Long-Awaited Historical Linguistics Research Sheds New Light on Early ASL
Deirdre A. Schlehofer · The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education · 2015
The authors establish an important new framework for the historical analysis of language contact and creolization, revealing the value of the study of pidgins and creoles to theoretical, typological, comparative-historical, and universal linguistics. They conducted an extensive archaeological collection of works based on publications dating back to the early 1800s, early sign language dictionaries, and the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) film data of three cohort generations of master signers from 15 surviving films in the period from 1910–1920. This well-written book contains 12 chapters outlining the purpose and description of sign language archaeology, background of master signers, understanding of ASL evolution, rediscovery of literary legacy, sign language methodology and its rich evidence of language change, and, finally, opportunities for humanistic and linguistic research. With the increase in use of data-driven methods, early ASL with few or no electronic resources has been difficult to process with current methods. The films were transcribed and translated into English, allowing the full corpora to be examined in their entirety. Through scientific methods, Supalla and Clark painstakingly documented and traced the transition from pidgin to creole languages while revealing the rich findings of grammaticalization processes (e.g., cliticization, reduction, and relexicalization). Their data reveal that early ASL was sequential, which has evolved into a complex morphology equal to that found in some spoken languages. The authors are extremely skilled at reconstructing historically related sign languages of early ASL and old French Sign Language (LSF) through examples from still photos and dictionaries. Today, ASL and LSF are unrecognizable, revealing the universal principles of language change.