Arabic sign language : a perspective

Abstract

Sign Language in the Arab World has been recently recognized and documented. Many efforts have been made to establish the Sign Language used in individual countries, e.g. Jordan, Egypt, Libya, the Gulf States, etc. by trying to standardize the language and spread it among members of the deaf community and those concerned. Such efforts produced many sign languages; almost as many as the Arabic-speaking countries, yet with the same sign alphabets. This paper is an attempt to give a tentative account of some sign Languages in Arabic through reference to their possible evolution which is believed to be affected by the diglossic situation in Arabic, and through comparing some aspects of certain sign languages: Jordanian, Palestinian, Egyptian, Kuwaiti and Libyan where issues such as primes, configuration and movement in addition to other linguistic features are discussed. Moreover, a contrastive account that depicts the principal differences between Arabic sign languages in general and the spoken language is given.