Amy Jacques
April 3, 2008
A Sign Language All Its Own
Those who study languages have been quite interested in how languages
begin and develop. In a remote portion of the southern desert of Isreal
there are a group of Bedouins (Al-Sayyid) (Wikipedia, 2007) that have
developed their own sign language and it is unlike any other sign language
in the area/world. It is unique.
This group of Bedouins was founded about 200 years ago with one family and
at this time has a population of about 3,500 (Sandler, 2005). Since the
members of this group marry among their family (cousins), and tend to shun
outsiders, the community has been rather isolated from their counterparts in
other parts of the country.( Sandler, 2005) The reason for this marriage
system is that it keeps the “ownership of the land within the family”
(Wikipedia, 2007). There is a trait of inherited deafness among the
population and its incidence is much higher in the community because of
their isolation than in other populations worldwide. During the past three
generations around 150 people with the gene for deafness have been born.(
Sandler, 2005)
In the community the members who are deaf are not stigmatized and most of
the community knows signing as a second language although some are more
proficient than others at signing. (Sandler, 2005). This language has
appeared in about the last 70 years or so, and in the first generation had a
subject, object, verb order. The language is progressing quite rapidly, so
much so that the third generation is signing twice as fast as the first and
has much longer sentence structures.( Wikipedia, 2007) The language in its
early stages was not as simplistic as researchers had supposed a “new”
language would be. The signers could convey ideas that related beyond the
“here and now” to include information “about social relations and
activities, home construction methods, fertility, national insurance, and
even folk remedies that have fallen out of use.” The organization the
sentence structure is clear as to the “doer of the action”, the action
itself, and the receiver of the action. (Boswell, 2006). As each successive
generation comes along they are adding to the language by introducing new
signs and forms. Researchers are going back and studying the
second-generation signers (all the members of the first generation, 10 of
them, are all deceased) to compare against the third generation. They are
also monitoring the following generation’s signing to record how the
language is changing. (Boswell, 2006). There is a concern that because of
marriage and schooling outside the community (a recent turn of events) that
this language may not last or continue to thrive. But the contribution to
understanding of the evolution of language will not be lost. (Boswell,
2006).
References
Boswell, S. (2006). Signs from the desert. Retrieved September of 2007 at
http://www.asha.org/about/publications/leader-online/archives/2006/060117/060117d.htm
Sandler, W., Meir, I., Padden, C., and Aronoff, M. (2005). The emergence of
grammar: Systematic structure in a new language. PNAS. Vol. 102(7). pp.
2661-2665.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2007). Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language.
Retrieved September of 2007 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Sayyid_Bedouin_Sign_Language
.