Sign language

A natural language expressed through visual-manual forms, including hand shapes, movements, facial expressions, and body posture. Each sign language has its own grammar and vocabulary, distinct from spoken languages.

Phonology of sign languages: The study of how sign languages organize contrastive visual-manual units into signs. Handshape, location, movement, and orientation function as contrastive parameters in signs.
Old French Sign Language: A sign language used in Paris before the development of modern French Sign Language. Its community and educational networks helped shape French Sign Language.
William Stokoe: An American linguist whose research established that American Sign Language has systematic linguistic structure. His analysis challenged the view that signing was merely gesture or pantomime.
Sign language interpreting: The translation of communication between a sign language and another language by an interpreter. Interpreters facilitate communication across linguistic communities without making sign language a code for speech.
Gesture: A movement of the body or hands that communicates meaning but is not necessarily part of a language. Gestures can accompany speech, while sign languages have conventional vocabularies and grammars.
Sign language morphology: The structure of meaningful units and word formation in sign languages. Changes in movement, location, or handshape can mark grammatical features or create new signs.
French Sign Language: A sign language used in France and parts of Switzerland. Its history includes the Paris school for deaf students founded by Charles-Michel de l'Épée.
Roch-Ambroise Auguste Bébian: A French educator who wrote an early systematic account of sign language and deaf education. His work treated signing as a language and informed later approaches to deaf education.
Deaf education: Education designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, using approaches that may include sign languages. Access to a natural sign language affects language development and educational participation.
Signed Exact English: A manually coded system that represents English words and grammatical forms through signs and fingerspelling. It follows English structure rather than the independent grammar of a natural sign language.

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