The Deaf Protest Stem Cells to Treat Post Birth Deafness

[Panzersharkcat]

This is coming from poorly remembered high school ASL classes, but there's also things like the sign for friendship in SEE being literally the signs for "friend" and "ship" put together. It makes things rather confusing because of the complete disconnect of the concept of friendship and a "friend boat." That said, it's been years since I've taken ASL and I can remember all of about thirty signs, tops, so asking me anything about Deaf culture or sign language is probably not a good idea.

[Simon_Jester]

Before I respond to your grammar points, may I ask the context of those two snippets? Because there are two points of view on their grammar: one is that they are bad English grammar, the other is that they are perfect ASL grammar using English words so they can be written (glossing). So, where are they from? Are they informal communication with other ASL speakers?

Using transliterated ASL grammar in informal written communication among ASL speakers... that sounds like something that could backfire. Written ASL is indistinguishable from written English, except for grammar; they use the same sets of symbols and are read the same way.

I would find it very hard to write using the same words ("pole, light, bright, message") according to two entirely different sets of grammatical rules without cross-pollination between the two grammars. And letting ASL grammar into your English writing would make your English writing damn near undecipherable: "Anyone who have pole with light use for in room paint and ceiling needs bright light" is pretty hard to interpret, though "If you have please message me I can borrow" is easier if you're motivated to try. As is "Sarah and I work paint at Tonya's mom house still lot work hope finish by Thursday-" which reads much like English would from someone speaking in pidgin.

[RRoan]

Speaking as somebody who was born with a serious hearing loss, and who's children almost certainly will too, all I have to say to this is wow, fuck anybody who signs that petition. Refusing this sort of stuff is tantamount to child abuse.

*Eight out of my grandmother's nine descendents were born with a hearing loss. How's that for a dominant trait?

[Terralthra]

Read the rest of the thread. Allowing a child to be deaf (by the way, once again, this experimental treatment does nothing for those born deaf) is child abuse, but signing a kid up for potential brain tumors is the right thing to do?

Also, the plural of anecdote isn't data. Less than 5% of deaf/hearing-impaired have deaf/hearing-impaired parents. source

[Elheru Aran]

Before I respond to your grammar points, may I ask the context of those two snippets? Because there are two points of view on their grammar: one is that they are bad English grammar, the other is that they are perfect ASL grammar using English words so they can be written (glossing). So, where are they from? Are they informal communication with other ASL speakers?

Facebook status posts, so it's not like this is a conversation or something. His sign language is fine in person and honestly he's only an acquaintance. Regardless though, if one is trying to write English, one should follow the structures of English rather than a different language. As Simon observes, using ASL grammar even with perfect English words results in an almost-unreadable pidgin, perhaps comprehensible to people fluent in ASL but otherwise difficult to understand.

Broomstick-- no argument, you have a valid point and I wasn't trying to say otherwise.

I read about an interesting study where Signed English, because it indeed tries to follow English grammar, becomes unwieldy to use. You make signs slower than you make sounds from your vocal cords, which is true for all signed languages. But natural signed languages are meant to be easily communicable so their grammar is suited for this, whereas constructed signed languages are made to strictly represent the parent spoken language. So in SE, you 'talk' at a slower rate than you normally would in English.

Especially when you want to talk about more complex things. There was a study by Greg Leigh (1995) where teachers who taught kids in Australasian Signed English found it harder and harder to make accurate sentences as they went from pre-school to primary and high school.

This is true.

For example, one of the attributes of SE (which I've typically heard to as SEE, Signing Exact English) is that it translates things like prepositions and transitive verb particles (talk to, etc.) as separate words, which does tend to be helpful for learning English grammar; however, ASL translates transitive verbs using spatial referents. For example, if I was signing a story about, say, two friends in a relationship, one of whom was having an affair, when I first referred to each person, I would sign their name (or namesign), then point to place within the signing zone, and for future references to that person, I would simply point to the assigned area as a pronoun. Transitive verbs taking any of those people as direct objects would be signed towards their spatial referent, and verb signs from one of them signed from their referent towards me (or another person's referent). SEE's exact translation of names and pronouns is significantly slower and less fluid. This is just one example, there are many many others.

The overall point is that while SEE may have advantages when the structures are transferred to written English grammar, it has significant disadvantages when applied to the primary purpose of a signed language - communication between deaf persons.

This is a good point, and one which I understand. The question is: Does learning ASL as a primary language from childhood substantially impair one's later understanding and use of the English language?

I don't know of any studies that have been done in regard to this. I do feel that the answer is probably 'yes'. When you've learned a completely different grammar structure that you use in signed communication, it becomes difficult to use another grammar for written communication, either in writing or reading it, because you're having to rearrange the words back and forth.

As such, given that I have personally known(anecdotal, I know) many deaf people that had very minimal levels of literacy for their age and had considerable difficulty communicating with hearing people as a result, I am fully in favor of using Signed English as a primary language from childhood, perhaps through elementary school, after which ASL could be taught to facilitate easier communication. This would, I believe, help enable deaf children to meet the same expectations placed upon hearing children, something which I believe is vital to help them meet life in a much more competent manner than they do now. This could help deaf children excel academically, rather than being stuck in special-education classrooms or sent to state schools for the deaf.

In my personal experience, SE is quite sufficient for signed communication. I prefer its exactness and appreciate that it's probably considerably helped my comprehension of the English language. I do acknowledge that it has its drawbacks, especially in interpreting. I can use ASL somewhat awkwardly when I try, but as I have few deaf acquaintances, I rarely need to.

I believe that deaf people need to adjust as completely into society as possible, allowing for their handicap. To do this, they need to be able to communicate clearly with hearing people. "Sarah and I work paint at Tonya's mom house still lot work hope finish by Thursday" isn't going to cut it, and limiting themselves to the society of those to whom this is intelligible isn't going to help, either.

[Terralthra]

Before I respond to your grammar points, may I ask the context of those two snippets? Because there are two points of view on their grammar: one is that they are bad English grammar, the other is that they are perfect ASL grammar using English words so they can be written (glossing). So, where are they from? Are they informal communication with other ASL speakers?

Facebook status posts, so it's not like this is a conversation or something. His sign language is fine in person and honestly he's only an acquaintance. Regardless though, if one is trying to write English, one should follow the structures of English rather than a different language. As Simon observes, using ASL grammar even with perfect English words results in an almost-unreadable pidgin, perhaps comprehensible to people fluent in ASL but otherwise difficult to understand.

Two points:
1) If his FB friendset is primarily made up of ASL users, I'd definitely count that as informal communication amongst ASL-users. While potentially obtuse to English-only speakers, those sentences are immediately understandable to me, and I'd wager to any other ASL speaker. My future in-laws write texts to me in using ASL grammar, but one is a technical engineer at HP and another a professor at SFSU. I'm pretty sure neither institution overly welcomes ASL-grammar-using language use.
2) Facebook itself offers a wealth of informal language communities, and many of the native-English speakers regularly post statuses with poor "formal" English grammar. Presumably their target audiences understand what they're trying to say.

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This is a good point, and one which I understand. The question is: Does learning ASL as a primary language from childhood substantially impair one's later understanding and use of the English language?

I don't know of any studies that have been done in regard to this. I do feel that the answer is probably 'yes'. When you've learned a completely different grammar structure that you use in signed communication, it becomes difficult to use another grammar for written communication, either in writing or reading it, because you're having to rearrange the words back and forth.

You'd be generally incorrect. Predictably, most of the studies on this are from Gallaudet University, but while they may be biased, you can read them for yourself. Here's one which addresses your question directly.

As such, given that I have personally known(anecdotal, I know) many deaf people that had very minimal levels of literacy for their age and had considerable difficulty communicating with hearing people as a result, I am fully in favor of using Signed English as a primary language from childhood, perhaps through elementary school, after which ASL could be taught to facilitate easier communication. This would, I believe, help enable deaf children to meet the same expectations placed upon hearing children, something which I believe is vital to help them meet life in a much more competent manner than they do now. This could help deaf children excel academically, rather than being stuck in special-education classrooms or sent to state schools for the deaf.

I can go anecdote for anecdote, but the study I linked shows ASL as a primary language does not inhibit English language learning, it helps it.

In my personal experience, SE is quite sufficient for signed communication. I prefer its exactness and appreciate that it's probably considerably helped my comprehension of the English language. I do acknowledge that it has its drawbacks, especially in interpreting. I can use ASL somewhat awkwardly when I try, but as I have few deaf acquaintances, I rarely need to.

While I wouldn't ordinarily comment on your personal language use, your own use of your proficiency as evidence does allow it, I think. In that light, reading over your first post, there are several points at which your language use is a bit odd from a natural English grammar point of view. Tense is on occasion muddled, and you have several run-on sentences with semicolon (ab)use. It's readable, but awkward. Is this an argument against SEE? Probably not, but it leads into a larger problem.

That larger problem is that SEE is still not understandable by English speakers. For you to communicate with a hearing, non-signed-language user still requires an interpreter, and in that case, the relative speeds of ASL and SEE necessitate that your interpreted conversation will be significantly slower than an ASL-mediated interpreted conversation. This is supported in the article I cite at the bottom of the page, in which SEE-using Deaf education program teachers report that in order to keep up a decent flow of teaching, they will "cut corners" on SEE and revert to pidgin natural sign.

When put together with the points above, I feel like there's a substantial case to be made for ASL use over SEE.
1) Your English is quite good, but at times dips out of native-English grammar. This is probably typical for SEE.
2) Your signed language use is no doubt competent, but fundamentally limited in speed and versatility compared to a natural signed language (e.g. ASL).
3) Your signed language is no more understandable to a hearing person than any other signed language
4) ASL usage does not (as shown by the study above) inhibit English literacy learning when the language learning program properly incorporates written English exposure.

I believe that deaf people need to adjust as completely into society as possible, allowing for their handicap. To do this, they need to be able to communicate clearly with hearing people. "Sarah and I work paint at Tonya's mom house still lot work hope finish by Thursday" isn't going to cut it, and limiting themselves to the society of those to whom this is intelligible isn't going to help, either.

Covered above. One anecdote vs. another could have us going back and forth all day, but studies specifically investigating a positive or negative link between ASL as a primary language and English literacy have shown a positive link, not a negative one.

Note: the study above does not intercompare SEE/ASL primary language users' knowledge and facility with written English, but one of its references does:

Goldin-Meadow, S. & Mayberry, R. I. (2001). How do profoundly deaf children learn to read? Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 16(4), 222-229.

I wasn't able to find this online freely available to link here, but any decently-equipped University Library ought to be able to pull it up for you.

[Duckie]

Though I don't support the keeping of kids deaf and think that Terralthra's things about Deaf Culture are often kind of daft, I must chime in for fairness's sake.

From my knowledge of linguistics, I can tell you that those studies are right- Based on everything I've learned, it's parsimonous to call ASL just any other language cognitively, even if culturally it isn't, so we can be pretty sure knowing ASL should not particularly impact your grammar in English if you learn both at the same time. Nor will learning one later than the other if it's done in a timely manner, before your brain ossifies into sucking at languages producing the "Immigrant parents always sound uneducated compared ot their native child even if they're both world-famous doctors" thing.

The human brain is quite capable of keeping systems of grammar separate- any poor English on the part of the speaker is because they weren't able to learn it in the depth and naturalness needed for speaking it in the first place. I would never accidentally or intentionally say anything like the Japanese sentence "if I blue sweater like if bought" or say this in Japanese using English grammar 'moshi watashi-wa suki datta shitemireba katta' (both these sentences are actually painful to write really), becuase that'd be like accidentally trying to wear a carrot and eat your sweater. Or for a less bizarre comparison, it'd be like accidentally saying a word in the wrong language- not just having to think because one came to mind first, but literally intending to say 'child' and saying 'kodomo'. Sure, sometimes the cat gets your tongue and you struggle for words and might fall back on one or the other, but monolinguals do that too, they just get frozen until they can navigate around the mental freeway pileup.

[Simon_Jester]

Duckie, I wouldn't worry about it in languages with different vocabularies. But written ASL and written English use the same vocabularies- I don't instinctively trust myself to keep the grammatical structures segregated under those conditions myself, so I wouldn't be surprised if others have trouble.

Do they not have trouble? If so, cool.

[Duckie]

Duckie, I wouldn't worry about it in languages with different vocabularies. But written ASL and written English use the same vocabularies- I don't instinctively trust myself to keep the grammatical structures segregated under those conditions myself, so I wouldn't be surprised if others have trouble.

Do they not have trouble? If so, cool.

I've always assumed, although this might be backwards, given how I'm starting from the known fact that signed languages don't damage your ability to speak (it's more not speaking much that does that), that sign language speakers don't associate the written word. When a chinese person thinks 'moon'... okay, I don't know chinese.

A Japanese speaker who thinks moon and visualises a white disc with a dark rabbit on it doesn't think 月 but rather 'tsuki'. Actually it'd be /tuki/ due to phonemic rule reasons.

I assume ASL speakers think of *various hand waves* as the word that goes alongside the picture, and 'f-r-o-g' as the written form, not the other way around, as motions replace phonemes in their language.

Further, I'm less certain, but I don't think zainichi chinese who speak chinese and japanese have problems with shared writing but with different pronunciations and grammar.

[hongi]

Duckie, I wouldn't worry about it in languages with different vocabularies. But written ASL and written English use the same vocabularies- I don't instinctively trust myself to keep the grammatical structures segregated under those conditions myself, so I wouldn't be surprised if others have trouble.

Do they not have trouble? If so, cool.

Signed languages are very rarely written out anyway, so it's not much of a problem.

[MKSheppard]

Key word being "English-speaking." Deaf students can't hear spoken language, and it's hardly the ASL community's fault that English is primarily spoken. English grammar is hard to transmit when it is literally impossible to immerse a deaf child in it.

They can fucking read, can't they? Unless of course we poke their eyes out.

[MKSheppard]

Another irritant.

So I find out that HULU.com has some NOVA shows (NOVA is a show that airs on PBS here in the states), and there's one on the Columbia Disaster. I load it up....

...and it's not fucking captioned.

Now, I KNOW that it's captioned, because it's shown in widespread dissemination as a flagship show of PBS -- e.g. it's not some fly by night show from Minnesota Public Television by a bunch of guys in a university....yet somehow the captioning somehow is lost when it makes the jump to hulu.

It's the same bullshit with netflix.

How the fuck can it be so hard to transmit a 100 kb .srt file synched with the movie?

[Terralthra]

Key word being "English-speaking." Deaf students can't hear spoken language, and it's hardly the ASL community's fault that English is primarily spoken. English grammar is hard to transmit when it is literally impossible to immerse a deaf child in it.

They can fucking read, can't they? Unless of course we poke their eyes out.

Of course they can read...starting to decode individual symbols around the age of 4-6, like hearing children. Of course, the individual symbols they can start decoding have no meaning to them because they're representations (graphemes) of phonological meaning-carriers (phonemes), and deaf children don't have any library of phonemes with which to associate those graphemes. So they're just symbols having little to do with how deaf children process language, and the acquisition process of phonemes -> morphemes takes longer. Still, even if it didn't take longer, that's a 4+ year gap between when they can start acquiring English grammar, so they're correspondingly behind compared to a hearing child. This gap is notably narrowed substantially in Deaf bilingual or TC education programs, because of the emphasis placed on English literacy.

I already explained all of this using less technical language, so I'm guessing you didn't bother to read the thread or think at all.

[Simon_Jester]

Signed languages are very rarely written out anyway, so it's not much of a problem.

Then what do you call it when someone writes a sentence with English words but ASL grammar?

[Terralthra]

Then what do you call it when someone writes a sentence with English words but ASL grammar?

The technical term is "glossing."

[someone_else]

Now, just glossed over the pepole bashing on Deaf subculture over random stuff, 'cause it's irrelevant here.

I don't see why this fucktards that protest have any real reason to try to prevent stuff from happening to others that want it (or to parent's will which is the closest thing possible for a children of that age).

I mean, you want to have your child become part of Deaf subculture? You can do it. The ones part of Deaf subculture should go and convince the parents that their subculture is so cooler than having a child that can hear though, not launch volleys of blatant bullshit to stop scientific research that would fuck sideways EVERYONE, even those that think they are loonies. That's what would be acceptable and fair.

These fuckers want to shut down research on stuff that would open a possibility for people (parents) that want it. Not prevent stuff from happening to people that don't want it to happen.

Hell, what is wrong with opening new possibilities?

I think it's just a STEM CELLS ARE EVULZ!!!!!11!1! case where they added a few nutters that happen to be deaf and think God wants Deaf to remain so or other bullshit like that, just to look slightly more serious.

[Broomstick]

So I guess you also just skipped over the posts discussing the real risks of stem cell research, including adverse outcomes up to an including death from prior such research attempts?

[Executor32]

Another irritant.

So I find out that HULU.com has some NOVA shows (NOVA is a show that airs on PBS here in the states), and there's one on the Columbia Disaster. I load it up....

...and it's not fucking captioned.

Now, I KNOW that it's captioned, because it's shown in widespread dissemination as a flagship show of PBS -- e.g. it's not some fly by night show from Minnesota Public Television by a bunch of guys in a university....yet somehow the captioning somehow is lost when it makes the jump to hulu.

It's the same bullshit with netflix.

How the fuck can it be so hard to transmit a 100 kb .srt file synched with the movie?

You know what's worse? Both Netflix's web streamer and its Android app support both subtitles/captions and multiple audio tracks, but almost no titles make use of either. I have yet to see an anime series on there that actually has more than the English dubbed audio track, for example.

EDIT: Well, I'll be goddamned. Apparently, 80% of Netflix's content has subtitles. Source