Al-Sayyid: A sociolinguistic Sketch

An agent-based model of sign language persistence informed by real-world data

“…Further, as discussed by de Vos (2012), deaf individuals in the Kata Kolok community have begun to attend deaf boarding schools in Bali, hence they learn Indonesian sign language and show new marital preferences; now, deaf individuals often marry deaf individuals from outside of the village, who are unlikely to carry the same recessive gene causing deafness (de Vos, 2012). A similar trend has been observed in the case of ABSL (Kisch, 2012). Considering this in the model would require modifications to the genetic component because, in contrast to the majority of shared signing communities, in Deaf community sign language communities deafness is not always due to the same genetic cause.…”

“…As is the case for many shared sign languages, the ABSL community has a high incidence of hereditary deafness and all deaf individuals acquire the sign language from birth. Strikingly, in this community, marriages between deaf individuals did not occur in the early generations of this language (Kisch, 2012). As Aoki and Feldman's (1991) model predicts that ABSL would not persist, it indicates that their model is incomplete.…”

“…For example, in the Adamorobe signing community, deafdeaf marriages have been prohibited by law since 1975, as deaf-deaf marriages were observed to yield deaf offspring (Kusters, 2012). Meanwhile, Kisch (2012) reports that in the ABSL community, initially no deaf-hearing marriages occurred. Due to a change in the norms of deaf education, since 2004 deaf individuals from this community have begun to marry deaf people outside the Al-Sayyid community (Kisch, 2012).…”

“…Meanwhile, Kisch (2012) reports that in the ABSL community, initially no deaf-hearing marriages occurred. Due to a change in the norms of deaf education, since 2004 deaf individuals from this community have begun to marry deaf people outside the Al-Sayyid community (Kisch, 2012). While both Aoki and Feldman's (1991) model and the present agent-based model do not predict the persistence of sign languages with no deaf-deaf marriages, the languages have persisted in reality.…”

Novel compounding and the emergence of structure in two young sign languages

“…Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) arose in a village that now has some 4,000 people with about 130 deaf members, and it is used by the deaf and also many of the hearing members of the community (Kisch 2012b). The language is fully functional for the communicative needs of its users.…”