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French Sign Language family

{{Short description|Sign language family derived from Old French Sign Language}}

{{Infobox language family

|name = French Sign Language

|altname = Francosign

|region = Before 1850, Western Europe, and North America; today parts of Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

|familycolor = sign language

|family = One of the world's primary language families

|ancestor = Old French Sign Language

|glotto=lsfi1234

|glottorefname=LSFic

}}

The French Sign Language (LSF, from {{Lang|fr|langue des signes française}}) or Francosign family is a language family of sign languages which includes French Sign Language and American Sign Language.

The LSF family descends from Old French Sign Language (VLSF), which developed among the deaf community in Paris. The earliest mention of Old French Sign Language is by the abbé Charles-Michel de l'Épée in the late 18th century, but it could have existed for centuries prior. Several European sign languages, such as Russian Sign Language, derive from it, as does American Sign Language, established when French educator Laurent Clerc taught his language at the American School for the Deaf. Others, such as Spanish Sign Language, are thought to be related to French Sign Language even if they are not directly descendent from it.

Language family tree

=Anderson (1979)=

Anderson (1979)Lloyd Anderson & David Peterson, 1979, A comparison of some American, British, Australian, and Swedish signs: evidence on historical changes in signs and some family relationships of sign languages postulated the following classification of LSF and its relatives, with derivation from Medieval monks' sign systems, though some lineages are apparently traced by their manual alphabets and thus irrelevant for actual classification:

{{tree list}}

  • LSF
  • Monastic sign languages (described 1086)
  • "Southwest European" Sign Languages
  • Proto-Spanish
  • Spanish Sign Language (dictionary 1851)
  • Venezuelan Sign Language
  • Irish
  • Australian Catholic
  • Old Polish
  • Polish Sign Language
  • Old French Sign Language (VLSF, before l'Épée)
  • Eastern French: Old Danish (edu. 1807), Old German, German Evangelical (edu. 1779 Austria), Old Russian (edu. 1806)
  • Western French
  • Middle French Sign Language finger-spelling group: Netherlands (1780), Belgium (1793), Switzerland, Old French
  • Middle French (dict. 1850)
  • French
  • American (edu. 1816; later including components from Northwest European sign languages)
  • International finger-spelling group: Norway, Finland, Germany, US
  • Old Brazilian
  • Brazil, Argentina, Mexico

{{tree list/end}}

= Wittmann (1991) and later research =

File:FrenchSignFamily.png

Henri Wittmann (1991)Wittmann, Henri (1991). "Classification linguistique des langues signées non vocalement." Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 10:1.215–88.[http://www.nou-la.org/ling/1991a-class.pdf]{{Cite book |last=Reagan |first=Timothy |date=2019 |title=Linguistic Legitimacy and Social Justice |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ofCKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA140 |publisher=Palgrave Mcmillan |pages=138–141 |isbn=9783030109677 |access-date=22 April 2020}} has been influential in scholarly attempts at constructing the French Sign Language family tree. He listed most of the following suspected members of the family, with date of establishment or earliest attestation. Subsequent scholarly research has confirmed most of his conclusions, but rejected others and expanded the family tree with new branches, while removing others.

{{tree list}}

{{tree list/end}}

;Post-1991 modifications

Wittnann believed Lyons Sign Language, Spanish Sign Language, Brazilian Sign Language, and Venezuelan Sign Language, which are sometimes counted in the French family, had separate origins, though with some contact through stimulus diffusion, and it was Lyons rather than French Sign Language that gave rise to Belgian Sign Language. Chilean Sign Language (1852) has also been included in the French family but is not listed by Wittmann.{{Citation needed|date=February 2011}} Hawaiian Pidgin Sign Language (with possible local admixture) turned out to be an isolate, unrelated to French, American, or any other Sign Language.{{citation needed|date=April 2020}} J. Albert Bickford concluded that there was 'no substantive evidence that the [Lyons Sign Language] ever existed' and retired it from Ethnologue in 2017.{{cite web|title=Request Number 2017-013 for Change to ISO 639-3 Language Code|url=https://iso639-3.sil.org/sites/iso639-3/files/change_requests/2017/2017-013.pdf|first1=J. Albert|last1=Bickford|publisher=SIL International|date=2017-03-09|access-date=2019-01-06}}

{{French Sign Language family tree}}

See also

References

{{reflist}}

{{Language families}}

{{sign language navigation}}

{{French Sign Language languages}}

Category:Deaf culture