ASL structure.

Chapter 2 Defining Cohort Generations

Within our historical ASL data, we can see that transmission of ASL takes place across a succession of living signers, with the younger signers acquiring ASL from their elders. In our database of ASL films, we find evidence for organizing signers into 3 ‘cohort generations,’ with the middle generation learning from the 1st generation models and passing on the language to the 3rd generation. These generations need not be within family lines of transmission. For example, students in deaf residential schools often learned ASL from their deaf teachers and older classmates and passed on the language to younger students. By our estimates, there have been 7 cohort generations of ASL users between 1817 and today. I, myself, am a member of the 6^th generation of ASL in America. In this timeline, the year 1910 is important for 2 reasons: It was the year that the NAD began filming the Gallaudet Lecture Series, and it was the year of publication of a very influential dictionary of sign language.

Chapter 3 Tools for Analyzing Variation

One important tool for the study of historical change in a language is the examination of variant forms that appear in films and dictionaries across generations and across communities or regions at different time periods. In our first clip, for example, you see the sign for “mother/father/ parents” which is produced by a 3rd generation signer of ASL from 1910. In the second clip, you see the sign as it is produced by a younger signer (from a later generation), also in 1910. This reduced form is similar to our modern version of the sign. The older forms are only seen in memorized performances of earlier literary forms, such as “The Lord’s Prayer.” Variation in modern ASL provides us with a window onto the past: we can use modern variants in signs, through linguistic reconstruction and assisted by historical research regarding linguistic contact within and across the Deaf communities of earlier eras, to determine what the antecedent forms were and how they were passed on to result in our current variants.

Chapter 4 Integrating Synchronic and Diachronic Approaches

In the scientific study of language change, the examination of data within a given time period is called a synchronic study. The comparison of data across time periods is called a diachronic study. Our complete data pool includes data about sign variants both within and across time periods and thus integrates synchronic and diachronic approaches.

Chapter 5 Digging On Your Own

You can participate in this new science of Sign Language Archeology by gathering on your own a set of sign forms used by signers across time periods and then examining the variants for a given sign in these data. In this way, you may discover the signs that served as the roots of our modern reduced forms. You may discover that our modern sign variants for a given concept - different signs that people you know may use - come from signs undergoing different changes from an earlier historical variant. Have fun in your discoveries!

Chapter 6 Data: NEVER

Contrast the modern sign for NEVER with these two film clips from 1910. In 1910, the forms for NEVER, while produced differently by the 2 signers, are both comprised of a 2-sign sequence. In the second clip, the handshape for the first sign has been assimilated to the second sign. In the first clip, it has not. From the first clip, we can see that the roots of the modern sign for NEVER is ALWAYS-NO, with the movement that resembles the number 7 stemming from the transition between the original two signs. You may notice that some modern versions of the sign maintain the handshape from ALWAYS throughout the sign, while others, like mine, instead have the B handshape from NO throughout the sign.

Chapter 7 Data: STARS

We are all familiar with our modern form of the sign STARS, but note the different way it was produced in 1910. In this clip, you see the phrase: MOON, SUN, STARS. The final sign for STARS is a repeated pointing above the head with alternate hands. How can we trace the change from this sign to our modern sign? For this, we must examine the sign for the same concept from signers in subsequent generations. In these examples, we will see the reduction and substitutions that lead to our modern sign. In the first example, we see that the two hands are close together and the movement is internal to each repetition. The location of the sign repetition is still above the head. In the second example, we see an alternate single-hand movement similar to the first signer, but the location has been lowered to shoulder height, perhaps due to the preceding sign BOSS/CHIEF. The combination of this sign and STARS gives the meaning “General”. The ease of producing the sign at this height may also have been a factor. From these examples, you can see the path from the original sign to our modern-day sign.

Chapter 8 Data: WATER

You may wonder if the sign WATER is an example of “initialization”, with the W handshape coming from the English word “water.” The movement differs in modern variants, sometimes touching the chin throughout the sign, sometimes touching, and then moving away. It is interesting to see the varying forms of WATER in historical films. In the first example, you will notice that there is a sequence involving a touch to the tongue, the fingerspelled letter “W,” and the sign for “liquid moving”. This signifies “wet”, “water” and “moving like a river”. The fingerspelled letter is not combined with the sign’s movement as it is in modern “initialized” signs. In the second example, we again see a sequence of signs. Clearly the goal was not to combine the fingerspelled letter with a sign, substituting for its handshape, as in most initialized signs. The sign sequence consists of separate sign parts in order. When did the combination and substitution take place for this sign? Consider the third example of a younger signer. Here we see the W handshape incorporated into the sign’s movement, as in our modern sign.

Chapter 9 Data: WHO

In modern times, you are no doubt aware that we have many sign variants for the sign “who”. My own sign is a movement of the index finger while the thumb is touching the chin. Here are some historical films showing earlier versions of WHO. In the first example, you will notice that the index finger circles around the entire face. In the second example, the movement circles the mouth and the thumb is extended from the fist. (This form is common even today.) Thus, we can see sign variants which resemble three of our modern signs: a whole face WHO using the index finger (= the modern sign LOOK), one circling the mouth, and one circling the mouth with the thumb extended.

We also have a fingerspelled variant “W-H-O,” which perhaps gave rise to the modern variant which opens and closes at the mouth, a fingerspelled loan sign. If we consider the principles of language change, such as ease of articulation, we can derive my own sign for WHO from a change in orientation of the sign encircling the mouth with the thumb extended, followed by contact of the thumb with the chin. We do not have enough data to determine exactly which sequence of variant signs led to other modern versions of WHO. Future research can help us to establish the intermediate steps of change in the signs for WHO.

Chapter 10 Acknowledgements

This presentation is the result of work performed by a team at the Sign Language Research Center at the University of Rochester. The team has gathered sign language data from films and historical dictionaries and created a database which cross-references signs from these sources. We hope to make this database available soon for other researchers to use. In addition, Patricia Clark (a member of the SLRC team) and I have co-authored a book describing the results of this research, which will soon be published by Gallaudet University Press.

Members of the research team at the Sign Language Research Center:

Ted Supalla, Director

Elissa L. Newport, Co-Director

Patricia Clark, Technical Associate

Betsy Hicks McDonald, Research Associate

Donald S. Metlay, Lab Technican

Book title: Supalla, T. and Clark, P. Sign Language Archeology: Understanding History and Evolution of American Sign Language. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, in press.

This research is supported by NSF Research Grant BCS0925073 to Ted Supalla, NIH Research Grant DC00167 to Elissa L. Newport and Ted Supalla, and by an NEH Fellowship Award to Ted Supalla.