CSET: American Sign Language flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Duality of patterning

The property that a language has two levels: meaningless formational units combine into meaningful units, which combine into larger utterances. ASL shows this with handshape, location, and movement combining into signs.

Modality difference

ASL and spoken languages share linguistic universals but differ in transmission channel: visual-gestural versus auditory-vocal. Modality affects simultaneity and use of space, not linguistic status.

Arbitrariness

The lack of a necessary resemblance between a linguistic form and its meaning. Many ASL signs are arbitrary, though some are iconic; iconicity does not make a sign non-linguistic or universally understood.

Nonmanual signals

Facial expression, head position, brow movement, and mouth morphemes that carry grammatical meaning in ASL, marking topics, question types, conditionals, and adverbial or adjectival modification.

ASL phonological parameters

The contrastive formational units of a sign: handshape, location, movement, orientation, and nonmanual features. Changing one parameter can change meaning, as in minimal pairs.

Minimal pair in ASL

Two signs that differ in exactly one phonological parameter and have different meanings, such as signs differing only in handshape or only in location, demonstrating phonemic contrast.

Battison's Symmetry Condition

In two-handed signs where both hands move, the hands must share handshape, location, and movement, and move symmetrically. This constraint governs permissible ASL sign forms.

Dominance Condition

In two-handed signs with different handshapes, the non-dominant hand must be passive and motionless, serving as a base while the dominant hand moves.

Agreeing verbs

Verbs such as GIVE and HELP whose movement is directed between referential loci to mark subject and object. They contrast with plain verbs, which require explicit noun phrases.

Numeral incorporation

A morphological process in which a numeral handshape is incorporated into a sign root, as in signs meaning two weeks or three years old, producing a single complex sign.

Role shift

A syntactic device using body shift, head position, and gaze change to mark reported speech or constructed action, indicating that the signer is depicting another person's utterance or perspective.

Manual babbling

Systematic, repetitive handshape and movement activity produced by deaf infants around six to ten months, paralleling vocal babbling and reflecting phonological organization before first words.

Critical period evidence

Deaf adults first exposed to a signed language after childhood show persistent difficulty with phonology, morphology, and complex syntax, supporting a sensitive period for first-language acquisition.

Nicaraguan Sign Language

A sign language that emerged among deaf Nicaraguan children beginning in the 1970s and conventionalized across cohorts, providing evidence that children systematize and enrich language input.

Home sign

An idiosyncratic gesture system developed by a deaf child without access to a signed language. It is structured but less conventionalized than community sign languages.

Code-blending

Producing signs and spoken words simultaneously, a normal behavior of bimodal bilinguals such as deaf children with cochlear implants or hearing children of deaf adults.

ABC stories

An ASL literary genre in which the handshapes of the manual alphabet appear in sequence from A to Z, structuring a narrative; number stories use numeral handshapes instead.

ASL poetry rhyme

Repetition of phonological parameters such as handshape or movement across a poem's lines, creating visual rhyme and rhythm. Movement and symmetry patterns also function as poetic structure.

Clayton Valli

A Deaf ASL poet and linguist known for the poem 'Dandelion' and for linguistic analysis of ASL poetry, including study of its formational structure and rhyme.

Constructed dialogue

A discourse strategy in ASL narrative in which the signer enacts a character's speech or actions using role shift, rather than reporting them in third person.

De'VIA

Deaf View/Image Art, an art movement articulating Deaf experience and identity, formally named in 1989; it is a central Deaf cultural product alongside ASL literature and theater.

Milan Congress 1880

An international meeting of educators that resolved to promote oral education and discourage sign language in schools, suppressing ASL in many educational settings for decades.

William Stokoe

A linguist whose 1960 work 'Sign Language Structure' demonstrated that ASL has phonological, morphological, and syntactic structure, founding the field of ASL linguistics.

Deaf President Now

The 1988 Gallaudet University protest demanding a deaf president, which led to I. King Jordan's appointment and became a landmark of Deaf self-determination.

Deaf vs. deaf

Capitalized Deaf refers to cultural identity and shared signed language; lowercase deaf refers to audiological status. The distinction reflects the social model of Deaf culture.

Laurent Clerc

A deaf French educator who, with Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, founded the first permanent US school for the deaf in Hartford in 1817, bringing French signing methods to America.

Black ASL

A recognized variety of ASL with distinctive features such as larger signing space and two-handed variants, shaped by school segregation and studied by Carolyn McCaskill and colleagues.

Lexicalized fingerspelling

Fingerspelled sequences that have become signs, undergoing phonological nativization such as handshape and movement reduction, as in signs derived from J-O-B or B-A-C-K.

Regional variation in ASL

Systematic lexical and phonological differences across geographic regions, such as different signs for the same concept, showing that ASL is not monolithic and has dialect-like variation.

ACTFL 5 Cs

The World-Readiness Standards: Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities. They frame world-language curriculum design, including ASL program goals.

ASLPI

The American Sign Language Proficiency Interview, a standardized interview-based assessment that rates functional ASL communication proficiency on a defined scale.

Interpersonal assessment

An assessment mode measuring interactive, unrehearsed communication between signers, such as conversation tasks scored for comprehension, fluency, grammar, and appropriateness.