Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 85. kötet (1983)

Tanulmányok - Gleason, Jean Berko: Insights from the Extraordinary: Some New Trends in American Psycholinguistics 140

NEW TRENDS IN AMEEICAN PSYCHOLINGTJISTICS 143 fédéral government once it was established, and during the 19th Century similar schools using ASL as the language of instruction spread throughout the United States. ASL took on a life of its own once thèse schools were started. For the first time, there was a large Community of deaf people with a common language. The children born to parents who had been to the schools learned ASL as their mother tongue, and ASL became a living language. Despite the fact that ASL has existed as a natural language for over a Century and a half in the United States, it has been only in récent years that linguists have begun to describe its structure. (See, for instance, Klima and Bellugi 1979.) Klima and Bellugi have conducted a séries of investigations into the nature of sign language with the help of their hearing and deaf colleagues at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. These studies have shown that ASL is a complète language, and that its users are able to modify their utterances to produce subtle grammatical nuances. ASL contains a basic set of handshapes that function like phonèmes. These signs are made within a well-delineated signing space in front of the body ; and the signs have morphological relations to one another. The language can be used to creatc metaphors, poems, jokes, lies, and exaggerations. Mothers even use ASL baby talk when signing to their infants. Within its grammatical System, ASL has markers that indicated aspect and other verbal modulations ; for instance, it is possible to indicate that something happened only once, or that it continued over a period of time. If a basic sign is made with an added circular movement, the meaning tends to be is conveyed. Using modulations of this type, deaf signers can produce complex messages like My sister was in an auto accident, and as a resuit she tends to be sickly. Studies of ASL have changed the way the deaf Community is regarded in the United States and led to great interest in the language itself. In fact, some American Universities that require students to show proficiency in a foreign language now allow students to satisfy this requirement by learning sign language. From a linguistic point of view thèse studies are very instructive : ASL is a very interesting language. We have learned from it that among humans the capacity for language can exhibit itself even in the absence of speech, so long as the brain is intact. Much cross cultural work is now needed to explore the varieties of sign language that exist in the world. Aside from some studies of Chinese sign language, very little is known about varieries of sign based on non-Indo -European languages. We really do not know what kinds of constraints there are on the possible grammars of visual communication Systems, nor can we say what kinds of universals might exist in such Systems. Hungárián sign language is thus a very promising area of inquiry. Aphasia Users of sign language have thus been shown to produce complète language even though they are unable to hear or speak. Aphasie patients, however, whose impairment is of a more central nature, involving some type of brain damage, have characteristically impaired linguistic Systems. Typically, the site of the lésion in the brain is associated with a typical aphasie syndrome, while the extent of the damage is related to the severity of the deficit. Damage to