| Nepalese Sign Language | |
|---|---|
| नेपाली साङ्केतिक भाषा | |
| Native to | Nepal |
Native speakers | 20,000 (2014)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | nsp |
| Glottolog | nepa1250 |
Nepalese Sign Language orNepali Sign Language (Nepali:नेपाली साङ्केतिक भाषा,romanized: Nēpālī Sāṅkētika Bhāṣā) is the mainsign language ofNepal. It is a partiallystandardized language based informally on the variety used inKathmandu, with some input from varieties fromPokhara and elsewhere. As an indigenous sign language, it is not related to oralNepali. The Nepali Constitution of 2015 specifically mentions the right to have education in Sign Language for the deaf.[2] Likewise, the newly passed Disability Rights Act of 2072BS (2017 CE) defined language to include "spoken and sign languages and other forms of speechless language." in practice it is recognized by theMinistry of Education and theMinistry of Women, Children and Social Welfare, and is used (albeit in a somewhat pidginized form) in all schools for the deaf. In addition, there is legislation underway in Nepal which, in line with the UNConvention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) which Nepal has ratified, should give Nepalese Sign Language equal status with the oral languages of the country.
Nepalese Sign Language may have originated in the first school for the deaf in Nepal, established in Kathmandu in 1966 by an ENT doctor.[3] The school was later moved to a children's home inNaxal. The aim of the school was to teach speech therapy to deaf children to have them learn to speak. Even so, deaf people who went to the school at this time recall using signs with each other during and after school. The oral policy continued until the arrival of the Patricia Ross, who tried to have total communication introduced into the school in 1985.
In 1980, 13 deaf Kathmandu youths established the Deaf Welfare Association, which would later become theKathmandu Association of the Deaf (KAD). This was the first association of any type established by disabled themselves and run under their own leadership and management. One of the chief goals of KAD was social reform of deaf people with an effort to promote and further develop sign language.[4] At the time sign language was still banned in the deaf school; however, KAD worked hard to keep it alive at Deaf gatherings on weekends. Later KAD developed a one-handedfingerspelling system forDevanagari with the support of UNICEF.
The first NSL dictionary was undertaken by American Patricia Ross in conjunction with KAD.[5] Because of this connection, there may have been influence fromASL during the process.
Generally speaking then, NSL developed as a natural language established by the Deaf community of Kathmandu valley, but it has been influenced by other sign languages, as well as artificial systems of sign such asTotal Communication orSimultaneous Communication. This influence from outside due to contact (with, for exampleIndo-Pakistani Sign Language and with structural principles introduced fromartificial sign systems used in the United States) was strong during its initial stage of the formation, but in different ways and to different degrees remains strong to this day (although the contact is more withInternational Sign,American Sign Language and various European sign languages used by visiting deaf tourists and by deaf from European funding organizations).[6] There are also semantic overlaps with spoken Nepali (and perhaps other spoken languages).[7]
Nepalese Sign Language is not used natively by the overwhelming majority of deaf people in Nepal. Since the overwhelming majority of deaf children in Nepal, as in all countries, are born into hearing families without a single signing member, Nepalese Sign Language is primarily learned first at schools for the deaf.[8] However, these schools are few in number, and not readily accessible to most, and so most deaf Nepalese have no opportunity to acquire Nepalese Sign Language under normal circumstances.
While the vast majority of non-hearing Nepalese do not have the opportunity to acquire NSL,[4] those who are a part of the country's active Deaf communities are often well-connected to a wide international network of signers through formal relationships with foreign Deaf organizations and personal relationships with foreign signers.[9]
Researchers have discussed thehomesign systems generated by Deaf Nepalese in the absence of or in addition to NSL, which are one source oflinguistic variation in the language,[4][10] and the potential impact of late exposure to NSL on signing practice.[4] Scholars have also noted that first exposure to signing practice often takes place in schools for the deaf, where classes are taught primarily by hearing teachers who useSigned Nepali, which can become another source of variation in Deaf Nepalese's signing repertoire.[11][10]
As mentioned above, aone-handed fingerspelling system fordevanagari, theNepali manual alphabet, was developed by KAD with the support of UNICEF. Although the idea behind this alphabet may have been motivated by foreign fingerspelling alphabets (especiallyAmerican manual alphabet and the International manual alphabet), in fact only a few of the forms of the letters can be said to derive directly from those foreign alphabets (i.e. अ from “a”, ब from “b”, म from “m”, and र from “r”).
The Nepali Manual Alphabet is used not for NSL per se, but forcode switching into Nepali (i.e. when a signer spells out a personal or place name, or a Nepali word). The importance of the forms of this alphabet are, however, not restricted to this function. Indeed,fingerspellinghandshapes have been widely used in development of new signs, through a process perhaps borrowed from America's various systems of Signed English, whereby the initial letter of the Nepali word is incorporated into the NSL, thus creating so-called "initialized signs". Perhaps more than anything else, it is this system ofinitialized signs which makes the lexicon of NSL structurally different from the lexicon ofIndo-Pakistani Sign Language.[12]
The classification of Nepalese Sign Language is currently under dispute.[12] Older work has suggested that Nepalese Sign Language is not related to other sign languages. Wittman posits that NSL is a language isolate (a 'prototype' sign language), though one developed throughTrans-cultural diffusion from an existing sign language, likelyIndo-Pakistani Sign Language, or the systems that underlay it.[13]Gallaudet University reports that NSL was "developed by the Peace Corps from local and American signs".[14] compared sign-language varieties in India, Pakistan and Nepal and found cognate rates of 62–71%.
Work on documenting the lexicon of Nepalese Sign Language started in the mid-1980s. The first work collecting signs in Nepal that we know of was started in 1985. Patricia Ross, an AmericanPeace Corps volunteer, was a pioneer in sign language research in Nepal.[5] However, her work with Kathmandu Association of the Deaf (KAD) was to collect already existing signs, not creating new signs. She wrote "The initial stumbling block in initiatingtotal communication in Nepal was the lack of any recorded sign language. Many people did not know that there was a fully developed system of Nepalese signs. Despite the fact that sign was not used in the schools, the deaf people, out of their own need to communicate, had developed an intricate system of signs".[5] Regarding the process of collecting signs, Ross further stated: "I would write down words and the students would discuss and argue about what the proper sign was. Slowly and patiently the students taught me their signs, their language."[5] Ross's work collecting NSL signs eventually lead to the publication of the first Nepalese Sign Language dictionary.[5]
Subsequently, the National Deaf Federation Nepal published a much more extensive dictionary,[15] and continues to work on both documenting and supplementing the Nepalese Sign language lexicon.
Despite the incongruity of applying the termphonology to asign language, like other sign languages Nepalese Sign Language also has a sub-morphemic level of structuring which is analogous (to a certain degree at least) to phonology inspoken languages.
As such, the standard sign language model of phonology (first developed byWilliam Stokoe forAmerican Sign Language[16]) can be applied to Nepalese Sign Language as well, according to which signs are analyzable according to fiveparameters:
Although linguistic research on Nepalese Sign Language is still in its infancy, and we do not have a complete list of for any of these parameters we can safely state that:
One of the problems of phonemic analysis on NSL, which is also manifest in other sign languages, is the absence of extensive lists ofminimal pairs such as are typically found for allspoken languages. While such pairs are impossible to find for all possibleminimal pairs, a sufficient number of such pairs can be produced to justify the method. Such pairs are especially easy to find in cases ofinitialized signs; thus, for example, while the index finger with tip indexic the back of the opposite wrist indicates the generic term TIME (Nepali: समय /samaj/), a म /ma/ handshape indicates OPPORTUNITY (Nepali: मौका /mauka:/), a फ /pʰa/handshape indicates FREETIME (Nepali: फुर्सत /pʰursat/), etc.
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Nepalese Sign Language shares a number of features with most sign languages studied to date:
Morphology in NSL, as in languages in general, comes in two types:derivational morphology and grammatical orinflectional morphology.
Incorporation is a feature which blurs the border betweenphonology andmorphology. There exists incorporation ofhandshapes from the Nepali manual alphabet into lexical items as we saw above the sections above on manual alphabet and lexicon.
Incorporation also occurs in NSL verbs, in what are often referred to as "classifier predicates". The pattern isergative-accusative, withsubjects ofintransitive verbs (e.g. ONE-PERSON in "One person passed by in front of me")), andobjects oftransitive verbs (e.g. "thick classifier" in "I ate a buff burger").[17]
William Stokoe proposed a theoretical revision called "semantic phonology".[16] Under such a proposal, the sign for TEA चिया /chiya:/ could be seen as a complete predicate, with the "classifier"—in this case the Nepali manual alphabethandshape च /cha/ standing for TEA चिया /chiya:/ -- being incorporated into a "verb" DRINK.
Frequently, and especially at the level of the lexicon, instruments are also incorporated.
Many verbs alsoagree inperson (andnumber) with thesubject andobject (often theindirect object, as e.g. "He stared at me" with the sign LOOK-AT directed fromthird person tofirst person). However, there is no grammatical or semantic criteria, other than it being transitive which can determine whether a verb will manifest agreement or not. To a limited extend the phonological feature of being "body anchored" (that is, having contact with the body at some point during execution) can limit agreement (e.g. a sign which starts with a body contact will be less free to show subject agreement, and a sign which ends with body contact will be less free to show object agreement).
Thus, in sentences of the type "I gave a book to you" we may have a singlesign GIVE,inflected foragreement (motion of the verb begins from the signer and moves towards the recipient) and thehandshape of the verb GIVE is modified to incorporate a "thick classifier"handling classifierhandshape (object the size and shape of a BOOK).
Typically, in discourse, sentences are short, and verbalarguments (actants) are often left to context (leading to average clause length of less than 2 signs). In addition, NSL (like other sign languages), tends to betopicalizing; that is, the topic isfronted (moved to the front of the clause). Given these two facts, it is hard to a "Basic Word Order" for NSL; nevertheless, in those instances where bothagent andpatient are lexicalized and where there is notopicalization (e.g. in artificially elicited sentences in isolation), the word order tends to beSOV (Subject-Object-Verb) - just likeNepali and most members of theSouth Asian Sprachbund.
Discourse in Nepalese Sign Language shares many features with discourse in other sign language:
In addition to the national sign language, several local indigenous'village' sign languages have been identified.[note 1] The following “village sign languages” have been identified:Jhankot Sign Language,Jumla Sign Language,Ghandruk Sign Language andMaunabudhuk–Bodhe Sign Language. Although insufficiently studied, they each appear to be mutually unintelligible to native signers of Nepalese Sign language, and thus qualify as separate sign languages.
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