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A new sign language has arisen within about three generations in Al-Sayyid, a Bedouin village in Israel's Negev desert where inherited deafness is unusually common. It developed a consistent grammar of its own, and many hearing villagers sign it as well as deaf ones.

Sandler, Meir, Padden & Aronoff, PNAS, 2005

LanguageScience

The story behind the card

Al-Sayyid was founded in the mid-nineteenth century, and a recessive gene for deafness spread through marriages within the community. Four deaf siblings were born about 75 years after its founding; today some 120 to 150 of roughly 3,000 residents are deaf. In 2005 the linguists Wendy Sandler, Irit Meir, Carol Padden and Mark Aronoff reported that second-generation signers already used a fixed word order, subject-object-verb, unlike the Arabic and Hebrew spoken around them. The third generation signs faster and in longer sentences, so linguists can watch a language build its grammar in real time.

Türkçe oku
İsrail'in Negev Çölü'ndeki Bedevi köyü Al-Sayyid'de yaklaşık üç kuşak içinde yeni bir işaret dili doğdu; köyde kalıtsal sağırlık alışılmadık ölçüde yaygındır. Dil kendine özgü, tutarlı bir dil bilgisi geliştirdi ve onu yalnızca sağırlar değil, işiten pek çok köylü de kullanıyor.
Sandler, Meir, Padden ve Aronoff, PNAS, 2005

Al-Sayyid 19. yüzyılın ortalarında kuruldu; topluluktaki çekinik bir sağırlık geni köy içindeki evliliklerle yayıldı. Kuruluştan yaklaşık 75 yıl sonra dört sağır kardeş dünyaya geldi; bugün yaklaşık 3.000 kişilik nüfusun 120 ila 150'si sağır. Dilbilimciler Wendy Sandler, Irit Meir, Carol Padden ve Mark Aronoff 2005'te, ikinci kuşak işaretçilerin bile sabit bir sözcük dizimi kullandığını bildirdi: özne-nesne-yüklem. Bu dizilim, çevrede konuşulan Arapça ve İbranicedekinden farklıdır. Üçüncü kuşak daha hızlı ve daha uzun cümlelerle işaretleşiyor; böylece dilbilimciler bir dilin kendi dil bilgisini kuruşunu adım adım izleyebiliyor.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language
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