Much of my work throughout my career has been the study of American Sign Language (ASL) structure. My dissertation, “Interaction of Morphology and Syntax in American Sign Language” (1983) was published as an Outstanding Dissertation in Linguistics (Garland Press, 1988). This work introduced an analysis of grammar in space: a tripartite classification of ASL verbs, first, plain verbs (those that involve the body but not space), spatial verbs (those marking positions and locations in the world) and then, agreement verbs (using space to show number and person agreement with subjects and objects). This tripartite pattern has been observed in many other sign languages around the world, suggesting that this three-way division is somehow important to language. I have also studied sign phonology and complex discourse forms in ASL which blend together gesture and language. My goal is to understand how human language uses both physical and social resources: the body (whether using the vocal tract or the hands and the body) together with the requirements of communicating in social and cultural context.
Sign Language Structure
Together with Mark Aronoff, Irit Meir and Wendy Sandler, I have been investigating the emergence of language structure in a sign language that created within a closed community approximately 75 years ago. Though the life span of this sign language is short, we have discovered consistent word order and an emerging verb classification system which is largely bipartite (plain and spatial verbs), not tripartite as is commonly seen in older, more established sign languages. We have come to learn that the body plays a central role in organizing meaning, then over time body and space interact in the emergence of space. Our goal is to trace the roots of language through the study of language evolution “in the wild,” that is, developing naturally within a community. [See Recent Publications: Sign Language Structure]
Culture and Community
Natural sign languages have as their distinguishing feature collective histories among communities of deaf people. The history of ASL dates from the earliest years of colonial America. With Tom Humphries, I have published two books on the cultures and communities of Deaf people who use ASL: Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture (Harvard University Press, 1988) and Inside Deaf Culture (Harvard University Press, 2005). I view culture not as an entity, but as a process, observed in practices carried out in context. These practices are historically created “solutions” to being deaf in the U.S. A sign language is one such “solution,” the creation of a visual/manual language which is adaptive to the communicative and symbolic needs of a community of people. Within this work, I have written about performance in ASL, rhetoric in George William Veditz’s 1913 film, The Preservation of the Sign Language, and the future of sign languages in the age of cochlear implants and genetic engineering. [See Recent Publications: Culture and Community]
Language and Literacy
A third area of research has been reading and literacy in young signing deaf children. While learning to read involves learning about language, it almost always requires skilled instruction from adults, as such it draws heavily from community and cultural resources. Some of my publications in this area examine fingerspelling, a mode of communication in which signers use a linearly-organized alphabetic representation of English words as a way to borrow from a spoken language. What is unique about fingerspelling in ASL is how entrenched it is in the language, existing as a productive means of borrowing from another modality, from speech to sign. Other work in this area looks at contexts of reading among ASL signers. [See Recent Publications: Language and Literacy]
