Editing Sign language (section)

=== Classification ===
{{See also|List of sign languages}}
[[File:Sign language families.svg|thumb|300px|alt=Sign language families I|'''The classification of Sign Language families'''
{{Legend|#5d6a8f|[[French Sign Language family]]}}
{{Legend|#1e2f5d|→[[American Sign Language]] (ASL) cluster}}
{{Legend|#93a1c7|→[[Russian Sign Language]] cluster}}
{{Legend|#a8d3db|→[[Czech Sign Language]] cluster}}
{{Legend|#9c6cd0|[[Danish Sign Language]] family}}
{{Legend|#a596d8|[[Swedish Sign Language family]]}}
{{Legend|#b08660|[[German Sign Language family]]}}
{{Legend|#660066|[[Vietnamese sign languages]] & some Thai and Lao SLs}}
{{Legend|#383834|[[Arab sign-language family]]}}
{{Legend|#99ff00|[[Indo-Pakistani Sign Language]]}}
{{Legend|#ff9691|[[Chinese Sign Language]]}}
{{Legend|#bd4b31|[[Japanese Sign Language family]]}}
{{Legend|#4b874b|[[BANZSL]] family (British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language)}}
{{Legend|#1c5e31|[[South African Sign Language]] (within the BANZSL family)}}
{{Legend|#fff200|Isolated languages}}
{{Legend|#e6e6e6|No data}}]]Sign languages may be classified by how they arise.

In non-signing communities, [[home sign]] is not a full language, but closer to a [[pidgin]]. Home sign is amorphous and generally idiosyncratic to a particular family, where a deaf child does not have contact with other deaf children and is not educated in sign. Such systems are not generally passed on from one generation to the next. Where they are passed on, [[creole genesis|creolization]] would be expected to occur, resulting in a full language.  However, home sign may also be closer to full language in communities where the hearing population has a gestural mode of language; examples include various [[Australian Aboriginal sign languages]] and gestural systems across West Africa, such as [[Mofu-Gudur Sign Language|Mofu-Gudur]] in Cameroon.

A [[village sign language]] is a local indigenous language that typically arises over several generations in a relatively insular community with a high incidence of deafness, and is used both by the deaf and by a significant portion of the hearing community, who have deaf family and friends.<ref>{{cite book |last1= Meir |first1= Irit |last2= Sandler |first2= Wendy |last3= Padden |first3= Carol |author-link3= Carol Padden |last4= Aronoff |first4= Mark |author-link4= Mark Aronoff |year= 2010 |chapter= Chapter 18: Emerging sign languages |chapter-url= http://sandlersignlab.haifa.ac.il/html/html_eng/pdf/EMERGING_SIGN_LANGUAGES.pdf |editor1-last= Marschark |editor1-first= Marc |editor2-last= Spencer |editor2-first= Patricia Elizabeth |title= Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies, Language, and Education |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=0mmJAgAAQBAJ |volume= 2 |location= New York |publisher= [[Oxford University Press]] |isbn= 978-0-19-539003-2 |oclc= 779907637 |access-date= 2016-11-05 |archive-date= 2023-01-14 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20230114125751/https://books.google.com/books?id=0mmJAgAAQBAJ |url-status= live }}</ref> The most famous of these is probably the extinct [[Martha's Vineyard Sign Language]] of the U.S., but there are also numerous village languages scattered throughout Africa, Asia, and America.

[[Deaf-community sign language]]s, on the other hand, arise where deaf people come together to form their own communities. These include school sign, such as [[Nicaraguan Sign Language]], which develop in the student bodies of deaf schools which do not use sign as a language of instruction, as well as community languages such as [[Bamako Sign Language]], which arise where generally uneducated deaf people congregate in urban centers for employment. At first, Deaf-community sign languages are not generally known by the hearing population, in many cases not even by close family members. However, they may grow, in some cases becoming a language of instruction and receiving official recognition, as in the case of ASL.

Both contrast with [[speech taboo|speech-taboo]] languages such as the various [[Aboriginal Australian sign languages]], which are developed by the hearing community and only used secondarily by the deaf. It is doubtful whether most of these are languages in their own right, rather than manual codes of spoken languages, though a few such as [[Yolngu Sign Language]] are independent of any particular spoken language. Hearing people may also develop sign to communicate with users of other languages, as in [[Plains Indian Sign Language]]; this was a contact signing system or [[pidgin]] that was evidently not used by deaf people in the Plains nations, though it presumably influenced home sign.

[[Language contact]] and creolization is common in the development of sign languages, making clear family classifications difficult– it is often unclear whether lexical similarity is due to borrowing or a common parent language, or whether there was one or several parent languages, such as several village languages merging into a Deaf-community language. Contact occurs between sign languages, between sign and spoken languages ([[contact sign]], a kind of pidgin), and between sign languages and [[gesture|gestural systems]] used by the broader community. For example, [[Adamorobe Sign Language]], a village sign language of Ghana, may be related to the "gestural trade jargon used in the markets throughout West Africa", in vocabulary and [[areal feature]]s including prosody and phonetics.<ref>Frishberg, Nancy (1987). "Ghanaian Sign Language." In: Cleve, J. Van (ed.), ''Gallaudet encyclopaedia of deaf people and deafness''. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. {{ISBN|9780070792296}}</ref><ref name="Wittmann, H. 1991">Wittmann, H. (1991). Classification linguistique des langues signées non vocalement. ''Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée'', 10(1), 88.</ref>

[[File:Lao sign language 025.jpg|thumb|Young students learn some words of [[Lao sign language]] from Suliphone, a deaf artist. This was one of several activities at a school book party sponsored by Big Brother Mouse, a literacy project in [[Laos]] where Suliphone works.]]
* [[British Sign Language|BSL]], [[Auslan]] and [[NZSL]] are usually considered to be a language known as [[BANZSL]]. [[Maritime Sign Language]] and [[South African Sign Language]] are also related to BSL.<ref>See Gordon (2008), under nsr {{cite web |url=http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=nsr |title=Maritime Sign Language |access-date=2011-06-01 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604014547/http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=nsr |archive-date=2011-06-04 }} and sfs {{cite web |url=http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=sfs |title=South African Sign Language |access-date=2008-09-19 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080921104537/http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=sfs |archive-date=2008-09-21 }}.</ref>
* [[Danish Sign Language]] and its descendants [[Norwegian Sign Language]] and [[Icelandic Sign Language]] are largely mutually intelligible with [[Swedish Sign Language]]. [[Finnish Sign Language]] and [[Portuguese Sign Language]] derive from Swedish SL, though with local admixture in the case of mutually unintelligible Finnish SL.{{clarify|date=September 2014}} Danish SL has French SL influence and Wittmann (1991) places them in that family,<ref name="Wittmann, H. 1991"/> though he proposes that Swedish, Finnish, and Portuguese SL are instead related to [[British Sign Language]].
* [[Swedish Sign Language family|Swedish Sign Language Family]] includes the following languages: [[Swedish Sign Language]], [[Finnish Sign Language]], [[Finland-Swedish Sign Language]], [[Portuguese Sign Language]], [[Eritrean Sign Language]] and the [[Cape Verdian Sign Language]],<ref>{{Cite web |title=State of Eritrea |url=https://africansignlanguagesresourcecenter.com/eritrea/ |access-date=2024-05-13 |website=African Sign Languages Resource Center |language=en-US |archive-date=2024-05-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240513205208/https://africansignlanguagesresourcecenter.com/eritrea/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Jepsen |first=Julie |title=Sign Languages of the World: a Comparative Handbook |publisher=De Gruyter |year=2015}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=Cape Verde |url=https://africansignlanguagesresourcecenter.com/cape-verde/ |access-date=2024-05-13 |website=African Sign Languages Resource Center |language=en-US |archive-date=2024-05-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240513193111/https://africansignlanguagesresourcecenter.com/cape-verde/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Pinto |first=Mariana Correia |date=2017-11-14 |title=O que todos devíamos saber sobre língua gestual (em dez pontos) |url=https://www.publico.pt/2017/11/14/p3/noticia/o-que-todos-deviamos-saber-sobre-lingua-gestual-em-dez-pontos-1828846 |access-date=2024-05-13 |website=PÚBLICO |language=pt |archive-date=2024-05-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240513195919/https://www.publico.pt/2017/11/14/p3/noticia/o-que-todos-deviamos-saber-sobre-lingua-gestual-em-dez-pontos-1828846 |url-status=live }}</ref> although some reports also say that the [[São Tomé and Príncipe Sign Language]] is largely intelligible with Portuguese Sign.<ref name=":02">{{Cite web |title=Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe |url=https://africansignlanguagesresourcecenter.com/sao-tome-and-principe/ |access-date=2024-05-13 |website=African Sign Languages Resource Center |language=en-US |archive-date=2024-05-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240513201434/https://africansignlanguagesresourcecenter.com/sao-tome-and-principe/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
* [[Indian Sign Language]] (ISL) is similar to [[Pakistani Sign Language]].
* [[Japanese Sign Language]], [[Taiwanese Sign Language]] and [[Korean Sign Language]] are thought to be members of a [[Japanese Sign Language family]].<ref>Fischer, Susan D. ''et al.'' (2010). "Variation in East Asian Sign Language Structures" in {{Google books|xI0uqGyrsN8C|''Sign Languages,''|page=499}}</ref>
* [[French Sign Language family]]. There are a number of sign languages that emerged from [[French Sign Language]] (LSF), or are the result of language contact between local community sign languages and LSF. These include: [[French Sign Language]], [[Italian Sign Language]], [[Quebec Sign Language]] (LSQ), [[American Sign Language]], [[Irish Sign Language]], [[Russian Sign Language]], [[Dutch Sign Language]] (NGT), [[Spanish Sign Language]], [[Mexican Sign Language]], [[Brazilian Sign Language|Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS)]], [[Catalan Sign Language]], [[Ukrainian Sign Language]], [[Austrian Sign Language]] (along with its twin [[Hungarian Sign Language]] and its offspring [[Czech Sign Language]]) and others.
** A subset of this group includes languages that have been heavily influenced by American Sign Language (ASL), or are regional varieties of ASL. [[Bolivian Sign Language]] is sometimes considered a dialect of ASL. [[Thai Sign Language]] is a [[mixed language]] derived from ASL and the native sign languages of Bangkok and Chiang Mai, and may be considered part of the ASL family. Others possibly influenced by ASL include [[Ugandan Sign Language]], [[Kenyan Sign Language]], [[Philippine Sign Language]] and [[Malaysian Sign Language]].
** According to an SIL report,<ref>{{Cite web|date=2012-01-14|title=SIL Electronic Survey Reports: The signed languages of Eastern Europe|url=http://www.sil.org/silesr/abstract.asp?ref=2005-026|url-status=live|access-date=2021-08-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120114060622/http://www.sil.org/silesr/abstract.asp?ref=2005-026|archive-date=2012-01-14}}</ref> the sign languages of Russia, Moldova and Ukraine share a high degree of lexical similarity and may be dialects of one language, or distinct related languages. The same report suggested a "cluster" of sign languages centered around [[Czech Sign Language]], [[Hungarian Sign Language]] and [[Slovak Sign Language]]. This group may also include [[Romanian Sign Language|Romanian]], [[Bulgarian Sign Language|Bulgarian]], and [[Polish Sign Language|Polish]] sign languages.
* [[German Sign Language]] (DGS) gave rise to [[Polish Sign Language]]; it also at least strongly influenced [[Israeli Sign Language]], though it is unclear whether the latter derives from DGS or from [[Austrian Sign Language]], which is in the French family.
* The southern dialect of [[Chinese Sign Language]] gave rise to [[Hong Kong Sign Language]], used in Hong Kong and Macau
* [[Lyons Sign Language]] may be the source of [[Flemish Sign Language]] (VGT) though this is unclear.
* Sign languages of [[Jordanian Sign Language|Jordan]], Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq (and possibly [[Saudi Sign Language|Saudi Arabia]]) may be part of a [[sprachbund]], or may be one dialect of a larger [[Eastern Arabic Sign Language]].
* Known [[Language isolate#Sign language isolates|isolates]] include [[Nicaraguan Sign Language]], [[Turkish Sign Language]], [[Armenian Sign Language]], [[Kata Kolok]], [[Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language]] and [[Providence Island Sign Language]].

The only comprehensive classification along these lines going beyond a simple listing of languages dates back to 1991.<ref>Henri Wittmann (1991). The classification is said to be typological satisfying Jakobson's condition of genetic interpretability.</ref> The classification is based on the 69 sign languages from the 1988 edition of [[Ethnologue]] that were known at the time of the 1989 conference on sign languages in Montreal and 11 more languages the author added after the conference.{{refn |Wittmann's classification went into Ethnologue's database where it is still cited.<ref>{{cite web |editor1=Simons, Gary F. |editor2=Charles D. Fennig |year=2018 |title=Bibliography of Ethnologue Data Sources |work=Ethnologue: Languages of the World |edition=21st |publisher=SIL International |url=http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/bibliography.asp |access-date=2008-09-19 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080725072840/http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/bibliography.asp |archive-date=2008-07-25 }}</ref> The subsequent edition of Ethnologue in 1992 went up to 81 sign languages, ultimately adopting Wittmann's distinction between primary and alternate sign languages (going back ultimately to Stokoe 1974) and, more vaguely, some other traits from his analysis. The 2013 version (17th edition) of [[Ethnologue]] is now up to 137 sign languages.}}

{| class = "wikitable"
|+ Wittmann classification of sign languages
!
! Primary<br />language
! Primary<br />group
! Auxiliary<br />language
! Auxiliary<br />group
|-
| Prototype-A<ref name=pro-A/>
|5<!--not 7: the other two are Chinese and Egyptian logograms, not sign languages at all-->
|1
|7
|2
|-
| Prototype-R<ref name=pro-R/>
|18
|1
|1
|–
|-
| [[BANZSL|BSL-derived]]
|8
|–
|–
|–
|-
| [[German Sign Language family|DGS-derived]]
|1 or 2
|–
|–
|–
|-
| [[Japanese Sign Language family|JSL-derived]]
|2
|
–
|–
|–
|-
| [[French Sign Language family|LSF-derived]]
|30
|–
|–
|–
|-
| [[Lyons Sign Language|LSG]]-derived
|
[[Flemish Sign Language|1?]]
|–
|–
|–
|}

In his classification, the author distinguishes between primary and auxiliary sign languages<ref>Wittmann adds that this taxonomic criterion is not really applicable with any scientific rigor: Auxiliary sign languages, to the extent that they are full-fledged natural languages (and therefore included in his survey) at all, are mostly used by the deaf as well, and some primary sign languages (such as ASL and [[Adamorobe Sign Language]]) have acquired auxiliary usages.</ref> as well as between single languages and names that are thought to refer to more than one language.<ref>Wittmann includes in this class [[Australian Aboriginal sign languages]] (at least 14 different languages), [[Monastic sign language]], Thai Hill-Country sign languages (possibly including languages in Vietnam and Laos), and [[Sri Lankan sign languages]] (14 deaf schools with different sign languages).</ref> The prototype-A class of languages includes all those sign languages that seemingly cannot be derived from any other language.<ref name="pro-A">These are [[Adamorobe Sign Language]], [[Armenian Sign Language]], [[Australian Aboriginal sign languages]], Hindu [[mudra]], the [[Monastic sign languages]], [[Martha's Vineyard Sign Language]], [[Plains Indian Sign Language]], [[Urubú-Kaapor Sign Language]], [[Chinese Sign Language]], [[Indo-Pakistani Sign Language]] (Pakistani SL is said to be R, but Indian SL to be A, though they are the same language), [[Japanese Sign Language]], and maybe the various [[Thai Hill-Country sign languages]], [[French Sign Language]], [[Lyons Sign Language]], and [[Mayan sign languages|Nohya Maya Sign Language]]. Wittmann also includes, bizarrely, Chinese characters and Egyptian hieroglyphs.</ref> Prototype-R languages are languages that are remotely modelled on a prototype-A language (in many cases thought to have been French Sign Language) by a process Kroeber (1940) called "[[stimulus diffusion]]".<ref name=pro-R>These are [[Providencia Island Sign Language|Providencia Island]], [[Kod Tangan Bahasa Malaysia]] (manually signed Malay), [[German Sign Language|German]], [[Ecuadorian Sign Language|Ecuadoran]], [[Salvadoran Sign Language|Salvadoran]], [[Gestuno]], [[Indo-Pakistani Sign Language|Indo-Pakistani]] (Pakistani SL is said to be R, but Indian SL to be A, though they are the same language), [[Kenyan Sign Language|Kenyan]], [[Brazilian Sign Language|Brazilian]], [[Spanish Sign Language|Spanish]], [[Nepali Sign Language|Nepali]] (with possible admixture), [[Penang Sign Language|Penang]], [[Rennellese Sign Language|Rennellese]], [[Saudi Sign Language|Saudi]], the various [[Sri Lankan sign languages]], and perhaps BSL, [[Peruvian Sign Language|Peruvian]], [[Tijuana Sign Language|Tijuana]] (spurious), [[Venezuelan Sign Language|Venezuelan]], and [[Nicaraguan Sign Language|Nicaraguan]] sign languages.</ref> The families of [[BANZSL|BSL]], [[German Sign Language|DGS]], [[Japanese Sign Language|JSL]], [[French Sign Language|LSF]] (and possibly [[Lyons Sign Language|LSG]]) were the products of [[creolization]] and [[relexification]] of prototype languages.<ref>Wittmann's references on the subject, besides his own work on [[creolization]] and [[relexification]] in spoken languages, include papers such as Fischer (1974, 1978), Deuchar (1987) and Judy Kegl's pre-1991 work on creolization in sign languages.</ref> Creolization is seen as enriching overt morphology in sign languages, as compared to reducing overt morphology in spoken languages.<ref>Wittmann's explanation for this is that models of acquisition and transmission for sign languages are not based on any typical parent-child relation model of direct transmission which is inducive to variation and change to a greater extent. He notes that sign creoles are much more common than vocal creoles and that we can't know on how many successive creolizations prototype-A sign languages are based prior to their historicity.{{Clarify|date=February 2011}}</ref>