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Languages, like human bodies, come in a variety of shapes—but only to a point. Just as people don't sprout multiple heads, languages tend to veer away from certain forms that might spring from an imaginative mind. For example, one core property of human languages is known as duality of patterning: meaningful linguistic units (such as words) break down into smaller meaningless units (sounds), so that the words sap, pass, and asp involve different combinations of the same sounds, even though their meanings are completely unrelated.
It's not hard to imagine that things could have been otherwise. In principle, we could have a language in which sounds relate holistically to their meanings—a high-pitched yowl might mean "finger," a guttural purr might mean "dark," a yodel might mean "broccoli," and so on. But there are stark advantages to duality of patterning. Try inventing a lexicon of tens of thousands of distinct noises, all of which are easily distinguished, and you will probably find yourself wishing you could simply re-use a few snippets of sound in varying arrangements.
What to make, then, of the recent discovery of a language whose words are not made from smaller, meaningless units? Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) is a new sign language emerging in a village with high rates of inherited deafness in Israel's Negev Desert. According to a report led by Wendy Sandler of the University of Haifa, words in this language correspond to holistic gestures, much like the imaginary sound-based language described above, even though ABSL has a sizable vocabulary.
To linguists, this is akin to finding a planet on which matter is made up of molecules that don't decompose into atoms. ABSL contrasts sharply with other sign languages like American Sign Language (ASL), which creates words by re-combining a small collection of gestural elements such as hand shapes, movements, and hand positions.
Researchers theorize the sign language hasn't re-used simpler elements to create new words because gestures can accommodate a wider range of variation than sounds can, such that many more unique signifiers are possible.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday June 21 2017, @06:08AM (1 child)
This is a "new" language that is "just developing". So...it's not actually a language yet, but rather a "pidgin".
A pidgin, for those who haven't read about linguistics, is what you get when a group of people are suddenly forced to create a common language of communication, for example, if you throw a bunch of prisoners together who have no common language. It will, of course, take elements from one or more existing languages, but what characterizes a pidgin is its extreme simplicity.
Given enough time, a pidgin will develop into a real language. When it does, you get all of the complexity back, because you need it for expressiveness. A pidgin suffices for "take out the trash", but it is unlikely to manage "if you don't take out the trash, the cockroaches might evolve into higher lifeforms".
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:51PM
TFA postulates they haven't re-used gestures yet because the density of vocabulary has not grown large enough. If the people using the sign language later do re-use gestural components to enlarge their vocabulary, then it would be evidence that's correct.
Washington DC delenda est.