6 ms·

ASL and other sign languages are literally languages. There are linguists that study how subfields in linguistics that traditionally only applied to spoken lang

ASL and other sign languages are literally languages. There are linguists that study how subfields in linguistics that traditionally only applied to spoken languages (e.g. phonology) have analogues in sign languages[0], so its now widely appreciated that anything expressible in spoken languages as a class is expressible in sign languages. All of that to say "not talking" has nothing to do with talking in a sign language. John Francis took a vow of silence. He wasn't talking in a non-spoken language; he was not talking. There is a lot you can do with non-verbal communication (i.e. non-linguistic communication, through your body), but that isn't nearly the same thing as speaking a sign language. [0] See Diane Brentari's research for example: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/prosodic-model-sign-language-phonology https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/prosodic-model-sign-language-...

thaumasiotes 7y ago
This: > so its now widely appreciated that anything expressible in spoken languages as a class is expressible in sign languages doesn't follow from this: > There are linguists that study how subfields in linguistics that traditionally only applied to spoken languages (e.g. phonology) have analogues in sign languages at all. For example, phonology is the study of what sounds can be produced in a language, what equivalence classes they belong to, and in what contexts they can occur. That doesn't apply directly to silent languages, but it's straightforward to say that the "phonology" of a sign language would be the gestures that it uses, which gestures are considered equivalent or distinct, and the contexts in which any given gesture can occur. But the question of what it's possible to express doesn't need to be analogized. It applies just as directly to sign languages as it does to spoken languages. The conclusion that sign languages have the same expressive power as spoken languages would be equally true or false regardless of whether anyone was studying the analogue of sound production in soundless languages.
- eindiran 7y ago
  The point there is that it's not necessarily obvious that sign languages would have phonology or morhphology or syntax, but once you've realized that that's true it absolutely does follow that they are as expressive (in the technical sense) as spoken languages. I don't want to get into an argument about linguistic relativity and the Minimalist program on Hacker News, but the Minimalists believe that the expressiveness of languages stem from their syntax: once a language has two syntactic operations (called "merge" and "move", that all natural languages have[0]), it becomes as expressive as every other natural language. Where you hide the complexity of this expressiveness depends a lot on the language: some put it in the lexicon, others in the morphology, etc. But at the end of the day, if sign languages have a syntax, they fall into the same class of expressiveness as spoken languages. As linguists started studying how something that looked like phonology, morphology and syntax might manifest in sign languages, it became clear that sign languages did have a syntax. You can see something that imo looks like the "move" operation going on with topicalization in ASL and something like "merge" going on with negations and numerical incorporation, although I don't actually know enough about ASL to say for sure. [0] Again, I really don't want to argue about this but one linguist named Daniel Everett doesn't think this is true (he believes that a language called Piraha does not have recursion or, by implication, a merge operation). But he's probably wrong, and Andrew Nevins and David Pesetsky at MIT have a very compelling argument about why that is.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    Sure. But as I already said, syntax is not a domain that "traditionally only applied to spoken languages". Its application to sign languages differs in no way from its application to spoken languages. And syntax is the relevant domain for asking whether sign languages are as expressive as spoken languages are. So your original claim looks like this hypothetical one: > Pete Ricketts is the governor of Nebraska, so it is now widely acknowledged that the sum of the first n consecutive odd numbers is always a perfect square. The premise is true. The conclusion is true. But this is a terrible argument to make. > it's not necessarily obvious that sign languages would have phonology or morphology or syntax, but once you've realized that that's true it absolutely does follow that they are as expressive (in the technical sense) as spoken languages. This is wrong on both points: - By definition, sign languages do not have phonology, do have morphology, and do have syntax; you can reach those conclusions without needing to investigate any language in particular. - Many other information channels, such as, say, Python, or bee dancing, do have morphology and syntax (and don't have phonology), but are obviously not as expressive as spoken languages are.
    - eindiran 7y ago
      Sign languages absolutely do have a phonology. From the first sentence of the Wikipedia page on phonology: > Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in spoken languages and signs in sign languages. I am using "syntax" in a very precise sense, as tied to linguistics generally and the Minimalist program specifically. Having a syntax = having a grammar with a merge operation and a move operation that governs relationships of the word or morpheme level units in your language. By that definition syntax is a domain "traditionally only applied to spoken languages", with the one caveat that there are a few papers out there examining whether non-linguistic grammars have merge or move operations. Because it wasn't always clear that sign languages have morphemes or words (it became widely known during the 1970s and 1980s), the syntacticians that were developing early ideas in mainstream syntax weren't doing so with sign languages in mind. So as the linguistic dogma "all languages are equally expressive" was developed, people were often not thinking explicitly of sign languages. That "all languages (including sign languages) are equally expressive" came to be appreciated was precisely because linguists started to examine how syntax and morphology might apply sign languages. If you can cite a single paper published before 1970 that discusses the syntax of a sign language from the perspective of generative linguistics, I will recant my whole statement and acknowledge that there is nothing meaningful tying the first half of the problematic sentence to the second half and that my understanding of the history of linguistics was incorrect. The earliest example I am aware of was from 1974.
mabbo 7y ago
> ASL and other sign languages are literally languages 100% agree. > He wasn't talking in a non-spoken language; he was not talking ... that isn't nearly the same thing as speaking a sign language I disagree. ASL 1000, first class, my professor was telling us elaborate, hilarious stories without ever speaking and none of us "knew ASL" the language. But he was communicating to us using a plethora of skills that a person fluent in Signing knows how to use. When we say that ASL is a language, that doesn't mean standing statically and one sign at a time signing each one like a pictograph. A huge proportion of the language is in the nuance, the non-words, the expression, the acting and movement. That doesn't mean ASL is just that acting part, but pretending that what Francis was doing has no relation to ASL is a stretch in my mind. What he was doing while 'not speaking' has a lot in common with what I'm doing when I'm signing with Deaf people.
- solipsism 7y ago
  Huh? How was he communicating if he wasn't speaking and wasn't signing? You never say.
  - shard 7y ago
    I expect it was through pantomime, common gestures, and facial and body expressions.
  - mabbo 7y ago
    If I wink at you then raise my eyebrows suggestively, was I using English? No, English is a spoken language. Yet if you didn't know ASL, you'd know what I was saying, right? So which language was I using? Much of ASL communication- but not all by any means- uses this sort of communication that is very language agnostic. To really get good at Signed languages, you need to use a lot of these skills. That's what I mean when I say that ASL isn't a list of specific signs matching to words, it's a very complex system of communicating ideas. My professor, one of the most wonderful teachers I've ever had, was a master of communication. He could tell us hilarious stories without speaking English and without us knowing ASL because he could communicate without language. And my point to all of this is that saying that what Francis was doing isn't Signed Language misses some nuance in what Signed Language is.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

This: > so its now widely appreciated that anything expressible in spoken languages as a class is expressible in sign languages doesn't follow from this: > There are linguists that study how subfields in linguistics that traditionally only applied to spoken languages (e.g. phonology) have analogues in sign languages at all. For example, phonology is the study of what sounds can be produced in a language, what equivalence classes they belong to, and in what contexts they can occur. That doesn't apply directly to silent languages, but it's straightforward to say that the "phonology" of a sign language would be the gestures that it uses, which gestures are considered equivalent or distinct, and the contexts in which any given gesture can occur. But the question of what it's possible to express doesn't need to be analogized. It applies just as directly to sign languages as it does to spoken languages. The conclusion that sign languages have the same expressive power as spoken languages would be equally true or false regardless of whether anyone was studying the analogue of sound production in soundless languages.

eindiran 7y ago
The point there is that it's not necessarily obvious that sign languages would have phonology or morhphology or syntax, but once you've realized that that's true it absolutely does follow that they are as expressive (in the technical sense) as spoken languages. I don't want to get into an argument about linguistic relativity and the Minimalist program on Hacker News, but the Minimalists believe that the expressiveness of languages stem from their syntax: once a language has two syntactic operations (called "merge" and "move", that all natural languages have[0]), it becomes as expressive as every other natural language. Where you hide the complexity of this expressiveness depends a lot on the language: some put it in the lexicon, others in the morphology, etc. But at the end of the day, if sign languages have a syntax, they fall into the same class of expressiveness as spoken languages. As linguists started studying how something that looked like phonology, morphology and syntax might manifest in sign languages, it became clear that sign languages did have a syntax. You can see something that imo looks like the "move" operation going on with topicalization in ASL and something like "merge" going on with negations and numerical incorporation, although I don't actually know enough about ASL to say for sure. [0] Again, I really don't want to argue about this but one linguist named Daniel Everett doesn't think this is true (he believes that a language called Piraha does not have recursion or, by implication, a merge operation). But he's probably wrong, and Andrew Nevins and David Pesetsky at MIT have a very compelling argument about why that is.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Sure. But as I already said, syntax is not a domain that "traditionally only applied to spoken languages". Its application to sign languages differs in no way from its application to spoken languages. And syntax is the relevant domain for asking whether sign languages are as expressive as spoken languages are. So your original claim looks like this hypothetical one: > Pete Ricketts is the governor of Nebraska, so it is now widely acknowledged that the sum of the first n consecutive odd numbers is always a perfect square. The premise is true. The conclusion is true. But this is a terrible argument to make. > it's not necessarily obvious that sign languages would have phonology or morphology or syntax, but once you've realized that that's true it absolutely does follow that they are as expressive (in the technical sense) as spoken languages. This is wrong on both points: - By definition, sign languages do not have phonology, do have morphology, and do have syntax; you can reach those conclusions without needing to investigate any language in particular. - Many other information channels, such as, say, Python, or bee dancing, do have morphology and syntax (and don't have phonology), but are obviously not as expressive as spoken languages are.
  - eindiran 7y ago
    Sign languages absolutely do have a phonology. From the first sentence of the Wikipedia page on phonology: > Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in spoken languages and signs in sign languages. I am using "syntax" in a very precise sense, as tied to linguistics generally and the Minimalist program specifically. Having a syntax = having a grammar with a merge operation and a move operation that governs relationships of the word or morpheme level units in your language. By that definition syntax is a domain "traditionally only applied to spoken languages", with the one caveat that there are a few papers out there examining whether non-linguistic grammars have merge or move operations. Because it wasn't always clear that sign languages have morphemes or words (it became widely known during the 1970s and 1980s), the syntacticians that were developing early ideas in mainstream syntax weren't doing so with sign languages in mind. So as the linguistic dogma "all languages are equally expressive" was developed, people were often not thinking explicitly of sign languages. That "all languages (including sign languages) are equally expressive" came to be appreciated was precisely because linguists started to examine how syntax and morphology might apply sign languages. If you can cite a single paper published before 1970 that discusses the syntax of a sign language from the perspective of generative linguistics, I will recant my whole statement and acknowledge that there is nothing meaningful tying the first half of the problematic sentence to the second half and that my understanding of the history of linguistics was incorrect. The earliest example I am aware of was from 1974.

mabbo 7y ago

> ASL and other sign languages are literally languages 100% agree. > He wasn't talking in a non-spoken language; he was not talking ... that isn't nearly the same thing as speaking a sign language I disagree. ASL 1000, first class, my professor was telling us elaborate, hilarious stories without ever speaking and none of us "knew ASL" the language. But he was communicating to us using a plethora of skills that a person fluent in Signing knows how to use. When we say that ASL is a language, that doesn't mean standing statically and one sign at a time signing each one like a pictograph. A huge proportion of the language is in the nuance, the non-words, the expression, the acting and movement. That doesn't mean ASL is just that acting part, but pretending that what Francis was doing has no relation to ASL is a stretch in my mind. What he was doing while 'not speaking' has a lot in common with what I'm doing when I'm signing with Deaf people.

solipsism 7y ago
Huh? How was he communicating if he wasn't speaking and wasn't signing? You never say.
- shard 7y ago
  I expect it was through pantomime, common gestures, and facial and body expressions.
- mabbo 7y ago
  If I wink at you then raise my eyebrows suggestively, was I using English? No, English is a spoken language. Yet if you didn't know ASL, you'd know what I was saying, right? So which language was I using? Much of ASL communication- but not all by any means- uses this sort of communication that is very language agnostic. To really get good at Signed languages, you need to use a lot of these skills. That's what I mean when I say that ASL isn't a list of specific signs matching to words, it's a very complex system of communicating ideas. My professor, one of the most wonderful teachers I've ever had, was a master of communication. He could tell us hilarious stories without speaking English and without us knowing ASL because he could communicate without language. And my point to all of this is that saying that what Francis was doing isn't Signed Language misses some nuance in what Signed Language is.