Jordanian Sign Language: aspects of grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective

Jordanian Sign Language:
aspects of grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective

Jordanian Sign Language (Lughat al-Ish¯ ara al-Urdunia, LIU) is the sign language
used by Deaf people in Jordan. It appears to be a relatively young language,
although not much is known about its history. It is mutually intelligible with
most other sign languages used in Arab countries in the Middle East. This study
is the first in-depth study of grammatical structures in a Middle Eastern Arab
sign language. It provides a lexical comparison of different sign languages from
the Middle East and gives a brief overview of the grammar of LIU. Selected
aspects of the grammar of LIU, notably negation, possession, manual
simultaneity and perspective are described in more depth and compared to
descriptions of other sign languages, revealing both interesting similarities and
differences. This raises the question in how far cross-linguistic similarities
between sign languages are related to the relative youth of sign languages, and
in how far grammatical differences can be explained by age differences between
sign languages.

Data for this study were gathered during a period of six years at the Holy Land
Institute for the Deaf in Jordan, where the author worked as a linguist and
teacher.

This book is of interest to scholars of sign linguistics, linguistic typology, Arabic
linguistics, and Deaf studies.