Re:The Covid Zoom Boom Is Reshaping Sign Language
by _nalply on Friday February 26, 2021 @04:36PM
(#26280095)
> Grammar that is mandatory in English is optional in ASL.
You can't relate the two languages like this. Sorry, this doesn't make sense. For example, ASL doesn't have articles, English doesn't have location dependent pronouns for people.
Re:The Covid Zoom Boom Is Reshaping Sign Language
by eindiran on Friday February 26, 2021 @04:59PM
(#26280350)
You absolutely can do this (unless I am misunderstanding your point in which case, my apologies).
That's why there are dozens of journals in things like linguistic typology and language variation and change. There are linguists whose entire careers have been generating a sort of conceptual mapping between the morphology, syntax and phonology of spoken languages to sign languages so that you can have sensible conversations about the typological relationship between a signed language and a spoken one.
See the research of eg Diane Brentari at Chicago or Diane Lillo-Martin at UConn or Wendy Sandler at UT Austin.
This isn't unusual. Even in spoken languages the required grammar are often different. Even in English some areas there are some contexts where "the" is mandatory in some geographical areas and not others. Linguists can give you a Phd if you want to study this more.