Linguistics of American Sign Language

Undergraduate / Graduate

Signed languages offer a unique perspective through which to understand human language and linguistic structure as it is realized across modalities (spoken vs. signed). Although signed languages offer crucial linguistic insights, there are many widely held misconceptions about the structure of these languages. In this course, we deconstruct these misconceptions as we study the structure of American Sign Language (ASL). Specifically, we will be looking at how core areas of language are manifest in ASL including the component parts of a sign (phonology), individual signs (morphology), sentence structure (syntax), and meaning (semantics), while also addressing sociolinguistics and language acquisition. Through this exploration, we will consider what the visual modality can teach us about the human language capacity.