Historical Change In American Sign Language Summary

IntroductionThis report is based on the article Arbitrariness and Iconicity: Historical Change in American Sign Language (Language 51, 1975) by Nancy Frishberg. First we will summarise Frishbergs article and explain her objectives. In the second part we will elaborate over four different words and their reduction of iconicity over the years. The article explicitly describes the changes up till 1975 and the changes after this era as in the ASL dictionary of 1981 will have no effect on our description although may be named.

Most researchers of sign languages share the opinion that big parts of the sign interference of sign languages have gesticulate and iconic origin. Iconicity in sign language represents the signs where the signifier resembles
Unlike many people think, there is not just one sign language with which all deaf people from all over the world can communicate, however there are several different sign languages we can distinguish from each other. ASL is the language deaf people use in America and some English speaking parts of Canada. Deaf people from other countries will not be able to recognize this language since, like the spoken languages, these languages are different.

Another misconception is that sign language, in this case ASL, is a direct translation of the English language. Frishberg notes that not one sign language is a direct translation of the spoken language. Sign languages have their own phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic properties. The grammar of ASL differs from the English spoken language as much as every other natural language.

There are many people who think that sign languages basically are mime and therefore nothing but iconic. This means that signs convey the exact subject matter or idea of the involved acts. There are indeed signs that are iconic, yet there are more signs that do not suggest reality at
Sign languages too are realised through several different simultaneously used parameters which are hand configuration, movement, location and orientation. Simultaneously use means that the hand or hands of the speaker move along with a certain configuration at a certain location, in a specific approach toward the body and move distinctively. Frishberg explains the forms that can show one single ASL morpheme with one hand and two hands:1. one handa. in contact with the bodyb. in a neutral space2. two handsa. both hands in contact with the bodyb. in a neutral space simultaneous symmetric movement varied symmetric movementc. a strong, or dominant, hand in action on a weak, rather basis, handThis means that a sign can only exist of one of these forms, or out of more, combined structures. Many signs underwent changes throughout history. The reasons for these changes according to Frishberg are that signs are more easily produced or understood when performed in a different manner. Frishberg argues that there are five ways in which the signs have changed, all of these made the signs more arbitrary than before. There is a tendency towards symmetry, which means that the two hands assume the same hand shapes and/or movement. The second evolutionary change is displacement. Head-displacement occurs with signs made in contact with the face, and includes two-handed signs becoming one-handed and the location on the face where the