so by now you realize that ASL is a language but I want you to clearly come
to understand that
ASL is a language just like other languages just like spoken languages
first let's take a look at the history of english and then compare it to the
history of ASL
originally there was a group of people who moved in to the British Isles who
spoke a language thats related to modern German now they didn't speak German they
spoke a languages called angle and Saxon these were groups of people called
the angles on the Saxons their languages eventually combined together into
something that would form English but it wasn't a simple straightforward process
it's not that the language is simply combined and that was English
there were invaders from the north called Vikings they came and they
brought with them a lot of new words a lot of new terms and even so me
grammatical features
that's right there were grammatical structures that Angles and Saxons didn't
have that Vikings brought many of the common words we use today actually came
from the Vikings
but even more important than the invasions of the Vikings were the
invasions of the French the French went up in to England and when these French-
that were from a particular area called Normandy came up in to English they brought
with them their language
in fact they stayed so long that the French that they spoke had a huge impact
on language in fact most of the words we use in formal settings
come from old french because the French people who invaded became the kings and
the nobles and the royalty
so the words that came from French were associated with being formal whereas the
words that were spoken by the Angles and the Saxons were the words spoken by the
people who weren't royalty they weren't the invaders
so even though the languages mixed we still sort of keep the separation
between words that are French in origin
like enter and subjugate versus the more common words like "go in" and "take over"
enter and subjugate they sounded slightly more formal those are
french-based whereas "go in" and "take over" which means basically the same thing are
less formal and they happen to also have come from anglo-saxon languages but that
said this complicated history is complicated interaction between Angles
Saxons Vikings and French produce what we have today and what we know as English
well American Sign Language has a similar history American Sign Language
originally came from the colonial signs that were used by deaf people living in
the United States
however these signs were not widely standardized and there were no schools
for deaf people so that people didn't have a chance to socialize and spread
these signs there were some signs systems that seem to have been used in
the colonies and there may have been some ability of different colonial deaf
people to understand one another but there was certainly no systematic
uniform way of signing that all changed when Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet brought a french man name Laurent Clerc
to come in and educate deaf people at what was then
called the American Asylum for Deaf Mutes I realize that's not a politically
correct term today but that eventually became the American School for the Deaf
he taught French sign language and what resulted was this combination between
colonial science and french signs and over time that developed into what we
now call ASL
in fact a lot of the features of ASL that we have today or are still based on
this old French sign language for instance when you sign the sign for
SEARCH or LOOK FOR you make a C handshape well that's because the french
word for "chercher"
it is the word for to LOOK FOR I'm probably pronouncing that French were
terribly i don't speak French
another example the word TO SEE has a V handshape you probably thought it was
just too representing the eyes but it turns out it's actually from the French
word to see which starts with a V but it wasn't only the the the the initials of
the words that came from French it was also a large number of structures
grammatical components that didn't come from spoken French but they came from
French sign language so this combination resulted in ASL
but we also can't forget that ASL is used along with English that is most Deaf
people who sign ASL read and write in english and sometimes speak and listen to
English depending on their oral training in their use of their residual hearing
so English and ASL have been
contact for a long time so we often have these phrases these words the grammatical structures
that are borrowed from english into ASL and that's ok it's
alright there's been a complicated history
now after ASL developed in the 18th century
it wasn't originally recognized as a language of course it was a slow process
of development of spreading of standardization just like it was with
English as the angles the saxons the Vikings and the French speakers
eventually developed a standardized language with american sign language
it was well into the 60s the 1960s that it was just called sign
it wasn't called American Sign Language it was just sign people didn't use the term
language as a matter of fact deaf people were even suspicious when a hearing man, a man
named william stokoe went to Gallaudet he was a linguist he was there at
Gallaudet University teaching English to deaf people and he noticed that the system of
signs that they used was complicated it was intricate it involved syntactic
structure very different from English and he said you know what this is a
language but deaf people didn't originally recognize that they said no
they were suspicious they said we do something different than language it's
just our systems it's our short hand it's just our bad english
they were they were reluctant to call it american sign language but eventually it
did catch on and its continuing today to gain recognition as a language linguist
now frequently study american sign language to understand how visual
language works to understand how language works in the brain and maybe
to even understand something about the origins of all language for humans
when thinking about ASL as a language we also need to understand that this
affects what we mean by ASL rules
we've already learned that when we talk about rules we don't just mean sort of
things you can look up in a book
I mean sure once linguists are done doing the descriptive work they can
write a book that tells you the rules as a matter of fact that's what we're doing in
this class we're going to describe what that people do and we're going to tell
you those rules but we have to understand that it's not as simple as
sort of some made-up system right
it's not like you can just make up the rules like you'd make up the rules of a game
no they evolved naturally over time through this complex interplay and as a
result the rules are complicated
it's not as simple as saying the time goes at the beginning of a sentence
well that's not always true it's not as simple as saying you always sign
time - topic - location - action as some ASL teachers might have told you
well that might be a useful way of thinking about things but it's more
complicated than that
there are lots of factors that come into play just as an English I might tell you
that the subject comes before the verb we can find examples of English
sentences with the subject doesn't come before the verb
so it is true in ASL that we can find examples of sentences where the time
doesn't come in the beginning of the sentence or whatever other simple rule
you think you've learned has an exception
this is important because ASL is still changing its continuing to evolve its
continuing to be influenced by English and as it evolves as it's influence by
English
these rules are going to change remember these are mental rules
the only way to know what is acceptable in ASL is to look at what lots of deaf
people do
native deaf signers to figure out what they sign to ask them how they sign it
and that's what the rules of a ASL are
it's not as simple as asking looking your ASL one book because those rules
are often not representative of the complexity the naturally evolving and the
changing mental rules that we find within the minds of native ASL signers