Jordanian Sign Language: Aspects of grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective
Temas
Detalles
Jordanian Sign Language, or Lughat al-Ishāra al-Urdunia (LIU), is the sign language used in Jordan. The language has several dialects. The dialect described in this dissertation is that of the residential school for the Deaf in Salt, where the author worked for six years. This school is currently the only residential school for the Deaf in Jordan and has about 140 students. It also has a number of Deaf staff members, both in the school and in the workshops for vocational training. Thus, it forms a Deaf community in its own right. LIU appears to be related to other sign languages in the Middle East, but none of these have been researched extensively. An introductory grammar of Jordanian Sign Language has been published (Hendriks 2004, with an Arabic edition published in 2006). The main aim of this publication was to make hearing Arabs with an interest in sign language more aware of the grammar of sign languages in general and LIU in particular. Apart from this grammar, very little research has been done into the sign languages of the Middle East. In the context of a wider typological project some research has been done by Ulrike Zeshan of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Psycholinguistics on certain aspects of Lebanese Sign Language (cf. Zeshan 2006b), which appears closely related to LIU. Apart from this, only dictionaries have been published (which are in fact wordlists, rather than dictionaries, because they contain no grammatical information or sample sentences). Beyond describing selected aspects of the grammar of LIU, this dissertation will focus on placing LIU in a cross-linguistic context. Its aim is not only to contribute to our general knowledge of sign languages in the Middle East, but also to add to our knowledge about the way in which different grammatical structures can be expressed in different sign languages around the world.