

An Unusual Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist - hownottowrite
http://nautil.us/blog/the-unusual-language-that-linguists-thought-couldnt-exist

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craigbaker
Sandler et al.'s paper
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250231/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250231/)
referenced in the article clears things up. The title: "The gradual emergence
of phonological form in a new language". The abstract: The division of
linguistic structure into a meaningless (phonological) level and a meaningful
level of morphemes and words is considered a basic design feature of human
language. Although established sign languages, like spoken languages, have
been shown to be characterized by this bifurcation, no information has been
available about the way in which such structure arises. We report here on a
newly emerging sign language, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language, which functions
as a full language but in which a phonological level of structure has not yet
emerged. Early indications of formal regularities provide clues to the way in
which phonological structure may develop over time.

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pmr_
This clears up a lot. The whole article felt dubious from the start since it
was lacking any examples of the language or an explanation of how functional
the language is. The paper makes it clear: the language is young and
regularities already emerge and it is interesting because the phenomena has
not been studied "live" yet.

~~~
XaspR8d
It parallels the emergence of verbal pidgins -> creoles very well. "Recently
born" languages frequently lack the grammatical structure that "mature"
languages do. Sometimes levels of phonotactic structure are absent as well.

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cel1ne
I've learned sign-language for 4 years (Not deaf), I'm not a linguistic
expert, but I don't really get this…

Most sign languages (which emerge naturally just like spoken languages, some
even think that they might have been there before) have simple, atomic signs
for concepts/things. There are combinations of course, like pointing to your
earlobe to add "female" to the sign before. So the specialty is that this
language has no such combinations at all?

There are also parts of sign languages which aren't categorized clearly,
especially when explaining visual/spatial circumstances. When signing "I
bought a table, it's wooden and has a fine white line engraved along the
edge." you probably won't use signs for "fine", "line", "along" or "edge". You
would just describe it visually. There is probably not even a sign for "edge"
which applies to this context. Again, I'm not a linguistic expert, but I think
that some of these characteristics might be hard to squeeze in "It's a word or
not".

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XaspR8d
The classification of the less-divisible "free-form" signs (especially those
seen in narrative and spatial arrangements) is definitely a challenge to
linguists, but that doesn't mean that they don't consider them to be
constructed out of semantic or phonetic units at all. For example, different
objects and methods of description are frequently represented using the same
classifier handshapes, despite how varied their placement and combination can
be.

On a similar note, the linguistic meaning of "word" is much, much fuzzier than
native English speakers expect (letters surrounded by spaces). Trying to pin a
particular level of structures across language categories becomes very
difficult due to morphemic, phonetic, and syntactic processes that can break
down word boundaries. (Even consider contractions in English for that matter.
What makes _don 't_ one word when _do not_ is two?) So the issue is, frankly,
a mess, and many linguists tend to avoid using the term "word" cross-
linguistically.

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jordigh
Can a linguist explain? I don't know much about sign languages. Is there a
corresponding concept of "phonemes" into which words in other sign languages
can be decomposed into? And is ABSL already "mature" i.e. native language of
some babies, or is it still in some sort of "pidgin" stage? Maybe it will
become more "normalised" as time goes by.

By the way, I wonder why sign languages are the ones whose birth we can easily
witness. Nicaraguan Sign Language is the textbook example of this.

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kylebgorman
Sign languages emerge when deaf kids (who aren't receiving other signed input)
are together. To get the equivalent with spoken language, you'd have to put a
bunch of (hearing) kids together on a desert island with no adult supervision.
Deeply unethical, but that hasn't prevented people from proposing it.

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pavel_lishin
I'd wager it's happened before in cities with a high initial immigrant
population. Several families who don't speak a common language move into an
area, and while the kids speak their native tongues at home, they might
develop a private neighborhood pidgin to understand each other.

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jacobolus
Here’s the key bit: “Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) is a new sign
language emerging in a village with high rates of inherited deafness.”

It sounds like this language hasn’t existed long enough to evolve some of the
characteristics of typical languages.

About a similar recently invented sign language, I recommend this RadioLab
bit: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/91730-new-words-new-
world/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/91730-new-words-new-world/)
[http://www.radiolab.org/audio/m3u/91730/](http://www.radiolab.org/audio/m3u/91730/)

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tokenadult
Yep, this just sounds like the language is at an early stage of development,
still a "pidgin" and on its way to developing into a "creole" and eventually
on its way to developing into a fully versatile language, by which time it
will be much like any other sign language. The terminology I am putting in
quotation marks here comes from studies of the origin of new spoken languages
in communities that mix together people who don't have a common spoken
language.[1]

[1]
[http://mufwene.uchicago.edu/pidginCreoleLanguage.html](http://mufwene.uchicago.edu/pidginCreoleLanguage.html)

[http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy/classes/sum07/myths/cr...](http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy/classes/sum07/myths/creoles.pdf)

[https://www.uni-due.de/SVE/VARS_PidginsAndCreoles.htm](https://www.uni-
due.de/SVE/VARS_PidginsAndCreoles.htm)

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ineedtosleep
I'd argue that this isn't a pidgin or creole. Unless the language has had
changes due to contact with other sign languages, it stands as its own
language.

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duskwuff
Many sign languages take form as a pidgin created through contact between many
different forms of "kitchen signing" \-- that is, idiosyncratic systems of
signing created by deaf individuals and their families. While the languages
involved aren't "normal" languages in the sense that the ones involved in
typical pidgins/creoles are, the process is believed to be similar.

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tcooks
I can understand everything the mute people say without reading the subtitles,
is it the same thing for everyone here or is it because of having lived for a
long time in Italy?

I'd say the Arab ruling in southern Italy helped having a commong language to
those peoples living in northern Africa, but maybe it's common knowledge.

Check this for comparision:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHZwYObN264](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHZwYObN264)

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golemotron
I'm still not sure why APL and Kanji are not examples of the same thing. They
are not spoken languages, but neither is sign language.

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tokenadult
See

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8353518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8353518)

my reply to another participant in this thread. Chinese characters (called
"Kanji" in Japanese) are very much writing out of spoken words, and not at all
what was described in the article kindly submitted to open this thread.
Another participant provided the definitive answer about what is going on in
the report submitted here. In all human communication systems, there is
recombination of basic symbols, because there has to be.

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Natsu
They love to play games where multiple words have the same sound, though, in
writing, to intentionally give things multiple interpretations.

At least in Japanese.

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Aardwolf
FTA: for example, the sign for “lemon” resembles the motion of squeezing a
lemon.

I wonder what the symbol for actually squeezing a lemon is?

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pavel_lishin
I'd bet that it's just highly contextual. If you point to a bowl of lemons
next to a pitcher, and sign "lemons", it would probably signify that the
speaker wants you to squeeze those lemons into the pitcher.

I wonder what the sign for lemon juice is.

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286c8cb04bda
That's kinda close. In sign languages, individual signs can be decomposed into
different elements: Hand shape, motion, position, et al. Related terms or
ideas will use some of the same elements.

I'll use a couple of examples from American Sign Language:

1\. The gender of a subject in a phrase is sometimes communicated by
performing the corresponding motion with the specific hand shape in front of
your forehead (for male) or in front of your chin (female).

2\. A signer could communicate "a chair", "then he sat down", and "so help you
god, jimmy, you better go sit down right now or i'm going to make you wish
that you were never born" with what is basically the same sign (first two
fingers on right hand tapping top of first two fingers on left hand), just by
repeating it more times and with more emphasis.

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wodenokoto
If it is easier to learn an atomic language, wouldn't that then count as a
genetic disposition towards atomic languages?

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adamfeldman
Nautilus is taking over the HN frontpage. I love it – their content is very
high quality and thought-provoking, and often interesting to a large subset of
HN readers

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pmr_
Compare the article with any of the papers it references. This is pure
fiction. All papers clearly state the sign language in question shows emergent
regularities which clearly means that it is on its way towards duality of
patterning. It is special since it is a great opportunity to study the
phenomenon as it happens.

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sevkih
when the gene pool is a jacuzzi

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peter303
not COBOL?

