Signed language pragmatics

Terry Janzen, Barbara Shaffer & Sherman Wilcox
Table of contents

Signed languages are natural human languages used by deaf people throughout the world as their native or primary language. Although no formal survey of the world’s signed languages has ever been conducted, it is generally assumed that they number in the hundreds – the 16th edition of the Summer Institute of Linguistics Ethnologue of the world’s languages lists 130 signed languages (Lewis 2009).

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