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Adamorobe Sign Language
Adamorobe Sign Language or Adasl is a village sign language used in Adamorobe, an Akan village in eastern Ghana. It is used by about 30 deaf and 1370 hearing people (2003). The Adamorobe community is notable for its unusually high incidence of hereditary deafness ( genetic recessive autosome). As of 2012, about 1.1% of the total population is deaf, but the percentage was as high as 11% in 1961 before the local chief instituted a policy prohibiting deaf people to marry other deaf. Deaf people are fully incorporated into the community. Under these circumstances, AdaSL has developed as an indigenous sign language, fully independent from the country's standard Ghanaian Sign Language (which is related to American Sign Language). AdaSL is a shared sign language which differs from urban sign languages such as Ghanaian Sign Language because the majority of speakers of a shared sign language aren't actually deaf. National sign languages usually emerge for the purpose of use by deaf indi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and Togo in the east.Jackson, John G. (2001) ''Introduction to African Civilizations'', Citadel Press, p. 201, . Ghana covers an area of , spanning diverse biomes that range from coastal savannas to tropical rainforests. With nearly 31 million inhabitants (according to 2021 census), Ghana is the List of African countries by population, second-most populous country in West Africa, after Nigeria. The capital and List of cities in Ghana, largest city is Accra; other major cities are Kumasi, Tamale, Ghana, Tamale, and Sekondi-Takoradi. The first permanent state in present-day Ghana was the Bono state of the 11th century. Numerous kingdoms and empires emerged over the centuries, of which the most powerful were the Kingdom of Dagbon in the north and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) was a village sign-language that was once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard from the early 18th century to 1952. It was used by both Deaf and hearing people in the community; consequently, deafness did not become a barrier to participation in public life. Deaf people who signed Martha's Vineyard Sign Language were extremely independent. They participated in society as typical citizens, although there were incidents of discrimination, and language barriers. The language was able to thrive because of the unusually high percentage of Deaf islanders and because deafness was a recessive trait, which meant that almost anyone might have both Deaf and hearing siblings. In 1854, when the island's Deaf population peaked, an average of one person in 155 was Deaf, while the United States national average was one in about 5,730. In the town of Chilmark, which had the highest concentration of Deaf people on the island, the average was 1 i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Village Sign Languages
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Though villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighborhoods. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings; however, transient villages can occur. Further, the dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, not scattered broadly over the landscape, as a dispersed settlement. In the past, villages were a usual form of community for societies that practice subsistence agriculture, and also for some non-agricultural societies. In Great Britain, a hamlet earned the right to be called a village when it built a church. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serial Verb
The serial verb construction, also known as (verb) serialization or verb stacking, is a syntactic phenomenon in which two or more verbs or verb phrases are strung together in a single clause.Tallerman, M. (1998). ''Understanding Syntax''. London: Arnold, pp.79–81. It is a common feature of many African, Asian and New Guinean languages. Serial verb constructions are often described as coding a single event;Aikhenvald, A. and Dixon, R.M.W. (2005). ''Serial Verb Constructions: A cross-linguistic typology''. Oxford: Oxford University PressLord, C. (1991). ''Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins they can also be used to indicate concurrent or causally-related events. Uses The terms "serial verbs", "serialization", etc. are used by different authors to denote somewhat different sets of constructions. There are also differences in how the constructions are analyzed, in terms of both syntax and semantics. In general, a structure described as a ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classifier Construction
In sign languages, the term classifier construction (also known as classifier predicates) refers to a morphological system that can express events and states. They use handshape classifiers to represent movement, location, and shape. Classifiers differ from signs in their morphology, namely in that signs consist of a single morpheme. Signs are composed of three meaningless phonological features: handshape, location, and movement. Classifiers, on the other hand, consist of many morphemes. Specifically, the handshape, location, and movement are all meaningful on their own. The handshape represents an entity and the hand's movement iconically represents the movement of that entity. The relative location of multiple entities can be represented iconically in two-handed constructions. Classifiers share some limited similarities with the gestures of hearing non-signers. Those who do not know the sign language can often guess the meaning of these constructions. This is because they are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sprachbund
A sprachbund (, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The languages may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related, but the sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatedness. A grouping of languages that share features can only be defined as a sprachbund if the features are shared for some reason other than the genetic history of the languages. Because of this, attempts to classify some language families without knowledge about the history of the languages can lead to misclassification as sprachbunds and similarly some sprachbunds are incorrectly classified as language families. History In a 1904 paper, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay emphasised the need to distinguish between language similarities arising from a genetic relationship (''rodstvo'') and those arising from co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bura Sign Language
Bura Sign Language is a village sign language used by the Bura people around the village of Kukurpu, 40 km (25 miles) south-east of Biu, Nigeria, an area with a high degree of congenital deafness. What little is known about it is due to a brief visit and a videotape by Robert Blench in 2003. It is "likely ... quite independent" from other, better-known sign languages such as Nigerian Sign Language, since none of the signers have been to school and the area where it is used is rather remote. Bura SL has the lax hand shapes and large sign space characteristic of indigenous West African sign languages. Many of the words are similar or identical to those of Adamorobe Sign Language and Nanabin Sign Language of Ghana, and appear to be based on the gestures common to the hearing population across West Africa. These involve conventionalized metaphors such as 'sweat' for "work" and 'sleep' for "next day". See also * Mofu-Gudur language Mofu-Gudur, or South Mofu, is a Chadic language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prosody (linguistics)
In linguistics, prosody () is concerned with elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, stress, and rhythm. Such elements are known as suprasegmentals. Prosody may reflect features of the speaker or the utterance: their emotional state; the form of utterance (statement, question, or command); the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus. It may reflect elements of language not encoded by grammar or choice of vocabulary. Attributes of prosody In the study of prosodic aspects of speech, it is usual to distinguish between auditory measures ( subjective impressions produced in the mind of the listener) and objective measures (physical properties of the sound wave and physiological characteristics of articulation that may be measured objectively). Auditory (subjective) and objective ( acoustic and articulatory) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard, often simply called the Vineyard, is an island in the Northeastern United States, located south of Cape Cod in Dukes County, Massachusetts, known for being a popular, affluent summer colony. Martha's Vineyard includes the smaller adjacent Chappaquiddick Island, which is usually connected to the Vineyard. The two islands have sometimes been separated by storms and hurricanes, which last occurred from 2007 to 2015. It is the 58th largest island in the U.S., with a land area of about , and the third-largest on the East Coast, after Long Island and Mount Desert Island. Martha's Vineyard constitutes the bulk of Dukes County, which also includes the Elizabeth Islands and the island of Nomans Land (Massachusetts), Nomans Land. The Vineyard was home to one of the earliest known deaf communities in the United States; consequently, a sign language, the Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, emerged on the island among both deaf and hearing islanders. The 2010 census report ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Village Sign Language
A village sign language, or village sign, also known as a shared sign language, is a local indigenous sign language used by both deaf and hearing in an area with a high incidence of congenital deafness. Meir ''et al.'' define a village sign language as one which "arise in an existing, relatively insular community into which a number of deaf children are born." The term "rural sign language" refers to almost the same concept. In many cases, the sign language is known throughout the community by a large portion of the hearing population. These languages generally include signs derived from gestures used by the hearing population, so that neighboring village sign languages may be lexically similar without being actually related, due to local similarities in cultural gestures which preceded the sign languages. Most village sign languages are endangered due to the spread of formal education for the deaf, which use or generate deaf-community sign languages, such as a national or foreign si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creole language, creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutination, agglutinative morphology. ASL originated in the early 19th century in the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in West Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of language contact. Since then, ASL use has been propagated w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ghanaian Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) developed in the United States and Canada, but has spread around the world. Local varieties have developed in many countries, but there is little research on which should be considered dialects of ASL (such as Bolivian Sign Language) and which have diverged to the point of being distinct languages (such as Malaysian Sign Language). The following are sign language varieties of ASL in countries other than the US and Canada, languages based on ASL with substratum influence from local sign languages, and mixed languages in which ASL is a component. Distinction follow political boundaries, which may not correspond to linguistic boundaries. Bolivian Sign Language Bolivian Sign Language (Lengua de Señas Bolivianas, LSB) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used predominantly by the Deaf in Bolivia. History In 1973, American Sign Language was brought to Bolivia by Eleanor and Lloyd Powlison, missionaries from the United States. An indigenous sign l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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