Languages and language: a critical contribution of French Sign Language

After having been neglected by general linguistics for a long period, sign languages and particularly French Sign Language (FSL) are today considered as genuine languages among others. Beginning with a description of the functional and structural organisation of FSL, this article shows that due to their fourth dimensional structures, the use of either discrete or non discrete, iconic or non iconic units, sign languages are in fact unmarked languages compared to vocal languages. This high degree of genericity would make sign languages typological interesting linguistics objects and ideal starting points to debate about the relations between language faculty and cognition.