American Sign Language Grammar
The grammar of American Sign Language (ASL) has rules just like any other sign language or spoken language. ASL grammar studies date back to William Stokoe in the 1960s. This sign language consists of parameters that determine many other grammar rules. Typical word structure in ASL conforms to the SVO/ OSV and topic-comment form, supplemented by a noun-adjective order and time-sequenced ordering of clauses. ASL has large CP and DP syntax systems, and also doesn't contain many conjunctions like some other languages do. Morphology ASL morphology consists of two different processes: derivational morphology and inflectional morphology. Derivational morphology in ASL occurs when movement in a sign changes the meaning - often between a noun and a verb. For example, for the sign CHAIR, a noun, a person would tap their dominant pointer and middle fingers against their non-dominant pointer and middle fingers twice or more. For the sign SIT, a verb, a person would tap these fingers ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 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 Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of language contact. Since then, ASL use has been propagated widely by schools ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Handshape
In sign languages, handshape, or dez, refers to the distinctive configurations that the hands take as they are used to form words. In Stokoe terminology it is known as the , an abbreviation of ''designator''. Handshape is one of five components of a sign, along with location (), orientation (), movement (), and nonmanual features. Different sign languages make use of different handshapes. Constraints Possible handshapes are constrained by a variety of mechanic and neural factors. Evolutionary forces have led to some handshapes being easier or more natural for humans to produce than others. These tendencies can be summarized as follows: # The selected (extended) finger is either the thumb or the index finger # Neighboring fingers are coupled # All fingers have the same shape A 2022 study of handshapes found that 85.6% of handshapes in 33 sign languages conform to these biological tendencies. Additionally, 35 handshapes were found to be represented in 89.2% of the 33 languag ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Classifier Constructions In Sign Languages
In sign languages, classifier constructions, also known as classifier predicates, are a morphological system expressing 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 often iconic (non-a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Incorporation (linguistics)
In linguistics, incorporation is a phenomenon by which a grammatical category, such as a verb, forms a compound with its direct object (object incorporation) or adverbial modifier, while retaining its original syntactic function. The inclusion of a noun qualifies the verb, narrowing its scope rather than making reference to a specific entity. Incorporation is central to many polysynthetic languages such as those found in North America, Siberia and northern Australia. However, polysynthesis does not necessarily imply incorporation (Mithun 2009), and the presence of incorporation does not imply that the language is polysynthetic. Examples of incorporation English Although incorporation does not occur regularly, English uses it sometimes: ''breastfeed'', and direct object incorporation, as in ''babysit''. Etymologically, such verbs in English are usually back-formations: the verbs ''breastfeed'' and ''babysit'' are formed from the adjective ''breast-fed'' and the noun ''bab ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Assimilation (linguistics)
In phonology, assimilation is a sound change in which some phonemes (typically consonants or vowels) change to become more similar to other nearby sounds. This process is common across languages and can happen within a word or between words. For example, in English "handbag" (), the often shifts to in rapid speech, becoming , because and are both bilabial (produced with both lips), and their places of articulation are similar. It occurs in normal speech but is more frequent in faster speech. Sometimes the change is accepted as canonical, and can even become recognized in standard spelling: implosion pronounced with , composed of ''in-'' + ''-plosion'' (as in ''explosion''). Sound segments typically assimilate to a following sound, but they may also assimilate to a preceding one. Assimilation most commonly occurs between immediately adjacent sounds but may occur between sounds separated by others. For example, in "handbag," the is sometimes elided (omitted), which caus ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Esperanto
Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for international communication. He described the language in ''Dr. Esperanto's International Language'' (), which he published under the pseudonym . Early adopters of the language liked the name and soon used it to describe his language. The word translates into English as 'one who hopes'. Within the range of constructed languages, Esperanto occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" (imitating existing natural languages) and ''Constructed language#A priori and a posteriori languages, a priori'' (where features are not based on existing languages). Esperanto's vocabulary, syntax and semantics derive predominantly from languages of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European group. A substantial majority of its vocabulary (approximat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Suprasegmental Feature
In linguistics, prosody () is the study of elements of speech, including intonation, stress, rhythm and loudness, that occur simultaneously with individual phonetic segments: vowels and consonants. Often, prosody specifically refers to such elements, known as ''suprasegmentals'', when they extend across more than one phonetic segment. Prosody reflects the nuanced emotional features of the speaker or of their utterances: their obvious or underlying emotional state, the form of utterance (statement, question, or command), the presence of irony or sarcasm, certain emphasis on words or morphemes, contrast, focus, and so on. Prosody displays elements of language that are not encoded by grammar, punctuation 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 physi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ted Supalla
Ted Supalla is a deaf linguist whose research centers on sign language in its developmental and global context, including studies of the grammatical structure and evolution of American Sign Language and other sign languages. Previously at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the University of Rochester in New York, Supalla is a professor in the Department of Neurology at Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private Jesuit research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic higher education, Ca .... Biography Ted Supalla was born deaf, into a deaf family, including his younger brother Sam. Ted's father would often go to the Deaf Club, bringing the whole family. He is married to Elissa L. Newport, also a professor in the Department of Neurology at Georgetown University. Education *Portland State University Psycholo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation'', ''anti-'', ''pre-'' etc., introduce a semantic change to the word they are attached to. Inflectional affixes introduce a syntactic change, such as singular into plural (e.g. ''-(e)s''), or present simple grammatical tense, tense into present continuous or past tense by adding ''-ing'', ''-ed'' to an English word. All of them are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes. Affixes, infixes and their variations Changing a word by adding a morpheme at its beginning is called ''prefixation'', in the middle is called ''infixation'', and at the end is called ''suffixation''. ''Prefix'' and ''suffix'' may be subsumed under the term ''adfix'', in contrast to ''infix.'' When marking text for interlinear gl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Blend
A blend is a mixture of two or more different substances. Blend may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Blend'' (album), a 1996 album by BoDeans * The Blend (Sirius XM), a North American satellite radio channel * "Blend", a 2017 song on ''Party'' (Aldous Harding album) Computing * .blend (file format), used by Blender, a 3D graphics tool * Microsoft Blend, a UI design tool for WPF and Silverlight Linguistics * Blend word, a word formed from parts of other words * Consonant blend, a cluster of consonants without an intervening vowel Other uses * Blend (cigarette), a Swedish brand * Blend (textile), made from two or more fibers See also * Polymer blend In materials science, a polymer blend, or polymer mixture, is a member of a class of materials analogous to metal alloys, in which at least two polymers are blended together to create a new material with different physical properties. History Du ..., a member of a class of materials analogous to metal alloys * ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |