This course promotes a better understanding of the factors that may affect how people learn signed language. In this course, we will look at how multiple, varying factors can account for language-learning patterns. Age, for example, is a key factor that predicts fluency. Another topic of particular importance to signed languages is the mind.

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Knowing that spoken language primarily activates the left hemisphere, in this course we will explore how signed languages also primarily activate the left hemisphere.

This course is part of the American Sign Language Science Professional Certificate.

What you'll learn

- Distinguish between continuous variation and discrete componentiality in sign innovation

- Define the term "linguistic typology"

- Describe the potential reasons for typological differences within ASL morphology according to observational and neuro-linguistic research on the morphological continuum.

- Stages and milestones in natural sign language acquisition

- Compare sign language pedagogies for L1 and L2 learning

- Identify the characteristic features of grammar that occur in both home sign and mature community sign languages