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57 8 Summary and Conclusions As you can see, ASL is just like other languages in having patterned variation that we can link to social factors, and some of these have to do specifically with Deaf communities. Even though both spoken and sign languages exhibit variation, the variation that sign languages exhibit is unique in some ways. A great deal of variation occurs in ASL, and in fact, we found many more noncitation forms than we did citation forms. Signers are more likely to sign DEAF from chin to ear, to lower the sign KNOW, and to sign PRO.1 (“I”) with an L or a 5 handshape. ! Clip 16. The narrator summarizes the conclusions. ! We found the same kind of linguistic constraints that we see in spoken language variation, such as the influence of the sign before or after and the role of same or switch reference in pronoun variation. We also saw that the grammatical function of the variable sign is very important in sign language variation. We found, moreover, that the same kinds of social constraints that operate in spoken language variation—age, gender, region, and ethnicity—also operate in sign languages and that some unique social constraints are at work in sign language variation, such as whether a signer’s parents are deaf ASL signers. Researchers have to consider age in connection with school language policies. In addition, any consideration of region has to take into account the way that ASL moved across the United States in the context of the residential schools for deaf students. We found lexical differences between African American and Caucasian signers, and we also learned that we need to consider certain special issues when collecting examples of variation in Deaf communities. These materials are only a beginning. We hope that other researchers and signers will want to look at other variables in ASL and other varieties of ASL. Work on Tactile ASL, the variety of ASL that Deaf Blind signers use, for example, is showing us that Tactile ASL has some unique features .12 Variation in the ASL that Hispanic, Asian, and Native American communities use and variation in other sign languages are open to further investigation as well. 58 Chapter 8 ...

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