Sign languages and linguistic universals (review)

The study of sign languages (SLs) as natural languages has a relatively short life compared to other areas in linguistics with a much longer tradition. Despite the relatively short history of the field, its growth has been steady over the past four decades, both in the number of languages studied and in the range of linguistic phenomena described and analyzed. At the same time, SLs have been progressively incorporated as objects of study by different linguistic approaches to language structure (generative, cognitive, or typological, for instance), as well as by other research areas such as language acquisition, language impairment, neurolinguistics, or sociolinguistics. The field of sign linguistics and especially linguistics in the broadest sense could not welcome a more timely publication than the book by Wendy Sandler and Diane Lillo-Martin, as it meets several goals in a single attempt. On the one hand, this work can be read as a handbook containing a comprehensive and up-to-date state of the art of the existing body of research on the linguistic structure of SLs. As such it can be used as a thorough advanced introduction to the field that remains accessible to sign and nonsign linguists, because it contains detailed descriptions of the phenomena tackled and the main lines of analysis that intend to explain them. On the other hand, it is also an original monograph, because in leading the reader through different proposals of analysis, concrete positions are defended over others and detailed arguments are offered from the general perspective that is put forth by the authors throughout this work: linguistic universals are unquestionably realized in sign languages, even though some specific effects of the gestural-visual modality must be acknowledged, and in fact they should be addressed from the perspective that both spoken and sign languages display clear modality effects in certain domains of their structure. In this respect, the authors' stand-shared by most researchers in the field in one way or another-places the challenge in the widest domain of linguistic theory (without qualifications referring to the physical modality of production/perception of specific languages) and, from a broader perspective, of cognitive science. The challenge that putting together such a book represents could only be taken up-and most importantly, successfully met-by two leading sign linguists like Sandler and Lillo-Martin, who have decisively contributed to the development of the field over the years and have had (and still have) a great impact on it with their work. The specializations of the two authors in somewhat complementary areas of expertise (phonology, morphology, and syntax) make the best match for such a daunting enterprise.

Despite the growing body of research on recently described sign languages around the globe, the available literature that is '(a) explanatory, (b) informed by general linguistic theory, and (c) part of more comprehensive sign language models' (xvi) is not vast, and it mostly deals with a limited set of languages, most prominently American Sign Language (ASL), the study of which has been predominant in sign linguistics from its very beginning. Nevertheless, the book also draws data from and handles analyses of other languages such as Israeli Sign Language and Brazilian Sign Language (LSB).

The twenty-five chapters of the book are structured around five units that, beyond the introductory one, cover the three main domains of sign-language structure (morphology, phonology, and syntax) and close with one specifically devoted to the issue of modality effects on language structure. It should be pointed out that the whole architecture of the book and the sequencing of the topics are truly successful, and internal referencing achieves the goal of highlighting the internal coherence of the work, while showing at the same time the multiple ramifications of a concrete topic into other parts of the research agenda.

The topic of the first major unit, unlike in most language descriptions, is not phonology, but morphology. This choice actually leads to a more natural sequencing in the exposition, with a rather smooth...