Classifier complexes and morphology in two sign languages
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For several years, we have been studying sign language morphology from the perspective of an observation that has surfaced with regularity over the short history of sign language linguistics: that sign languages are like creoles, in both their genesis and their structure (Bickerton 1977; Fischer 1978; Feldman, Goldin-Meadow, & Gleitman, 1978; Gee & Goodhart 1985, 1988). The influence of this idea has only grown over time, so that very recently, the development of Nicaraguan sign language morphology, which has been documented in some detail since its inception in a school in Managua in the late 1970s (Kegl, Senghas, & Coppola , 1999; Senghas, 1995), has been taken as a paradigm example of creole genesis, of value not only to sign language researchers, but also to creolists and those interested in language acquisition, language change, and basic linguistic theory.
En: K. Emmorey (Ed.). "Perspectives on Classifiers in Sign Language" (2003) pp. 53-84