Endangered language of the Plains peoples
Plains Indian Sign Language
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![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/Sun_Sign.jpg/200px-Sun_Sign.jpg) |
Native to
| Canada, Mexico, USA
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Region
| Central Canada and United States including the
Great Plains
and the
Rocky Mountains
region; northern Mexico
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Ethnicity
| Various
Plains Indians
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Native speakers
| Unknown
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Dialects
|
- Navajo Sign Language
- Blackfoot Sign Language
- Cree Sign Language
- Ojibwa Sign Language
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| None; illustrations of signs
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Official language in
| none
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Recognised minority
language in
| Recognised as official in courts, education and legislative assembly of Ontario.
[1]
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ISO 639-3
| psd
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Glottolog
| plai1235
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ELP
| Plains Indian Sign Language
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![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/US_%26_Canada_sign-language_map_%28excl._ASL_and_LSQ%29.png/320px-US_%26_Canada_sign-language_map_%28excl._ASL_and_LSQ%29.png)
The attested historical range of Plains Sign Language among other sign languages in the US and Canada (excl.
ASL
and
LSQ
)
|
Extracts of the films taken during the 1930 Conference on PISL conservation, showing General
Hugh L. Scott
and signers from various tribes
[4]
A 1900 newspaper illustration claiming to showcase several of the signs of Plains Indian Sign Language
Plains Indian Sign Language
(
PISL
), also known as
Hand Talk
or
Plains Sign Language
, is an
endangered
[5]
language common to various
Plains Nations
across what is now central Canada, the central and western United States and northern Mexico.
[6]
This
sign language
was used historically as a
lingua franca
, notably for trading among tribes; it is still used for story-telling, oratory, various ceremonies, and by deaf people for ordinary daily use.
[7]
In 1885, it was estimated that there were over 110,000 "sign-talking Indians", including
Blackfoot Confederacy
,
Cheyenne
,
Sioux
,
Kiowa
and
Arapaho
. As a result of several factors, including the
European colonization of the Americas
, the number of sign talkers declined sharply from European colonization onward. However, growing interest and preservation work on Plains Sign Language has increased its use and visibility in the 21st century.
[6]
Historically, some have likened its more formal
register
, used by men, to
Church Latin
in function.
[8]
It is primarily used today by
elders
and deaf members of Native American tribes.
[5]
Some deaf Indigenous children attend
schools for the deaf
and learn
American Sign Language
(ASL) having already acquired Plains Sign Language.
[7]
A group studied in 1998 were able to understand each other, though this was likely through the use of
International Sign
.
[7]
Jeffrey E. Davis, a leading linguist in documentation efforts,
[5]
hypothesizes that this contact, combined with potential contact with
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language
(another potential antecedent to ASL) may suggest that ASL descends in part from Plains Sign Language.
[9]
: 24?27
History
[
edit
]
Plains Sign Language's antecedents, if any, are unknown due to a lack of written records. However, the earliest records of contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples of the Gulf Coast region in what is now Texas and northern Mexico note a fully formed sign language already in use by the time of the Europeans' arrival there.
[10]
These records include the accounts of
Cabeza de Vaca
in 1527 and
Coronado
in 1541.
Signing may have started in the south of North America, perhaps in northern Mexico or Texas, and only spread into the Plains in recent times, though this suspicion may be an artifact of European observation. Plains Sign Language spread to the Sauk, Fox, Potawatomi, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Caddo after their removal to Oklahoma. Via the Crow, it replaced the divergent
Plateau Sign Language
[
citation needed
]
among the eastern nations that used it, the Coeur d'Alene, Sanpoil, Okanagan, Thompson, Lakes, Shuswap, and Colville in British Columbia, Washington, and Idaho, with western nations shifting instead to
Chinook Jargon
.
[11]
Geography
[
edit
]
Sign language use has been documented across speakers of at least 37 spoken languages in twelve families,
[12]
spread across an area of over 2.6 million square kilometres (1 million square miles).
[7]
[9]
In recent history, it was highly developed among the
Crow
,
Cheyenne
,
Arapaho
and
Kiowa
, among others, and remains strong among the Crow, Cheyenne and Arapaho.
The various nations with attested use, divided by language family, are:
- Piman
: Pima, Papago, and continuing into northern Mexico
- isolates of the Texas coast
:
Coahuilteco
,
Tonkawa
,
Karankawa
,
Atakapa
- Yuman
: Maricopa
- Numic
: Paiute, Ute, Comanche, Shoshone
- Tanoan
:
Kiowa
,
Taos
- Zuni Pueblo
- Caddoan
: Wichita, Pawnee, Arikara
- Athabaskan
: Apache (Mescalero, Lipan, Jicarilla, and Kiowa Apache), Navajo, Sarcee, Beaver
- Algonquian
: Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Cree, Ojibwa
- Kutenai
- Siouan
: Mandan, Crow, Hidatsa, Omaha, Osage, Assinibion, Ponca, Oto, Sioux (Teton, Yankton, Yanktonai, Santee)
- Sahaptian
: Nez Perce, Sahaptin, Umatilla, Palus
- Cayuse
- Salish
: Kalispel, Coeur d'Alene, Flathead, Spokane, Sanpoil (shifted from the distinct
Plateau Sign Language
)
A distinct form is also reported from the
Wyandot
of Ohio.
[
citation needed
]
It is known that Navajo has a comparably sizeable population of individuals who can speak the Navajo dialect of Plains Sign Language. There is also an unrelated sign language,
Navajo Family Sign
, in a clan of
Navajos
that has several deaf members.
[13]
[14]
There exists a variety of Plains Sign Language within the
Blackfoot Confederacy
. Little is known about the language beyond that it is used by Deaf community members, as well as by the community at large, to pass on oral traditions and stories.
Phonology
[
edit
]
La Mont West
, working under the guidance of
Alfred Kroeber
and
Charles F. Voegelin
, was an early pioneer in not only the
phonological
analysis of Plains Sign Language but
sign language phonology
in general. In his unpublished dissertation, he developed a notation system and analysed Plains Sign Language as having eighty-two
phonemes
, which he called
kinemes
, each being able to be broken down further in terms of
features
. He analyzed signs as
morphologically complex
that others such as
William Stokoe
would analyze as
monomorphemic
, and many of his findings were later rediscovered.
[17]
His study of Plains Sign Language was taking place at the same time as Stokoe's seminal studies of
ASL phonology
.
[9]
: 85
West analyzed Plains Sign Language as having non-isolable phonemes classified as
handshapes
,
directions
,
referents
,
motions
or
motion-patterns
, and
dynamics
. Four of these parallel the now widely recognized sign language parameters
handshape
,
orientation
,
location
, and
movement
, which arose out of Stokoe’s and other researchers’ later work on a variety of sign languages. The fifth, dynamic, is unique to West’s analysis, though it may be present in other sign languages as well. West argued that this analysis avoids the issue of having signs consisting of a single phoneme be composed of multiple morphemes:
[18]
: 5
[9]
: 134?135
[19]
- Direction?paralleling
vowels
, there are eight distinctive directions, including the “directions” of either touching or being parallel to the referent. It can be combined with handshape to designate pointing or facing; with the referent, where it surfaces as placement; or with movement (i.e. motion dynamics), where it specifies the direction of movement.
- Handshape?paralleling
consonants
, nine basic handshapes can be rounded or unrounded to form a total of 18 distinct handshapes.
- Referent
?numbering 40, these account for the greater phonemic inventory of Plains Sign Language compared to most
spoken languages
. This can be a part of the hand, head, leg, body, or an external referent.
- Motion-patterns?there are four motion-patterns consisting of the shape of any movement.
[18]
: 10?16
A phoneme cannot occur in isolation, although a morpheme may consist of only one phoneme.
[18]
: 6
Dynamics
[
edit
]
There are twelve dynamic phonemes, working similarly to
suprasegmentals
like stress or
tone
in that while every sign must be made with some speed or force, only certain ones are
marked
. Dynamics can either change the way another phoneme, like a handshape or motion, is
realized
, or modify the entire
package
or sub-package.
[18]
: 5, 15
Phoneme-level dynamics
[
edit
]
- Motion dynamic
- By default, the movement in a motion takes place at the elbow. A motion may be
articulated
at the wrist instead, in which case it is said to have an additional phoneme combined with it called the motion dynamic. If wrist movement is done in addition to another movement, the motion dynamic has been combined with a long extent dynamic.
[18]
: 37
- Stress
There are two phonemic
stresses
,
tense and lax
, as well as the default unmarked stress. When combined with a handshape, these correspond respectively to
over- and underextension
of the hand’s extended parts compared to the basic handshape.
With motions, they characterize the motion as either strong and fast or weak and slow. A motion can also combine with two stress dynamics, with one specifying the tension of a motion as either tense or light, and the other the speed. When no stress dynamic is present, motions default to an intermediate force and speed, and tension is irrelevant.
[18]
: 42
- Extent
The long and short phonemic extents represent
lengths
in a variety of contexts. With a referent, they specify that the hand is held far from or close to the referent, relative to the default distance.
With a motion, they specify the length of the motion as long or short, with the default length being mid-length.
[18]
: 42
Lengthening a motion moves the articulation from the elbow to the shoulder.
[18]
: 37
- They may also combine with a stress dynamic or another extent dynamic, in which case they exaggerate them.
- Rounding or diphthongizing
This non-phonemic dynamic serves two purposes. It is used with the unrounded handshapes to generate the rounded handshapes, like how
voicing
can generate voiced consonants from
unvoiced
ones.
It can also be used to
diphthongize
any two directions to form a compromise direction midway between them, which West compared to
doubly articulated consonants
. He noted that while doubly articulated consonants are usually described as separate phonemes, the number of diphthongized pairs of directions in Plains Sign Language is too great to grant them all phonemic status.
[18]
: 39
Package-level dynamics
[
edit
]
- Hand-specifiers
- By default, a sign can be made with either hand, though the right hand is more common. However, a sign can also be specified as being left-handed, made symmetrically with both hands, made in parallel with both hands, or made in parallel with both hands alternating.
[18]
: 39
- Package-repeaters
- A package can be repeated either exactly, progressively (starting where the last iteration ended), or erratically (with different, random directions each time).
[18]
: 40
Phonotactics
[
edit
]
The smallest executable unit under West’s analysis is called the
package
, which he compared to the spoken
syllable
. A package must have exactly one
nucleus
, a handshape and a direction, notated PO. A sub-package is defined as a single, non-diphthongized direction and its associated non-direction phonemes.
[18]
: 70
There are almost no restrictions on the co-occurrence of members of different phonemic classes within a package, especially between handshapes, directions, motion-classes, and dynamics. Since some referents are quite rare, it is difficult to tell whether there are limits to their combinatorial privileges.
[18]
: 18
Clusters
of multiple phonemes of the same class within a package are, in contrast, heavily restricted. Handshapes rarely cluster, referents never do, and clustering between dynamics is limited by sub-class and extremely infrequent. Motion-patterns can only form clusters of two, where one of the motion-patterns must be oscillation/vibration.
[18]
: 42
The phonemic class with the most combinatorial privilege is the direction; any two directions may be clustered using the
diphthongizing
dynamic.
[18]
: 18
Phonological processes
[
edit
]
The possible forms of signs are heavily constrained.
[20]
: 71
Most signs are one-handed, including all
function
signs,
[21]
: 11
and these one-handed signs can be divided into static signs or those with movement. Two-handed signs are limited to signs where both hands are still, where one hand stays still and the other moves, or where both hands move. When both hands move, they move together in either parallel or intersecting motion.
[21]
: 2?3
[9]
: 96
The prevalence of one-handed signs in
auxiliary sign languages
like Plains Sign Language may be
typological
, as
primary sign languages
tend to prefer two-handed signs.
[22]
These constraints parallel the
Symmetry and Dominance Conditions
later found in ASL. The Symmetry Condition requires that two-handed signs in which both hands move must be symmetrical in motion, while the Dominance Condition says that in two-handed signs involving two different handshapes, the passive hand is limited to certain movements and handshapes.
[9]
: 96
Preliminary analysis has shown that Plains Sign Language seems to adhere to these conditions, and also favours
unmarked
handshapes.
[9]
: 139?140
West describes extensive
allophony
, the
conditioning environments
of which can be highly specific.
[18]
: 43
Prosody
[
edit
]
Users of Plains Sign Language show extensive
prosodic
structure, which West divided into syllable-like packages and sub-packages,
word
-like individual signs,
sentence
-like phrases, and paragraph-like
utterances
. Except for the
package
and in stark contrast to most
deaf sign languages
, where signs often flow freely into each other, the boundaries of each of these
prosodic units
are consistently marked with one of three
junctures
:
- Paragraph-final juncture
- The hands are crossed or folded over the lower stomach if standing, or in the lap if sitting.
- Phrase-final juncture
The hands move partway towards the paragraph-final juncture position but recoil before reaching it.
Two variants have the hands clasped near the chest or, if sitting, the palms lightly touched to the thighs, though this variant is rarer. Either of the two variants can be made emphatic, in which case a strong and audible clap or slap is made instead. The emphatic variants are more common in the northern Plains
dialects
of
Saskatchewan
and northern
Alberta
.
- Sign-final juncture
- The hands recoil slightly toward the chest or shoulder, or alternatively, a slight pause is made. The pause variant may be a marker of casual conversation as opposed to what speakers described as a more elegant
register
.
The paragraph-final juncture exclusively marks the beginnings and ends of complete utterances, each having approximately the length and content of a paragraph. It may be
dropped
at the beginning of an utterance.
The paragraph- and phrase-final junctures can be used
interchangeably
between signs. The paragraph-final juncture is more frequently used to separate list items and complete, sentence-like ideas, while the phrase-final juncture is preferred after incomplete ideas or
dangling clauses
and is more likely to appear everywhere else.
Any signs not separated by either the paragraph- or phrase-final juncture are
near-universally
separated by the sign-final juncture, as well as packages within an open
compound
, where multiple signs are used as a unit to refer to some idea or thing. Paragraph- and phrase-final junctures are extremely rare within open compounds. The largest units not separated by a juncture at all are unit signs, which can be a single package, a package and a handshape or terminal referent, a repeated package, or a closed compound, where multiple signs form a new sign.
[18]
: 53?56
Writing
[
edit
]
As Plains Indian Sign Language was widely understood among different tribes, a
written
, graphic transcription of these signs is known to have functioned as a medium of communication between Native Americans on and off reservations during the period of American colonization, removal, and forced schooling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The letter of a Kiowa student, Belo Cozad, in 1890 sent to
Carlisle Indian School
in Pennsylvania from his parents on a reservation in Oklahoma made use of such signs and becomes one of the few known indigenous written transcriptions of the
Kiowa language
.
[23]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Recognition of Sign Language as an Official Language Act
(Bill 273).
Legislative Assembly of Ontario
. 2007.
- ^
Rice, Keren
(2020).
"Langues des signes autochtones au Canada"
. In Wilson-Smith, Anthony (ed.).
L’Encyclopedie canadienne
(in French).
- ^
Public Services and Procurement Canada
(October 27, 2020).
"TERMIUM Plus®"
.
www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca
.
Government of Canada
. Retrieved
August 7,
2023
.
- ^
"Indian Sign Language Council of 1930"
– via www.youtube.com.
- ^
a
b
c
Davis, Jeffery E. (2016). "Sign Language, Indigenous". In Gertz, Genie; Boudreault, Patrick (eds.).
The SAGE Deaf Studies Encyclopedia
. Vol. 1.
SAGE Publications
. pp. 783?786.
ISBN
9781483346489
.
- ^
a
b
Hilleary, Cecily (April 3, 2017).
"Native American Hand Talkers Fight to Keep Sign Language Alive"
.
Voice of America
. Retrieved
May 25,
2023
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
McKay-Cody, Melanie Raylene (1998). "Plains Indian Sign Language: A comparative study of alternative and primary signers". In Carroll, Cathryn (ed.).
Deaf Studies V: Toward 2000?Unity and Diversity
. Washington DC:
Gallaudet University Press
.
ISBN
1893891097
.
- ^
Neisser, Arden (1983).
The Other Side of Silence
. Gallaudet University Press. pp. 91?92.
ISBN
9780930323646
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
Davis, Jeffrey E. (2010),
Hand talk: Sign language among American Indian nations
, Cambridge UK:
Cambridge University Press
,
ISBN
9780521690300
- ^
Wurtzburg, Susan;
Campbell, Lyle
(1995).
"North American Indian Sign Language: Evidence of Its Existence before European Contact"
.
International Journal of American Linguistics
.
61
(2): 153?167.
doi
:
10.1086/466249
.
ISSN
0020-7071
.
JSTOR
1265726
.
S2CID
144965865
.
- ^
Flynn, Darin (August 16, 2017).
"Indigenous sign languages in Canada"
.
University of Calgary
. Retrieved
July 17,
2023
.
- ^
Davis, Jeffrey E. (2006). "A historical linguistic account of sign language among North American Indians". In
Lucas, Ceil
(ed.).
Multilingualism and Sign Languages: From the Great Plains to Australia
. Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities. Vol. 12. Washington DC:
Gallaudet University Press
. pp. 3?35.
- ^
Supalla, Samuel J.
(1992).
The Book of Name Signs
. DawnSignPress. p. 22.
ISBN
9780915035304
.
- ^
Davis, Jeffrey;
Supalla, Samuel
(1995). "A Sociolinguistic Description of Sign Language Use in a Navajo Family". In
Lucas, Ceil
(ed.).
Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities
. Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities. Vol. 1.
Gallaudet University Press
. pp. 77?106.
ISBN
9781563680366
.
- ^
Hulst, Harry van der
(2022). "The (early) history of sign language phonology". In Dresher, B. Elan; Hulst, Harry van der (eds.).
The Oxford History of Phonology
.
Oxford University Press
. pp. 783?786.
ISBN
9781483346489
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
q
West, La Mont
(1960).
The Sign Language, An Analysis
(PhD thesis). Vol. I.
Indiana University
.
ProQuest
301872594
.
- ^
Tree, Erich Fox (2009).
"Meemul Tziij: An Indigenous Sign Language Complex of Mesoamerica"
.
Sign Language Studies
.
9
(3): 347.
ISSN
0302-1475
.
JSTOR
26190558
.
- ^
Voegelin, C. F. (1958).
"Sign Language Analysis, on One Level or Two?"
.
International Journal of American Linguistics
.
24
(1): 71?77.
doi
:
10.1086/464434
.
ISSN
0020-7071
.
JSTOR
1264173
.
S2CID
143152073
.
- ^
a
b
Kroeber, A. L. (1958).
"Sign Language Inquiry"
.
International Journal of American Linguistics
.
24
(1): 1?19.
doi
:
10.1086/464429
.
ISSN
0020-7071
.
JSTOR
1264168
.
S2CID
144797783
.
- ^
Etxepare, Ricardo; Irurtzun, Aritz (2021-05-10).
"Gravettian hand stencils as sign language formatives"
.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
.
376
(1824).
doi
:
10.1098/rstb.2020.0205
.
ISSN
0962-8436
.
PMC
8059529
.
PMID
33745310
.
- ^
"Who put Native American sign language in the US mail?"
.
OUPblog
.
Oxford University Press
. May 9, 2018.
Further reading
[
edit
]
|
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Official languages
| |
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Indigenous languages
| |
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Pidgins, creoles and mixed
| |
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Minority languages
| |
---|
Sign languages
| |
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|
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Languages in
italics
are extinct.
|
English
| |
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Oral Indigenous
languages
| Families
| |
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Others
| Isolates
| |
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Mixed or trade
Languages
| |
---|
|
---|
|
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Manual Indigenous
languages
| Hand Talk
|
- Anishinaabe Sign Language
- Blackfoot Sign Language
- Cheyenne Sign Language
- Cree Sign Language
- Navajo Sign Language
|
---|
Isolates
| |
---|
|
---|
Oral settler
languages
| |
---|
Manual settler
languages
| |
---|
Immigrant languages
(number of speakers
in 2021 in millions)
| |
---|
|
---|
Official/
Indigenous
| 100,000+
speakers
| |
---|
10,000-100,000
speakers
| |
---|
Under 10,000
speakers
| |
---|
|
---|
Non-official
| |
---|
Sign
| |
---|
Note: The list of official languages is ordered by decreasing size of population.
|
|
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|
Language
families
[a]
| |
---|
By region
[a]
| Sign languages by region
|
---|
Africa
| |
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Asia
| |
---|
Europe
| |
---|
North and
Central
America
| |
---|
Oceania
| |
---|
South America
| |
---|
International
| |
---|
|
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ASL
| |
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Extinct
languages
| |
---|
Linguistics
| |
---|
Fingerspelling
| |
---|
Writing
| |
---|
Language
contact
| |
---|
Media
| |
---|
Persons
| |
---|
Organisations
| |
---|
Miscellaneous
| |
---|
^a
Sign-language names reflect the region of origin. Natural sign languages are not related to the spoken language used in the same region. For example, French Sign Language originated in France, but is not related to French. Conversely,
ASL
and
BSL
both originated in English-speaking countries but are not related to each other; ASL however is related to
French Sign Language
.
^b
Denotes the number (if known) of languages within the family. No further information is given on these languages.
^c
Italics
indicate
extinct languages
.
|