American Sign Language Science Professional Certificate

What you will learn
- Identify the historical origins in natural gesture for the emergence of ASL grammar.
- Describe the degree and types of structural variation within ASL, considering the possible influences from its contacts with other signed and spoken languages.
- Discuss the role of visual analogy in learning ASL, considering the possible linguistic universals for signed languages.
- List ways in which language specific variation and historical change for signed languages may compare and contrast to those for spoken languages.
- Describe the visual, motoric, and cognitive constraints which may give rise to these phenomena.

Sort options

Sign Language Science: Factors Contributing to Natural Change (edX)

This course describes how we use historical data to demonstrate language change. While earliest indications suggest that the origin of a signed language began as a gestural form, it has evolved as it was handed down.

Sign Language Science: Factors Contributing to Natural Learning (edX)

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 [...]

Sign Language Science: Factors Contributing to Nature Structure (edX)

This course details the development of the type of grammar that occurs whenever a group of people develops and uses a signed language. In this course, we will look at how people make sign language work—and to understand this, we have to analyze the actual language. In this course, [...]