Sign language develops with the development of society. Sign language is produced by labor and based on social development. It grows with language, depends on the development of society and language, and is restricted by society and language at the same time. At present, there is still a debate about whether language comes from verbal shouting or gesture communication, just like the chicken or the egg. Some people think that the original language of human beings is not spoken language, but sign language. Spoken language is formed on the basis of sign language. For example, W.N. Feng Te, a German psychologist, believes that in the earliest times, people used "sign language" to express their thoughts, and sound was only used to express their feelings. (Gui Shichun, a series of linguistics textbooks, Applied Linguistics (Hunan Education Press, 1988, May 1 edition)) Only later did people express their thoughts with sounds. Max Planck, a linguist in the Soviet Union, also believed that human beings had only "the language of hands" at first. (Gui Shichun, a series of linguistics textbooks, Applied Linguistics (Hunan Education Press, 1 May, 988,1Edition)) was later replaced by audio language. It was the ancient ape-man who walked upright and his forelimbs turned into hands that made it possible for the ape-man to communicate with his body language. Due to the needs of physiological evolution and communication, audio language has gradually emerged. As a deaf person without sound, with the evolution of society and the development of language, sign language has become more and more abundant and standardized, and has become a modern independent language. Since 1960s, Europe and America have studied sign language as a language, because both countries attach importance to the sign language of hearing-impaired people and formally regard it as the object of language research. In Europe and America, people who want to learn sign language are not only hearing-impaired people, but also have more contact with hearing-impaired people, so as to communicate and serve them better and promote the further development of sign language.
Sign language is the product of custom. "Agreement" means "* * * has an agreement" and "custom" means "habit formed among the masses". Of course, the "* * * with" here was originally a gesture that the hearing impaired made by themselves in their life and communication, and both sides could understand it. When it is understood by everyone, it forms a tacit understanding and a certain habit among the hearing-impaired people. With the development of society and language, due to the participation of educators and researchers, the sign language of hearing-impaired people has been summarized, studied and created, which has enriched and standardized the vocabulary of sign language and formed the current sign language. As we all know, sign language is a communication tool between people with hearing impairment. This sign language is different from Moore's "sign language". "Gesture language" is an action that people can temporarily express their emotions and attitudes, and sign language, as a modern meaning, is a communication tool that hearing-impaired people can use and understand. After research and standardization by researchers and educators, it uses certain rules, word formation rules and gesture naming norms.
Hearing impaired people can also think. Hearing-impaired people, like ordinary people, live in human society and have sound brains and developmental organs. The human brain is divided into two hemispheres, and each hemisphere has a special division of labor. They can't learn a language mainly because they are deaf and can't hear others. Once hearing is restored or acquired, people with hearing impairment can gradually learn to speak. Secondly, the brain is the headquarters of all human activities, and all kinds of human sensory organs are unified by it to form a complete system. Hearing impaired people can't get the information they deserve from hearing, but they can get compensation through other sensory organs. Communication tools are divided into verbal communication tools and non-verbal communication tools such as body posture. Because hearing-impaired people can't get language communication tools, they have developed nonverbal communication tools to receive the information that ordinary people get from vision and feeling through hearing. Hearing-impaired people have good eyesight and usually use gestures to express themselves. Third, "look from all directions and listen from all directions", hearing is easier to obtain information than vision, and the effect of visual communication is not as good as that of auditory language, which cannot but affect the development of thinking ability of hearing-impaired people.
People can't speak without thinking, and they can't understand what others say. Without words, there is no thinking. Hearing-impaired people talk in sign language, have a wide range of views, quote classics, pour out their thoughts and feelings, and have heated debates with different views. Without thinking activities, aren't these rich, vivid and logical words just trees without roots and passive water? Whether deaf people think through sign language remains to be further studied by scientists. But there is no doubt that sign language is one of the tools for hearing-impaired people to think. Hearing-impaired people often snap their fingers naturally when thinking. For example, when thinking about something, he will demonstrate it gently in sign language. Deaf students usually use sign language when reading silently or aloud, unless the teacher forbids the use of sign language. In mathematical calculation, I have tested the formula of 13 in my class, for example, 356+678. Two students can work out the answer directly. Six students list the numerical formula first, and then draw it below the vertical position with gestures. Write 4 first, then type 1, and then type 12+65438+. The four students type all the numbers in each position with their gestures and write the answers according to the carry rule. 1 Students with mental retardation are counted one by one, and they add up completely. Sign language can help deaf children to convert internal speech into external speech. For example, the process of teaching deaf children to learn the word "cat" is to understand words, imitate pronunciation and express words. Sign language can help deaf children distinguish the characteristics of "cat" from other animals, so as to remember the expression form of "cat", which is a favorable means to help deaf children think.
Admittedly, words and concrete things can be tools for hearing-impaired people to think, but obviously, gestures should be one of the tools for hearing-impaired people to think. It can be seen that sign language can help hearing-impaired people think positively, and without thinking, there is no language. Before hearing-impaired people master spoken English, natural gestures are the language they communicate with others. At the same time, natural sign language and body language promote the development of hearing-impaired people's thinking. The origin of gestures is produced together with human society, and as a language, the emergence and development of gestures are synchronized with deaf education. Before schools for the deaf appeared, the simple image of individuals in society was not called sign language at all. With the development of deaf education, the needs of teaching and the needs of hearing-impaired people, the vocabulary of sign language is gradually increasing, and its speech rules are formed, thus forming a language.
For a long time, some deaf educators at home and abroad have been paying attention to sign language, conducting theoretical and applied research, and publishing papers and monographs. This paper demonstrates the language value and position of sign language from the form and content, and makes a preliminary classification, induction and arrangement from three aspects of expression (gesture, understanding, instruction, metonymy, synthesis, etc.). ), word formation (roots and affixes) and sentence formation (so-called "inverted sentences" and "ellipsis sentences"), and understand the structural system of sign language.
Chinese sign language uses ideographic methods to express the meaning of words. In Comparative Analysis of Ideographic Methods between Chinese Sign Language and American Sign Language (Special Education Research 1998.4), Shen Yulin classified Chinese sign language into five ideographic methods, namely, wiping, knowing, pointing, metonymy and synthesis. Mo shape is a sign language that directly imitates the obvious appearance of things, such as "bed, table, chair", etc. Understanding is to indirectly express the meaning of the word with something related to something that is not suitable for direct imitation or more abstract. Such as "milk, praise, tap water" and so on; Indication refers to pointing (pointing) directly to the things expressed with your fingers, such as human organs, positions, people, etc. Metonymy means borrowing the pronunciation or glyph of spoken language directly, and expressing the meaning of a word by spelling fingers or imitating glyphs or blank glyphs. Such as "Mountain Residence, Fine" and so on.
Cai of Shanghai Institute of Education thinks that the sign language part includes nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, numerals, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions and auxiliary words in On the Elements of Deaf Sign Language (Modern Special Education 1994. 1 page), but no quantifiers are used.
Sign language has different roots and affixes from Chinese. The roots and affixes of sign language are generated according to the hand shape. "You must have the same characteristics or related things before you can use prefixes and roots" (sign language-the language of the deaf, Zhao Qian 'an, 169). If the root of "good" is used, words such as "head", "leader" and "teacher" can be derived. Taking the word "house" as the root, we can derive "auditorium", "classroom" and "children's palace".
1993 Mr. Shen Yulin, the editor-in-chief of Modern Special Education, analyzed the smallest unit of sign language by segmentation in the analysis of Chinese sign language morphemes, and found the smallest and meaningful word-building unit in sign language. He also compared sign language with Chinese in word formation methods, found out their differences in morpheme composition, and proved that each has its own word formation rules (sign language morphemes have their own unique characteristics, and there is no inevitable corresponding law with Chinese words in word formation. For example, the Chinese word only has 1, while the sign language morpheme has two morphemes, one is a block and the other is a cold gesture, indicating a cold block object, so it consists of two gestures. Chinese "house" uses two morphemes, and sign language directly uses one morpheme to build a house by hand. If we deny the characteristics of sign language morphemes and mechanically imitate Chinese word formation, the result will only be incomprehensible and unacceptable to deaf people.
Mr. You Zhaoshun, a French Chinese linguist, put forward "visual linguistics" in 1983, and made great achievements in the study of sign language into the linguistic category. He has his own views on the current research situation in the field of linguistics. In his view, human language phenomenon is a complex social and physiological phenomenon, involving many aspects and fields. However, the traditional language research places too much emphasis on hearing, only pays attention to the tongue and ears, and ignores the visual aspects, regardless of eyes and hands. He feels that this prejudice has caused obstacles to the in-depth study of language. Explore sign language materials to promote and update the study of language theory. Because of this, he decided to start his own way and devote himself to the study of sign language. After several years of deliberation and investigation, his views became more and more mature, and he formally put forward the theoretical framework of visual linguistics in 1983. From You's research, it is found that there are indeed a series of parallel phenomena between sign language and spoken language, and the information of sign language (especially natural sign language) can be introduced not only into linguistic research.