Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) is a
village sign language used by about 150
deaf
Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...
and many hearing members of the
al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the
Negev desert of southern
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
.
As deafness is so frequent (4% of the population is deaf, compared to 0.1% in the United States)
and deaf and hearing people share a language, deaf people are not stigmatised in this community and marriage between deaf and hearing people is common.
ABSL grammar developed quickly, with the signing of each generation becoming more complex than the last. Even though no evidence of
phonological
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
structure was found throughout the community, it seems to be emerging within individual families.
History
In 2004 the Al-Sayyid community numbered around 3,000, most of whom trace their ancestry to the time the village was founded, in the mid-19th century, by a local woman and an Egyptian man. Two of this founding couple's five sons carried a gene for nonsyndromic, genetically recessive, profound pre-lingual neurosensory deafness. The descendants of the founding couple often
married their cousins owing to the tribe's rejection by its neighbours for being "foreign
fellah
A fellah ( ar, فَلَّاح ; feminine ; plural ''fellaheen'' or ''fellahin'', , ) is a peasant, usually a farmer or agricultural laborer in the Middle East and North Africa. The word derives from the Arabic word for "ploughman" or "tiller". ...
in". The gene became
homozygous
Zygosity (the noun, zygote, is from the Greek "yoked," from "yoke") () is the degree to which both copies of a chromosome or gene have the same genetic sequence. In other words, it is the degree of similarity of the alleles in an organism.
Mo ...
in several members of the family.
Four deaf siblings were born into the community approximately 75 years after its founding. Deafness spread to other families in the following two generations; in 2011 there were about 120-150 deaf individuals in the community. This unique set of circumstances led to a
sociolinguistic
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of l ...
environment not often found elsewhere. The deaf individuals were not only accepted into the greater community, but the resulting sign language was being used by a significant proportion of hearing people in the community as well. Additionally, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language is being passed down from generation to generation in a natural social setting.
There is no separate
deaf culture or politics.
ABSL was first studied in the late 1990s by anthropologist Shifra Kisch and came to worldwide attention in February 2005 when an international group of researchers published a study of the language in the ''
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Sci ...
''. The spontaneous emergence of the language in the last 70 years and the development of a complex grammar in near-isolation are of particular interest to
linguists for the insights it provides into the birth of human language.
The community was isolated from the outside not by geography, but by social stigma. Contact with the outside world is growing as pupils are exposed to Israeli Sign Language and Jordanian Sign Language in schools and community members are marrying outside the community.
Linguistics
Scholars study ABSL because, as deaf people in Al-Sayyid cannot hear Arabic or Hebrew and they have not been exposed to any other sign languages, ABSL is a brand new language, uninfluenced by any other. ABSL is in its early stages, so researchers are observing the language as it develops.
Syntax
ABSL consistently shows
subject–object–verb (SOV)
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
(e.g., "woman child feed") and head-modifier order.
SVO order is prominent only when the
object is a
pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...
.
This word order is marked contrast to the dialect of
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
spoken by hearing members of the community (
SVO) as well as
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
(
SVO), classical Arabic (
VSO) and the predominant sign languages in the region,
Israeli Sign Language
Israeli Sign Language, also known as Shassi or ISL, is the most commonly used sign language by the Deaf community of Israel. Some other sign languages are also used in Israel, among them Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language.
History
The history of ...
and
Jordanian Sign Language
Levantine Arabic Sign Language, also known as Syro-Palestinian Sign Language, is the sign language used by Deaf and hearing people of Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon
Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially ...
.
ABSL has a tendency to limit
predicates
Predicate or predication may refer to:
* Predicate (grammar), in linguistics
* Predication (philosophy)
* several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic:
**Predicate (mathematical logic)
**Propositional function
**Finitary relation, ...
to containing one
animate argument. Events involving multiple animate referents are therefore often conveyed through the use of multiple clauses as seen below.
ABSL is seen as evidence for the human tendency to construct communication along
grammatical lines. Researchers have remarked on the speed with which a grammar emerged, with the SOV word-order emerging with the first generation of signers, as well as the continuing rapid development of the language: the third generation is signing twice as fast as the first and is using longer sentences. ABSL does not contain "agreeing" verbs as most known sign languages do.
Few syntactic markers such as
complementizer
In linguistics (especially generative grammar), complementizer or complementiser (glossing abbreviation: ) is a functional category (part of speech) that includes those words that can be used to turn a clause into the subject or object of a se ...
s, signs to signal
conditionals
Conditional (if then) may refer to:
*Causal conditional, if X then Y, where X is a cause of Y
*Conditional probability, the probability of an event A given that another event B has occurred
*Conditional proof, in logic: a proof that asserts a co ...
or structures to mark questions have been found. These functions are instead expressed through the use of
prosodic
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, st ...
cues to designate when a
clause starts or ends or in order to link them together. For example, conditional and when-clauses are marked by raising the eyebrows and tilting the head forward.
Phonology
ABSL has not been found to have a fully fledged
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
. This can be seen in the absence of
duality of patterning, which means signs in ABSL cannot be analyzed as being composed of smaller, meaningless units.
Other features common of phonologies, such as
signs differing in single feature or rigid
constraints on well-formed signs were also not found. Sign features that often contrast in established sign languages, such as
where the sign is articulated or the
orientation
Orientation may refer to:
Positioning in physical space
* Map orientation, the relationship between directions on a map and compass directions
* Orientation (housing), the position of a building with respect to the sun, a concept in building de ...
of the hand do not seem relevant.
Mouthing
In sign language, mouthing is the production of visual syllables with the mouth while signing. That is, signers sometimes say or mouth a word in a spoken language at the same time as producing the sign for it. Mouthing is one of the many ways in w ...
, the visual depictions of spoken words with the mouth, is not used.
It seemed that the ABSL speakers were "aiming for an
iconic and holistic
prototype" when producing a sign rather than adhering to strictly defined features, which is what one would expect from a language with a phonology.
The form of a given sign varies considerably throughout the community and is understood by others through iconicity. However, within households that have fluent deaf or hearing signers the signs have a much more conventionalized agreed-upon form. Certain phonological processes, such as
assimilation of handshape within a
compound
Compound may refer to:
Architecture and built environments
* Compound (enclosure), a cluster of buildings having a shared purpose, usually inside a fence or wall
** Compound (fortification), a version of the above fortified with defensive struc ...
, have also been observed within families. These types of households might eventually give rise to the type of phonology found in more established sign languages.
Lexicon
New signs are often creating through compounding, whereby two noun signs are combined. One method of compounding includes the addition of what appears to be an
affix to the base sign to indicate its length. This length affix cannot be used in isolation and is produced by touching the wrist with the non-dominant hand at different points to indicate the relative length of the object in question. The dominant hand meanwhile indicates its thickness through the extension of more or less fingers. For example, the word 'pencil' is translated with the compound 'WRITE+LONG-THIN-OBJECT' by first performing the sign for WRITE, then extending the index finger to represent the pencil and having the other hand represent its relative length. This compound also undergoes handshape assimilation, whereby both hands take on the same handshape. This could be considered as the beginnings of a phonology.
Some signs have been found to not iconically represent the concept in question. For example, the sign for "man" is formed by the curling of the finger in the shape of a moustache although Bedouin men no longer wear them.
See also
*
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 ...
*
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, dea ...
*
Nicaraguan Sign Language
Nicaraguan Sign Language (ISN; es, Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua) is a form of sign language which developed spontaneously among deaf children in a number of schools in Nicaragua in the 1980s. It is of particular interest to linguists as it off ...
*
Language acquisition device
The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a claim from language acquisition research proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s. The LAD concept is a purported instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language. It is ...
References
External links
Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign LanguageSign Language Research Laboratory, University of Haifa
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Village sign languages
Endangered sign language isolates
Sign languages of Israel