Ronnie Wilbur
Boston University

Recent studies of American Sign Language (ASL) have argued convincingly
that ASL is a language in the full linguistic sense of the word. Research into
the structrue of ASL began in earnest with Stokoe ( 1960), and only recently
have the details of ASL acquisition, memory, perception, history, sociology,
and educational implications been approached. Recent research in linguistics
illustrates the variety of topics that has been investigated: sociolinguistics
( Woodward, 1973a, 1973b, 1973c), historical changes ( Frishberg, 1976), pho-
nology ( Friedman, 1976a, 1976b), syntax ( Liddell, 1977), borrowings from
English through fingerspelling ( Battison, 1978), the pronoun system ( Lacy,
personal communication; Kegl, 1976a, 1976b, 1977), and the complete range
of systems built on the indexic pointing gesture and their acquisition ( Hoffmeister
, 1978a, 1978b). These and other studies have highlighted many lin-
guistic features of ASL. Extensive research on other sign languages has not
yet been conducted. Of necessity then, this chapter focuses entirely on ASL. It
may be presumed that many of the processes, if not the actual details, will be
found in other sign languages when they are investigated.

Stokoe ( 1960) investigated sign formation, which he called "cherology,"
treating it as analogous to the phonological system of oral languages. He
defined three parameters that were realized simultaneously in the formation

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