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[s] in an existing, relatively insular community into which a number of deaf children are born." [1] The term "rural sign language" refers to almost the same concept. [2] 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 sign language.
When a language is not shared with the village or hearing community as a whole, but is only used within a few families and their friends, it may be distinguished as a family sign language. In such cases, most of the hearing signers may be native speakers of the language, if they are members of one of these families, or acquired it at a young age.
The nature of the village sign language depends on the nature of deafness in the community. Where deafness is genetically recessive, deaf children may not have immediate family who are deaf, but instead have more distant deaf relatives. Many largely hearing families have deaf members, so large numbers of hearing people sign (though not always well). In Desa Kolok on Bali, for example, two thirds of villagers sign even though only 2% are deaf; in Adamorobe, Ghana, the number of hearing signers is ten times the number of deaf people. This means there is generally good communication between the deaf and hearing people outside of their families, and thus a high degree of intermarriage between the deaf and hearing. In extreme cases, such as on Providencia Island of Colombia, nearly all conversations deaf people have are with the hearing, and there is little direct communication between deaf people themselves, and so little opportunity for the language to develop. Perhaps as a result, Providencia Sign is rather simplistic, the hearing speak to the deaf as if they were stupid, and the deaf are not well integrated into the community. In most recorded cases of village sign, it appears that recessive deafness is at work. [1]
Where the deafness is genetically dominant, on the other hand, deafness is largely restricted to particular families, such as the Mardin family of Turkey and the family in which the Central Taurus Sign Language of Turkey emerged. Deaf people tend to have deaf children, and so pass the language on directly. With plenty of direct contact between deaf signers, the languages tend to be well developed. With fewer hearing people with deaf relatives, there are also generally fewer hearing people who sign, and less intermarriage; families tend to have their own vocabulary (and perhaps language), as on Amami Oshima in Japan. There are exceptions, however: In Ban Khor in Thailand the deafness is dominant, and restricted to one extended family, but the houses of different families are intermixed within the village, so nearly all hearing people have deaf neighbors, and signing is widespread among all-hearing families. [1]
Village sign contrasts with Deaf-community sign languages, which arise where deaf people come together to form their own communities. These include school sign, such as Nicaraguan Sign Language, Penang Sign Language, and the various Tanzanian and Sri Lankan sign languages, which develop in the student bodies of deaf schools which do not use sign as a language of instruction, as well as community languages such as Bamako Sign Language (Mali), Hausa Sign Language (Nigeria), Saigon, Haiphong, and Hanoi Sign Language (Vietnam), Bangkok and Chiangmai Sign Language (Thailand), which arise where generally uneducated deaf people congregate in urban centers for employment. Deaf-community sign languages are not generally known by the hearing population.
There appear to be grammatical differences between village and Deaf-community languages, which may parallel the emergence and development of grammar during creolization. Sign space tends to be large. Few village sign languages use sign space for abstract metaphorical or grammatical functions, for example, restricting it to concrete reference, such as pointing to places or where the sun is in the sky at a particular time. It is thought that such differences may be at least partially due to the sociolinguistic setting of the languages. In the case of village sign, speakers are culturally homogenous. They share a common social context, history, and experiences, and know each other personally. This may allow them to communicate without being as explicit as required for a larger, less intimate society. As a consequence, grammatical and other linguistic structures may develop relatively slowly. [1] There are exceptions, however. Kailge Sign Language is reported to use both concrete and metaphorical pointing, and to use sign space grammatically for verbal agreement. [3]
Because, at least in cases of genetically recessive deafness, village sign languages are used by large numbers of hearing people who also use spoken languages, the structures of village sign may be strongly influenced by the structure of the spoken languages. For example, Adamorobe Sign Language of Ghana has serial verbs, a linguistic construction that is also found in the language spoken by the hearing people of the community, the Twi language. [4]
Deaf sign languages contrast with speech-taboo languages such as the various Aboriginal Australian sign languages, which are developed as auxiliary languages by the hearing community and only used secondarily by the deaf, if they (rather than home sign) are used by the deaf at all, and (at least originally) are not independent languages.
Village sign languages have historically appeared and disappeared as communities have shifted, and many are unknown or undescribed. Attested examples include: [5]
The alleged Rennellese Sign Language of the Solomon Islands was home sign. It is not clear if the reported Marajo Sign Language in Brazil is a coherent language or home sign in various families; [8] similarly with Maxakali Sign Language, also in Brazil, which is at least very young. [9] With Mehek Sign Language (Papua New Guinea), signs are quite variable, suggesting at most only an incipient coherent village language along with much home sign.
Sign languages are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulations in combination with non-manual elements. Sign languages are full-fledged natural languages with their own grammar and lexicon. Sign languages are not universal and are usually not mutually intelligible with each other, although there are also similarities among different sign languages.
Nicaraguan Sign Language is a sign language that was developed, largely spontaneously, by deaf children in a number of schools in Nicaragua in the 1980s. It is of particular interest to the linguists who study it because it offers a unique opportunity to study what they believe to be the birth of a new 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).
Mayan Sign Language is a sign language used in Mexico and Guatemala by Mayan communities with unusually high numbers of deaf inhabitants. In some instances, both hearing and deaf members of a village may use the sign language. It is unrelated to the national sign languages of Mexico and Guatemala, as well as to the local spoken Mayan languages and Spanish.
Indo-Pakistani Sign Language (IPSL) is the predominant sign language in the subcontinent of South Asia, used by at least 15 million deaf signers. As with many sign languages, it is difficult to estimate numbers with any certainty, as the Census of India does not list sign languages and most studies have focused on the north and urban areas. As of 2021, it is the most used sign language in the world, and Ethnologue ranks it as the 151st most "spoken" language in the world.
Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) is a village sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert of southern Israel.
A contact sign language, or contact sign, is a variety or style of language that arises from contact between deaf individuals using a sign language and hearing individuals using an oral language. Contact languages also arise between different sign languages, although the term pidgin rather than contact sign is used to describe such phenomena.
Ka'apor Sign Language was a village sign language used by the small community of Ka'apor people in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. Linguist Jim Kakumasu observed in 1968 that the number of deaf people in the community was 7 out of a population of about 500. This relatively high ratio of deafness led to both hearing and deaf members of the community using the language, and most hearing children grow up bilingual in the spoken and signed languages. The current state of the language is unknown. Other Indigenous tribes in the region have also been reported to use sign languages, and to communicate between themselves using sign language pidgins.
Kata Kolok, also known as Benkala Sign Language and Balinese Sign Language, is a village sign language which is indigenous to two neighbouring villages in northern Bali, Indonesia. The main village, Bengkala, has had high incidences of deafness for over seven generations. Notwithstanding the biological time depth of the recessive mutation that causes deafness, the first substantial cohort of deaf signers did not occur until five generations ago, and this event marks the emergence of Kata Kolok. The sign language has been acquired by at least five generations of deaf, native signers and features in all aspects of village life, including political, professional, educational, and religious settings.
Nepalese Sign Language or Nepali Sign Language is the main deaf sign language of Nepal. It is a somewhat standardized language based informally on the variety of Kathmandu, with some input from varieties of Pokhara and elsewhere. As an indigenous sign language, it is not related to oral Nepali. The newly promulgated constitution on Nepal 2072 (2015) had specifically mentioned the right to have education in Sign Language for the deaf. Likewise the newly passed Disability right act 2072 (2017) in its definition of Language has mentioned "'Language' means spoken and sign languages and other forms of speechless language." in practice it is recognized by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare, and is used in all schools for the deaf. In addition, there is legislation underway in Nepal which, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) which Nepal has ratified, should give Nepalese Sign Language equal status with the oral languages of the country.
Inuit Sign Language is an indigenous sign language. It is a language isolate native to Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic. It is currently only attested within certain communities in Nunavut, particularly Baker Lake and Rankin Inlet. Although there is a possibility that it may be used in other places where Inuit people live in the Arctic, this has not been confirmed.
Sinasina is a term used to refer to for several Chimbu–Wahgi language varieties of Tabare Rural LLG, Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea. The term 'Sinasina' as a language name is an exonym. Speakers of the varieties of this region instead refer to their languages with tok ples vernacular languages endonyms, including: Dinga, Gunangi, Kebai, Kere, Kondo, Nimai, Tabare. The Kere community also has a deaf sign language, Sinasina Sign Language.
Jamaican Country Sign Language, also Country Sign, or Konchri Sain (KS) in Jamaican Patois, is an indigenous village sign language of Jamaica. It is used by a small number of Deaf and hearing Jamaicans, spread over several communities in the rural south-western parish of St. Elizabeth.
Yolŋu (Yolngu) or Murngin Sign Language is a ritual sign language used by the Yolngu, an Aboriginal community in the Arnhem Land region of Australia. As with other Australian Aboriginal sign languages, YSL was developed by the hearing for use when oral speech is forbidden, as during mourning or between certain family relations. However, "YSL is not a signed version of any spoken Yolngu language... YSL also serves as a primary means of communication for a number of deaf members in Yolngu communities... YSL functions as both an alternate and primary sign language". That is, it is used for communicating to the deaf, but also when communicating at a distance, when hunting, or when ceremonies require silence. It was acquired from birth by the hearing population. YSL is now considered an endangered language.
Algerian Jewish Sign Language (AJSL), also known as Ghardaia Sign Language, is a moribund village sign language originally of Ghardaïa, Algeria that is now used in Israel and possibly also in France.
A deaf-community or urban sign language is a sign language that emerges when deaf people who do not have a common language come together and form a community. This may be a formal situation, such as the establishment of a school for the deaf, or informal, such as migration to cities for employment and the subsequent gathering of deaf people for social purposes. An example of the first is Nicaraguan Sign Language, which emerged when deaf children in Nicaragua were brought together for the first time, and received only oral education; of the latter, Bamako Sign Language, which emerged among the tea circles of the uneducated deaf in the capital of Mali. Nicaraguan SL is now a language of instruction and is recognized as the national sign language; Bamako SL is not, and is threatened by the use of American Sign Language in schools for the deaf.
Alipur Sign Language is a village sign language of India. It is spoken in the town of Alipur, Karnataka, a Shia Muslim enclave with a high degree of congenital deafness. There are between 150 and 250 deaf people in Alipur, and there are approximately 10,000 hearing people speaking the language on a population of 26,000. The language has no official status and deaf children receive no formal education. This fact plus the increasing influence of the Indian Sign Language threaten the survival of Alipur Sign Language. Sibaji Panda was the first person to officially document the language in 2012.
Douentza Sign Language, or Dogon Sign Language is a community sign language spoken in Douentza and neighboring communities in the Dogon country in Mali. It is unknown how similar it may be to the nearby village sign language, Tebul Sign Language, but it may be unrelated to another sign language of the Dogon region, Berbey Sign Language. As of 2013, there is no school for the deaf in the area, but one is planned; the introduction of American Sign Language as the language of instruction may affect Douentza Sign. A video corpus has been collected by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics to document the pre-contact form of the language.
Sinasian Sign Language (SSSL) is a village sign language of the Sinasina valley in Chimbu Province, Papua New Guinea. This language is used by approximately 3 deaf and 50 hearing individuals, including members of the Kere community. SSSL was first encountered and reported by linguists in 2016. Documentation efforts are ongoing.
Ulrike Zeshan is a German-born linguist and academic specializing in the linguistics of signed languages. She is Professor of Sign Language Linguistics at the University of Central Lancashire, UK.
