Dying Sign Language Before It Disappears
The article, “The Race to Study a Dying Sign Language Before It Disappears”, considers how a al-Sayyid community, within the Negev Desert in Israel, which has a deaf population of 3/80, has created their own sign language, called al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL). According to Rubin, ABSL “like other, similar ‘village sign languages,’ is not a counterpart to any other spoken or signed language: It does not share characteristics with the Bedouin Arabic dialect, Modern Standard Arabic, or Israeli Sign Language, all of which are also used in the village”. As these villagers go outside their community to find work, they end up using the Israeli Sign Language more than their created language. As this continues, the villagers eventually stop
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using the created language so that they can easily communicate with others. This phenomenon has brought up questions about the core truths when it comes to the origins of human languages. The first question it brought up was the definition of key words and concepts.
According to Guest, a “[l]anguage is a system of communication that uses symbols –such as words, sounds, and gestures- organized according to certain rules, to convey any kind of information” (Guest 2014, 115). It has already been confirmed that the al-Sayyid people have a gestured-central language which they use to create productivity, “the linguistic ability to use known words to invent new combinations”, and displacement, “the ability to use words to refer to objects not immediately present or events occurring in the past or future” (Guest 2014, 116). Two examples from the articles include the al-Sayyid people using “the sign for prayer combined with a reference to the direction of the city [of Jerusalem] from their current location” and point to a house in reference to someone else not involved in the conversation (Rubin, 2016). Another definition put in question is grammar which is a “combined sets of observations about rules governing the formation of morphemes and syntax that guide language use” (Guest 2014, 119). The problem here is that the al-Sayyid sign language has “lacked many rules of grammar” for most of its existence which conflicts with “[t]he linguist Noam Chomsky, [who], has argued that humans — unique among all animals — are born with a ‘universal grammar’ already in place, and that an understanding of language is genetic and innate rather than learned” . This example proved
that linguistic diversity is the biggest difference rather than grammar and syntax that separate animal conveyance from human language (Rubin, 2016). When globalization occurs smaller cultures end up assimilating and dissappearing. As Salah al-Sayyid, “a principal at a local school and the son of one of the village’s first signers,” explained “…when [the al-Sayyid sign language] dies, so too will an opportunity to understand ‘everything that comes with it.’ He’s referring, he says, to ‘the culture of our ancestors, their values of hospitality and of hard work…’” (Rubin, 2016).
using the created language so that they can easily communicate with others. This phenomenon has brought up questions about the core truths when it comes to the origins of human languages. The first question it brought up was the definition of key words and concepts.
According to Guest, a “[l]anguage is a system of communication that uses symbols –such as words, sounds, and gestures- organized according to certain rules, to convey any kind of information” (Guest 2014, 115). It has already been confirmed that the al-Sayyid people have a gestured-central language which they use to create productivity, “the linguistic ability to use known words to invent new combinations”, and displacement, “the ability to use words to refer to objects not immediately present or events occurring in the past or future” (Guest 2014, 116). Two examples from the articles include the al-Sayyid people using “the sign for prayer combined with a reference to the direction of the city [of Jerusalem] from their current location” and point to a house in reference to someone else not involved in the conversation (Rubin, 2016). Another definition put in question is grammar which is a “combined sets of observations about rules governing the formation of morphemes and syntax that guide language use” (Guest 2014, 119). The problem here is that the al-Sayyid sign language has “lacked many rules of grammar” for most of its existence which conflicts with “[t]he linguist Noam Chomsky, [who], has argued that humans — unique among all animals — are born with a ‘universal grammar’ already in place, and that an understanding of language is genetic and innate rather than learned” . This example proved
that linguistic diversity is the biggest difference rather than grammar and syntax that separate animal conveyance from human language (Rubin, 2016). When globalization occurs smaller cultures end up assimilating and dissappearing. As Salah al-Sayyid, “a principal at a local school and the son of one of the village’s first signers,” explained “…when [the al-Sayyid sign language] dies, so too will an opportunity to understand ‘everything that comes with it.’ He’s referring, he says, to ‘the culture of our ancestors, their values of hospitality and of hard work…’” (Rubin, 2016).