Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language
The Al-Sayyid Bedouin sign language is a separate sign language used exclusively by the Al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert in Israel .
history
The Al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe emerged in the 19th century when a local woman married an Egyptian. Two of the five sons carried the gene for congenital deafness . Since the tribe was rejected by the neighboring tribes and so got into social isolation , the reproductive instinct forced its descendants into an incestuous society. As a result, the genetically determined deafness in the tribe was far above average, and today around 4 percent of the tribal population are deaf or deaf . The nation now consists of around 3,000 members, around 150 of whom are deaf. Because of this large number of deaf persons are fully in society integrated and also many members who can hear this sign language like islands developed dominate.
These relationships were investigated by Irit Meir and Wendy Sandler at the University of Haifa in the early 2000s and published in the following years.
reception
In 2005, this sign language became known worldwide when an article appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . It is one of the rare cases (along with Martha's Vineyards Sign Language ) where a language has developed spontaneously without any influence from other languages. In contrast to the surrounding spoken languages and also the sign languages, the language uses the sentence position subject-object-verb . Due to the young age of this language, grammar is still evolving and changing from generation to generation, allowing scholars to observe the development of a language.
See also
Web links
- The emergence of grammar: Systematic structure in a new language (English)
- Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (English)