[notatoad]

do sign languages even have words? i understand that they have signs, and they have methods to communicate words from a spoken language. but is there a sign language that has words, not signs, that are specific to the sign language?

[scarmig]

Sign languages are full fledged languages in their own right; they aren't simply a series of visual renditions of the words in the spoken or written language. Their grammars are often fundamentally different. E.g. ASL is closer in syntax to Japanese than it is to English.

[notatoad]

yeah, i understand that they're not visual renditions of spoken or written words. but as far as the possibility for a sign language to share a word with a written or spoken language - how?

does a sign language have words, in the sense that a spoken language does, that could be shared with a spoken language and aren't simply a transliteration of a spoken-language word into signing? from the example in the article, is there any way that a sign language could share the word for coffee, or we could say that the sign for pineapple was more like pineapple vs more like ananas? or is the sign simply a sign, that could never be compared to a spoken word?

[nrclark]

Signs and spoken language feel very different, at least to me. ASL is definitely not "english, but with signs instead of verbal words".

In ASL, there are some words where you just spell it out. But most things have their own dedicated sign, or maybe a compound of a couple of signs, or a sign that looks -almost- like a related concept but with a modifier (it almost feels like Chinese in that respect). The sign usually represents some aspect of what you're describing (as an example, "banana" is signed by peeling an imaginary banana).

ASL grammar is nothing like English, and has concepts that have no verbal equivalent. Conjugation works completely differently, and it's common for sentences to have a directional component and/or a facial-expression component.

[scarmig]

Do the meanings of mouth morphemes ever correspond to the mouth shapes associated with spoken morphemes in the local spoken language? (Sorry if that's incorrectly/confusingly phrased; been awhile since I cracked open a linguistics textbook.) Curious about both ASL and other sign languages, if you happen to know.

[klyrs]

American Sign Language will borrow words through "fingerspelling," but if they're used frequently, that gets exhausting so new signs get invented. Some common signs use a handshape corresponding to the first letter of the English word of their most common use -- for example apple and pineapple use the A and P handshapes with a similar placement and motion, where banana is effectively pantomimed peeling a banana. So, some signs feel borrowed. The middle finger means in ASL what North Americans expect it to mean, and it's pointed at the ground for the interjective form (for example oh, fuck) but the sign for "intercourse" is much more graphic.

[scarmig]

Ah, I see what you mean. I don't think so, though sign languages do sometimes have loanwords from spoken language. For instance, certain English words have made their way into ASL through finger spelled words. It's not quite a transliteration, as I understand it, but a stylized sign that originates from the transliteration. E.g. a word meaning job in ASL is a stylized j followed by a b.

[mcswell]

Sign languages absolutely have words, they're just formed out of finger and/or hand positions + finger and/or hand movements, and sometimes facial or other body movements, rather than out of sounds (phonemes). And yes, these signed words are specific to each sign language (although there is borrowing between many sign languages, just as there is among spoken languages). Sign languages also have grammars, as do spoken languages, although the grammars of sign languages may allow for some things to be encoded simultaneously rather than sequentially, as is usually required with spoken languages.