A linguistic review of sign language
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17977/um063.v6.i4.2026.7Keywords:
Sign language, Phonology, Syntax, Pragmatic, Deaf communityAbstract
The present study provided a linguistic review of published research on sign language from 2011 to 2026. It examines studies across multiple linguistic domains including phonology, syntax, acquisition, lexicon, technology, and cognition. The review analyzes results from key studies on sign language acquisition, phonological organization, spatial pragmatics, syntactic agreement, sociolinguistic variation, and machine translation. The findings indicate that early age of acquisition significantly impacts sign language development. Community attitudes and the absence of bullying play essential role in acquisition. Language choices are also shaped by political and ideological boundaries. Phonologically, sign languages organized simultaneously through the use of parameters such as handshape, location, and movement. Syntactically, agreement is marked by directional verbs rather than affixes, and spatial references serve pragmatic functions beyond literal location. Technologically, there has been progress in sign language recognition, especially in fingerspelling and lexical signs, but true translation remains limited by the lack of large datasets and the need to move beyond glosses. The study concludes that sign languages share core linguistic features with spoken languages but implement them through modality-specific mechanisms.
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