New Perspectives on the History of American Sign Language

Examinations of the etymology of American Sign Language have typically involved superficial analyses of signs as they exist over a short period of time. While it is widely known that ASL is related to French Sign Language, there has yet to be a comprehensive study of this historic relationship between their lexicons. This article presents preliminary results of an exhaustive study of historic documents in French Sign Language and American Sign Language, as well as fieldwork in regions in France and the United States that will ultimately culminate in a historic dictionary of American Sign Language. We present evidence of relationships in six categories and conclude that a thorough account of the history of ASL requires a systematic examination of contemporary and historic documents in both languages. © 2010 Project MUSE®.