History: Lojban Sign Language

is there any? --Skorgu

No. What would you expect it to be like? Sign languages are in general unrelated to the spoken languages spoken in the area. American Sign Language is unrelated to British Sign Language, but quite closely related to French Sign Language. British Sign Language, OTOH, is related to Irish Sign Language, even though the Irish and British spoken languages belong to different branches of the Indo-European family. Chinese Sign Language appears to be an isolate, as is Nicaraguan Sign Language. I think you get the point. --tsali

Oh, you've just barely gotten started!

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_iso639.asp?code=sgn

My personal favorite is monastic sign language.

-RobinLeePowell

I wouldn't know what to expect it to be like, hence the question --Skorgu

OK, I'll answer again, this time a little bit slower.

If by Lojban Sign Language, you mean an artificial sign language based on the structure of Lojban, go ahead and construct one. It would likely be very cumbersome, however, because all its morphemes would have to be uttered sequenctially, without having access to the simultaneous, spatial grammatical features common to many sign languages.

If, on the other hand, we imagine a deaf community living in the midst of a community of native Lojban speakers (say, in Lojbanistan), that language would not be "Lojban sign language", or anything like Lojban at all. At best, it would be known as "Lojbanistan Sign Language". It is much more likely to have the typological features such as topicalization and SOV, which is very common among sign languages. -tsali

What would a sign language designed with some of the same goals and principles of Lojban look like? --TheEllmist Tuesday, April 29th, 02003

• This was actually more towards the point of my original question, what would a logical (if not lojban per se) sign language look like? Could a signed language be constructed that has the same benefits lojban brings to spoken/written language? (e.g. unambiguous meaning in things like negation, piano-carrying, etc.)--Skorgu
  • These factors are mainly a matter of vocabulary, not grammar, so any sign language (indeed, any langauge) that would take the trouble to create an use relatively short expression for these things would be logical in that way. sign languages are unlikely candidates for this, since they are so fluid — though capable of any required degree of precision with added complexities (mainly length). pc