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fjerman words [n fjerman sfgn Lane~e: vo Tlut'1 TeU US somethtne NewAooutsfgn Laneuaees? H a R 5 T EBB I N G H A U 5 AND J ENS H E SSM ANN n this paper we are going to outline some of the ideas relevant to the work on German Sign Language (GSL) carried out at the Free University of Berlin and supported by the German Research Foundation. With Prof. Dr. Helmut Richter acting as our supervisor, we have been involved in sign language research since 1986. At the beginning of 1989, our team was significantly enlarged and now includes two native Signers of GSL, Gunter Puttrich-Reignard and Sabine Fries. Joanna Martin, a hearing American keenly interested in sign language and the deaf world, has also joined us. Our work is empirical in spirit, and we are concentrating on collecting and transcribing data from GSL use in natural communicative settings. Previous experience with deaf people's signing in Germany has led us to adopt a specific analytical perspective: Our goal is to describe the relationship between elements of spoken German and communication generally considered to be elements of sign language. Our empirical work has led us to believe that there are German words in GSL; in other words, that we should recognize spoken language elements as an integral part of a sign language. We suspect the above claim will startle many. There is a general belief that progress for deaf people hinges on the recognition of sign languages as languages in their own right. In that context, the use deaf people make of spoken language elements tends to be regarded as a carryover from the oralistic indoctrination deaf education has inflicted on deaf people for too long. Given the history of oppression the signing community has faced, such an assumption is understandable, but we believe it is somewhat unfortunate . In our view, neither recognizing sign languages as languages in their own right nor taking an unambiguous stand in the struggle for the rights of the deaf community precludes acknowledging that there may be important relationships between signed and spoken languages that a valid description of sign language should systematically take account of. This paper, originally presented at The Deaf Way, has been published in a slightly different form in Current Trends in European Sign lAnguage Research: Proceedings of the Third Eurapean Congress on Sign lAnguage Research (International Studies on Sign lAnguage and the Communication of the Deaf, volume 9), edited by Siegmund Pril\witz and Tomas Vollhaber, 1990, pp. 97-112, Hamburg, Germany: SIGNUM·Press. 400 THE DEAF WAY ~ The Study of Sign Language in Society Previous references to spoken language elements in natural sign language use have been scarce and somewhat apologetic. Odd-Inge Schroeder (1985) makes a strong plea for recognizing the role of mouthing in Norwegian Sign Language; as the title of his article indicates, he is well aware that such a recognition causes "a problem in phonological description." Speaking of Dutch signing, Trude Schermer (1985) remarks that "as of 1983 I would say that the existence of a pure sign language, without the occurrence of any speech, among deaf adults, is more or less a theoretical construct" (p. 288), but Schermer predicts that the role of speech in natural signing "will decrease in the future" (p. 286). This mayor may not be so. Still, if sign language is to be an empirically justifiable notion, we should be wary of constructing theories that do not fit the facts of signing as it normally occurs. By way of introducing our topic, we will brush aside theoretical questions and start with this bold assumption: Signed communication is multichannel communication and should be regarded as the result of an interaction between different types of meaningful units. In order to do justice to sign language as a visual means of communication we should recognize at least the following types of meaningful units: Manual Units. As the central units of sign language, manual signs have of course received much attention, and there are many detailed analyses of the form and use of these units. In working upon sign language empirically, it is not always easy to decide whether a given movement of the hand can be regarded as a sign or not, but for the most part manual units may be considered relatively well defined. Nonmanual Units. Again, there is nothing new about nonmanual elements such as facial expression, though just how we should conceive of their relationship...

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