Linguistics: Etymology

The science of etymology involves tracing the history of words through a study of the changes across time in their form and analysis. Variation in current sign language use provides us with a window onto the past: We can use modern variants in signs, through linguistic reconstruction and assisted by historical research regarding linguistic contact within and across the Deaf communities of earlier eras, to determine what the antecedent forms were and how they were passed on to result in current variants.

[Page 602]In the scientific study of language change, the examination of data within a given time period is called a synchronic study. The comparison of data across time periods is called a diachronic study. Etymological research requires background information—or metadata—to provide information about sign variants both within and across time periods and thus integrates synchronic and diachronic approaches. As we uncover historical texts, illustrations, and films of early versions of a sign language, it is also important to consider the role of folk etymologies, those natural community theories about words. While they may not provide us with actual historical documentation about the earlier forms of a sign, they nevertheless provide valuable information about the linguistic analysis of a sign at the time, leading to an understanding of its perceived relationship to other signs and its function during that time period. For this reason, these periodic folk reanalyses should also be recorded and included in scientific etymological study.

Research on the etymology of specific signs in American Sign Language (ASL), for example, can provide us with the tools to link the history of ASL to early French Sign Language (Langue des Signes Francaise, LSF), to which it is related, and to modern LSF. In previous research conducted by James Woodward, a list of common concepts was used to elicit signs from members of each sign language community. The comparison of these modern ASL and LSF signs revealed a striking 60% level of cognate forms—that is, 60% of the signs he examined across the two languages had a clear similarity in form, suggesting that they were historically related. Our challenge in researching and understanding the history of ASL, however, is to fill a gap in our knowledge extending from the French roots of sign language upon its introduction to America to the modern documentation of ASL structure.

For this effort, a digital library developed by Ted Supalla—the Historical Sign Language Corpora—integrates and cross-references multiple data sources such as historical films, illustrated dictionary entries, annotations and written descriptions of signs, and observed processes in ASL across two centuries. This database thus provides historically attested forms that can contribute to the development of scientific etymologies of ASL concepts. To demonstrate how such historically accurate reconstructions can contribute to ASL heritage knowledge, consider the etymology for the concept “Sunday.” Often, modern-day variation in dialect or register provides us with data to reconstruct missing links in the construction of a scientific etymology. The standard form for “Sunday” is often explained as evolving from a “praise gesture.” However, this explanation does not seem to fit certain regional variants of this sign. One variant is used by elderly Deaf graduates of St. Mary’s School for the Deaf in the Buffalo, New York, area. We can explain the sign from the Buffalo region by tracing it to historical phrases, or sign sequences, for “church,” an etymology which differs from the one usually offered.

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