Roots of language
Sign language structure
Studies of sign language structure are designed to uncover fundamental properties of human languages. Some aspects of sign languages are similar, even identical, to spoken language structure, for example, having levels of organization from the phonological to the morphological and syntactic. Other aspects of sign languages are less clearly like spoken languages, for example, the verb class system in American Sign Language (ASL). ASL verbs divide into three major classes: 1) plain verbs (without agreement), 2) spatial verbs (marking only locatives) and 3) agreement verbs (marking person and number agreement). Agreement in spoken languages rarely applies to a single semantic class, instead is more likely to appear more broadly across verbs. My recent work explores areas of sign language structure that appear to be unusual to sign languages, such as: fingerspelling, a manual system for representing alphabetic letters that is not iconic, yet interacts with signs, and a category of signs that alternate between handling/instrument forms for objects held by the hand.
Language and culture