Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: When did American Sign Language develop?
ASL emerged as a language in the American School for the Deaf (ASD), founded in 1817.[7]:7 This school brought together Old French Sign Language, various village sign languages, and home sign systems; ASL was created in this situation of language contact.[8]:11[nb 1] ASL was influenced by its forerunners but distinct from all of them.[7]:7
Cyprus or Cypriot Sign Language () is an incipient sign language of Cyprus. It appears to be a pidgin of American Sign Language and Greek Sign Language, not yet a fully developed language. The Greek Cypriot deaf community predominantly uses the Greek Sign Language (the Turkish Cypriot deaf community uses the Turkish Sign Language).
Observations on great apes have been widely reported as evidence of tactical deception. Several great apes have been trained to use sign language, and in some instances these animals seem to have used language in an attempt to deceive human observers. Koko, a female gorilla, was trained to use a form of American Sign Language. It has been claimed that she once tore a steel sink out of its moorings and when her handlers confronted her, Koko signed "cat did it" and pointed at her innocent pet kitten. Nim Chimpsky was a common chimpanzee also trained in American Sign Language. In a documentary about the chimp ("Project Nim") trainers claimed that when Nim got bored of learning to sign words she would sign 'dirty' indicating she wanted to go to the toilet, which caused the trainer to stop the lesson.
To take advantage of Genie's nonverbal abilities, in 1974 the Riglers arranged for her to receive sign language instruction; Curtiss described the type of sign language as being, "a system of signing somewhere between American Sign Language and signed English in its grammatical system." Curtiss wrote that Genie would often simultaneously speak and sign, and continued to use and invent her own gestures, but while she continued to use her existing gestures for individual phonemes she started creating new ones to convey a semantic meaning. The scientists did not specifically test Genie's sign language, but Curtiss recorded that by February 1975 Genie could use the sign to indicate a plural and that by the spring of 1975 used the past tense sign. In addition, when told to start a sentence in sign language with the word "he" Genie produced "The boy signing is he cookie".
It is unknown when the first attempts were made to represent an oral language with gesture. Indeed, some have speculated that oral languages may have evolved from sign languages, and there may be undocumented cases in history when vocal and signed modes of a language existed side by side. It is not uncommon for people to develop gestures to replace words or phrases in contexts where speech is not possible or not permitted, such as in a television studio, but these are usually limited in scope and rarely develop into complete representations of an oral language. One of the most elaborated examples of this kind of auxiliary manual system is Warlpiri Sign Language, a complete signed mode of spoken Warlpiri which was developed by an Indigenous community in central Australia due to cultural proscriptions against speech. Sign language linguists usually make a distinction between these auxiliary sign languages and manually coded languages; the latter are specifically designed for use in Deaf education, and usually represent the written form of the language.
Researchers disagree regarding at what stage in the development of ISN it was to be considered a full-fledged language.From the beginning of her research in Nicaragua in 1986 until Nicaraguan Sign Language was well established, Kegl carefully avoided introducing the sign languages she knew, in particular American Sign Language, to the deaf community in Nicaragua. A type of linguistic imperialism had been occurring internationally for decades where individuals would introduce ASL to populations of deaf people in other countries, often supplanting existing local sign languages. Kegl's policy was to document and study rather than to impose or change the language or its community. While she did not interfere with deaf Nicaraguans gaining exposure to other sign languages, she did not introduce such opportunities. She has, however, documented contact and influences with other sign languages that began as early as the 1990s and that continue; critics, such as Felicia Ackerman, have taken issue with the ethics of isolating the Nicaraguan children.
The first deaf school using Chinese Sign Language was created by Nellie Thompson Mills, the wife of American missionary C.R. Mills, in the year 1887. However, American Sign Language (ASL) did not influence Chinese Sign Language (CSL) much. Schools, workshops and farms in different areas for the Deaf are the main ways that CSL has been able to spread in China so well. Other Deaf who are not connected to these gathering places tend to use sets of gestures developed in their own homes, known as home sign.
The FSL family descends from Old French Sign Language, which developed among the deaf community in Paris. The earliest mention of Old French Sign Language is by the abbé Charles-Michel de l'Épée in the late 17th century, but it could have existed for centuries prior. Several European sign languages, such as Russian Sign Language, derive from it, as does American Sign Language, established when French educator Laurent Clerc taught his language at the American School for the Deaf. Others, such as Spanish Sign Language, are thought to be related to French Sign Language even if they are not directly descendant from it.
Informal, rudimentary sign systems are sometimes developed within a single family. For instance, when hearing parents with no sign language skills have a deaf child, the child may develop a system of signs naturally, unless repressed by the parents. The term for these mini-languages is home sign (sometimes "home sign" or "kitchen sign").
Under these circumstances, AdaSL has developed as an indigenous sign language, fully independent from the country's standard Ghanaian Sign Language (which is related to American Sign Language). AdaSL is a shared sign language which differs from urban sign languages such as Ghanaian Sign Language because the majority of speakers of a shared sign language aren't actually deaf. National sign languages usually emerge for the purpose of use by deaf individuals such as those attending schools specifically for the deaf. This important feature of shared sign languages alters the way it is maintained, developed, and shared. A historical example of a shared signing community is the island Martha's Vineyard (Martha's Vineyard Sign Language).
The classification of Nepalese Sign Language is currently under dispute. Older work has suggested that Nepalese Sign Language is not related to other sign languages. Wittmann (1991) posits that NSL is a language isolate (a 'prototype' sign language), though one developed through stimulus diffusion from an existing sign language, likely Indo-Pakistani Sign Language or the systems that underlay it. Gallaudet University reports that NSL was "developed by the Peace Corps from local and American signs".
The studies did not consider how a non-implanted child exposed to a signed language and a bilingual/bicultural education could develop English skills in relation to a hearing child's English development. Multiple studies find that by ensuring a deaf child has access to American Sign Language, their overall academic performance is better than those who are not.
Paraguayan Sign Language, or "Lengua de señas paraguaya" (LSPY), is the deaf sign language of Paraguay. It is not intelligible with neighboring languages, nor with American Sign Language, but speakers report that it has historical connections with Uruguayan Sign Language. It developed outside the schools, and was only used in education "recently" (as of 2009).
Greek SL formed in the 1950s when American Sign Language and French Sign Language came together, with admixture from indigenous sign.
However, American Sign Language does not appear to be vastly varied when compared to other signed languages. This is because when Deaf education was beginning in the United States, many educators flocked to the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. This central location for the first generation of educators in Deaf education to learn American Sign Language allows ASL to be more standardized than it is variant.[27]
American Sign Language (ASL) developed in the United States and Canada, but has spread around the world. Local varieties have developed in many countries, but there is little research on which should be considered dialects of ASL (such as Bolivian Sign Language) and which have diverged to the point of being distinct languages (such as Malaysian Sign Language).
Baby sign programs encourage parents to improve their communication skills between themselves and their infants before they have developed speech. Kirk and colleagues have found that the results of their study with hearing infants provided no evidence to support that a child’s language development would benefit from learning baby sign. They also found that children who participated in baby sign had similar language development to children who did not learn baby sign. It is suggested that participating in baby sign may be an unnecessary effort with infants when being motivated by the hopes of advanced language learning for the child. However, it was found that mothers who used baby sign with their infants encouraged increased independence with them and supported a higher level of independence for their child. Another conducted research study has shown that there are no significant differences found with language acquisition between infants who are receiving or not receiving exposure to baby sign, including reaching language milestones Although no support for using baby sign was found in this study, there was also no negative effects found to be associated with language development when using baby sign with your child. It is possible that baby sign is working in support of infant's spoken language, but was not found to further their later language development.
In 1815, an American Protestant minister, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, travelled to Europe to research teaching of the deaf. He was rebuffed by both the Braidwood schools who refused to teach him their methods. Gallaudet then travelled to Paris and learned the educational methods of the French Royal Institution for the Deaf, a combination of Old French Sign Language and the signs developed by Abbé de l’Épée. As a consequence American Sign Language today has a 60% similarity to modern French Sign Language and is almost unintelligible to users of British Sign Language.
Thai Sign Language is related to American Sign Language (ASL), and belongs to the same language family as ASL. This relatedness is due to language contact and creolisation that has occurred between ASL, which was introduced into deaf schools in Thailand in the 1950s by American-trained Thai educators and at least two indigenous sign languages that were in use at the time: Old Bangkok Sign Language and Chiangmai Sign Language. These original sign languages probably developed in market towns and urban areas where deaf people had opportunities to meet. They are now considered moribund languages, remembered by older signers but no longer used for daily conversation. These older varieties may be related to the sign languages of Vietnam and Laos.
Most formal education for the deaf in Mali uses American Sign Language, introduced to West Africa by the deaf American missionary Andrew Foster. There are two other sign languages in Mali. One, Tebul Sign Language, is found in a village with a high incidence of congenital deafness. Another, Bamako Sign Language, developed in the after-work tea circles of the cities; it is threatened by the educational use of ASL.
As with all sign languages around the world that developed organically, these are full languages distinct from any oral language. American Sign Language (unlike Signed English) is not a derivation of English. Some languages present here were trade pidgins which were used first as a system of communication across national and linguistic boundaries of the Native Americans, however, they have since developed into mature languages as children learned them as a first language.
Deaf-community languages may develop directly from home sign, or perhaps from idioglossic sign (in families with more than one deaf child), as was the case with Nicaraguan SL, or they may develop from village sign languages, as appears to have been at least partially the case with American SL, which arose in a school for the deaf where French Sign Language was the language of instruction, but seems to have derived largely from two or three village sign languages of the students.
Work on documenting the lexicon of Nepalese Sign Language started in the mid-1980s. The first work collecting signs in Nepal that we know of was started in 1985. Patricia Ross, an American Peace Corps volunteer, was a pioneer in sign language research in Nepal. However, her work with Kathmandu Association of the Deaf (KAD) was to collect already existing signs, not creating new signs. As she herself writes: "The initial stumbling block in initiating total communication in Nepal was the lack of any recorded sign language. Many people did not know that there was a fully developed system of Nepalese signs. Despite the fact that sign was not used in the schools, the deaf people, out of their own need to communicate, had developed an intricate system of signs". Regarding the process of collecting signs, Ross further stated: "I would write down words and the students would discuss and argue about what the proper sign was. Slowly and patiently the students taught me their signs, their language." Ross's work collecting NSL signs eventually lead to the publication of the first Nepalese Sign Language dictionary.
While Singapore does not have a national sign language, the local deaf community recognizes Singapore Sign Language (SgSL) as Singapore’s native sign language. This is because sign language in Singapore has developed over the last 6 decades since the setting up of the first school for local deaf in 1954. Hence, there is crucial need to preserve and maintain local signs invented by the deaf community in Singapore since the early 1950s. Various sign languages have been adopted and used by the local deaf community as a result of linguistic changes. SgSL is influenced by Shanghainese Sign Language (SSL), American Sign Language (ASL), Signing Exact English (SEE-II) and locally developed signs. It also comprises different types of systems, including SEE-II, Pidgin Signed English (PSE) and gestures. Today, SgSL consists of the following language and sign systems:
The development of the signs have influences of Spanish sign language and American Sign Language. It is reported to have signs in common with Salvadoran Sign Language.