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Have
you ever seen deaf people signing and wondered where this language
came from? Was it invented? Is it English? Is it universally
understood by deaf people the world over?
American
Sign Language (ASL) is not an invented language. It is
a natural, living language,
unrelated
to English in its grammar. It’s not
universal, but just as Spanish and Portuguese are related, ASL has relatives
in the family of signed languages. The closest living relative to ASL
is not British Sign Language — BSL and ASL are not mutually comprehensible — but
French Sign Language, or Langue des Signes Française
(LSF).
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In
2003 two students in the Department of Linguistics Signed Language
Interpreting Program began working with faculty
on honors projects to
study these historical connections between ASL and LSF.
Rebecca Varoz accompanied Dr. Phyllis Wilcox to Paris, France to study
modern LSF.
Under a research project funded by UNM’s Research
Allocations Committee and with honors funds from the
College of Arts and Sciences, they
collected language data from deaf, native users of LSF.
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Laurel Page worked on a project
in the department’s video laboratory designed to make it
easier for students and faculty to study the historical connections
between ASL and
LSF. The problem was finding a way to search for and compare
several thousand signs from their images in old documents. The
solution
was to construct a database of images of each sign. "For the
database, I scanned in pictures of old ASL and pictures of
LSF.
Then each
sign was
coded by using the four parameters of sign (shape, location,
movement and palm orientation) as guides." |
Laurel didn’t
stop there. She also used computer multimedia technology to
capture movies of ASL signers filmed in 1913 telling stories, transferring
them to digital video. Then, Laurel added text captions to
the
digital video to coincide with the signs. Now, instead of time-consuming
searches for a particular sign on a videotape, students and faculty
can simply
type in a word and the computer instantly finds the ASL sign.
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"Starting
this database was a wonderful learning experience," says
Laurel. "I
hope to continue to work on both the database
and the video as well as learning more about old ASL and LSF."
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Rebecca says her
trip to Paris and continuing honors study will be invaluable when she
graduates and enters the job market.
"This experience is something I will never forget. I have gained
better knowledge about the deaf world. I am grateful because this will
enhance
my
skills in the interpreting profession." |
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Learn more: |
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