In the previous chapter we introduced the basic idea of morphemes, and then considered some of the ways that morphemes are used in BSL. We looked in some detail at nouns and adjectives. This chapter will focus on the morphological information that can be found in BSL verbs.

BSL verbs contain a considerable amount of morphological information, and very much more than English verbs do. The three types of information featured here (aspect, manner, and mood) are usually provided in English through the use of separate adverbs; in BSL the information is often incorporated into the verb itself. Before we consider these three inflections, however, it is worth discussing tense. BSL does not use tense, while English does.

TENSE

Tense is one way of locating events in time. It means showing time by adding morphemes to verbs to provide information such as ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’. Some languages have tenses indicating ‘distant past’ and ‘distant future’ too. Tense is deictic; that is, it needs a specific reference point for it to have any real meaning. Using a reference point of ‘the present’, English verbs show when an event occurs by adding this information morphologically. There is little evidence so far that BSL uses tense, but it is a feature worth discussing because so many other languages do, including English.

The main part of this book concerns the structure of BSL. We will be describing the way that the language works and how it can express different types of linguistic information. However, it is important to remember that all languages are used within a social context. To understand how a language is used, it is important to understand the interaction between the language and the communities that use it.

By now it should be clear that British Sign Language is the language of the British Deaf community. Its lexicon is different from other sign languages. Sign languages are not universal, and most sign languages are mutually unintelligible. The sign languages of all Deaf communities are independent of (even if they are influenced by) the spoken language of the surrounding hearing communities. For this reason there is very little similarity between American Sign Language, Irish Sign Language, and British Sign Language. The three Deaf communities are independent of each other, and so are the three sign languages.

However, some sign languages are historically related to each other. They are more similar to each other than to languages that are not related. In a similar way, some spoken languages are related. If we know German, we can read some Dutch, to which German is closely related. If we know Spanish, we can read Portuguese fairly easily, again, because the two languages are related. However, knowing Dutch and German will do us little good if we try to read Finnish, to which neither is related.

In the last chapter we discussed the productive and established lexicons and simultaneous signs. We said that signs in the productive lexicon are a very important part of signing BSL. In this chapter we will discuss another way for new signs to enter the language, through borrowing. As well as creating signs from within the language, BSL can borrow signs from other languages. It can borrow from other sign languages or it can borrow from English, either through the process of ‘loan translation’ or through fingerspelling.

As an illustration of these processes, we will also look at signs for brand names, people, and places. Personal name signs are particularly useful to study here because they show many different sign-formation processes. They provide a way to summarise some of the different ways that BSL adds to its lexicon.

BORROWING

BSL borrows from other languages. By this we mean that it uses signs that are derived from words or signs of other languages. English also borrows from other languages. There are a great many English words that can be traced to other languages and the process continues today. For example, jihad has recently come into English from Arabic, and karaoke has been borrowed from Japanese.

It is important to note that after a long time these words are often not recognised as foreign.

In this chapter we discuss the idea of ‘units of meaning’ in BSL. Morphology is the area of linguistics concerned with the meaning of words and signs and their structure.

WHAT IS A MORPHEME?

A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a word or sign. If we break words or signs into smaller and smaller units, eventually they no longer have any meaning. In BSL, morphemes can be combined to make a sign that has several meaningful parts to it, but which is still a single sign.

Sometimes one morpheme is exactly one sign, and one sign is exactly one morpheme. This occurs where the sign only has one unit of meaning. In some languages, almost all words contain only one morpheme. This means there is only one unit of meaning in every word. The Chinese language is one example. There are many BSL signs and English words that only contain one unit of meaning. English and BSL (and many other languages) also have words and signs containing more than one morpheme. These are called ‘polymorphemic’ words or signs from the Greek poly (‘many’) and morph (‘form’).

The following signs cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful units, so they are single morphemes (‘monomorphemic’ signs): TRUE, SAY, MOUSE, RED, KITCHEN, HAPPY, AEROPLANE.

The following signs are all single signs that have at least two meaningful units, so they are polymorphemic: PROMISE (made up from SAY + TRUE), BELIEVE (made up from THINK + TRUE), SPACE-SHUTTLE, MINICOM, YOU-TEASE-ME, DRIVE-CASUALLY, CHECK (made up from SEE + MAYBE), ANIMAL-JUMP-OVER-WALL (fig. 6.1).

This chapter continues the discussion of the sources of signs, focusing in the first section on how handshapes are used in visually motivated signs. In the second section, we consider the role of metaphor in the creation of the BSL lexicon.

All signers use visually motivated signs, but most of the time they use these signs automatically without thinking about why they are made that way or what information is included. Understanding how signs show different degrees of visual motivation, and in different ways, is very important when it comes to understanding how to create new signs. We will talk about this more in chapter 11. For now, we can say that it is important to understand how BSL can reflect the visual nature of an object or an action.

CLASSES OF VISUALLY MOTIVATED SIGNS

In the 1970s, the American sign linguist Mark Mandel classified visually motivated signs into different groups:

1. (a) those that show an image of the referent or action itself (these are ‘presentation’ signs, because we present the referent or action in some way); and

2. (b) those that make a picture of the referent, either by drawing it or by making the shape of it with the hands (these are ‘depiction’ signs because they make a picture).

Presentable objects

These can be pointed to, because they are present. There is no specific sign because the referent is in the environment, so simply pointing will give all the information needed.

QUESTIONS

All languages can ask questions. In chapter 1, where we discussed characteristics of communication systems, we found that animals and traffic lights cannot ask questions in the way humans can with language. BSL can ask questions, just as well as English can.

Language users know how to ask a question, but actually a ‘question’ is quite difficult to define. Questions can be defined by their function (the reason for asking a question), or by their formor structure (how a speaker or signer knows that a sentence is a question, and not a command or a declarative statement).

Anyone who knows English has no problem saying what is and what is not a question. The same is true for sentences in BSL; signers know what is a question and what is not. However, it is much more difficult to describe the rules for forming questions.

QUESTION FUNCTION

Questions have a basic function in language – they can be treated as requests for information. One definition of a question is that it expects (although does not necessarily get) a response, and preferably an answer.

A response is something that follows and relates to what another person has said, whether or not that other sentence was a question.

Mary: Lovely day!

Jane: Yes, and I've heard it'll last.

In this example, Jane is responding to what Mary has said, but Mary's sentence was not a question and Jane's response is not an answer.

Basic background material

Chronology of the Arab–Israeli dispute.

pre–1881 Palestine mainly Arab and Muslim with some Christians and small Jewish community (approximately 24,000 out of total population of 500,000).

1881–1903 Beginning of Russian pogroms against Jews. First wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine.

1896 Publication of Theodor Herzl's The State of the Jews, advocating the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

1897 First Zionist congress meets at Basel, Switzerland. Demands establishment of Jewish state in Palestine.

1914–1918 World War I.

1917 Balfour Declaration in which the British government declares itself favourable towards the establishment of national home for Jews in Palestine, on condition that this should not harm the civil and religious rights of existing non–Jewish communities in Palestine.

1922 Beginning of British mandate in Palestine.

1933 Hitler comes to power in Germany. Persecution of Jews in Germany and other states in central Europe greatly increases Jewish emigration to Palestine.

1936–1939 First Arab revolt (intifada).

1939–1945 World War II. Nazis murder vast majority of Jews (c. 6,000,000 people) in areas under their control.

1947 UN General Assembly Resolution 181 on partition of Palestine proposes Jewish state in almost all areas of Palestine with significant Jewish populations; accepted by Zionists, rejected by Palestinians and Arab states.

1948–1949 Internal war in Palestine followed by internal and international war after Israel declares independence. Approximately 750,000 Palestinians displaced.

1948–1958 Massive Jewish immigration to Israel from Europe, North Africa and Asia. Jews leave Arab countries – in some cases forced out by governmental or popular hostility, or both – as opposition to Zionism gives rise to anti-Jewish sentiment in Arab world.

Basic background material

(a) Islam in a unitary world

European colonialism (including the colonisation of the Arab world from the end of the eighteenth century onwards), and the development of a world economy with mass production, mass movement of goods and people, multinational corporations, and instant communication can be said to have destroyed an autonomous Islamic civilisation, just as it has destroyed an autonomous Japanese or Chinese civilisation. The world is in a more profound sense one than at any previous time in history.

However, the terms on which this unity has been achieved have been largely dictated by the West: in the nineteenth century by the European powers, and in the twentieth century increasingly by the United States. Formerly, the communism of eastern Europe offered some alternative to Western capitalism, at least on an ideological plane. However, even for those who are socially discontented, the fall of east European communism in the early 1990s and the return of these states to capitalism, along with the increasingly capitalist orientation of China, have largely deprived this potential alternative of its remaining credibility. Forms of socialism, or more generally ‘statism’, which were attempted elsewhere (in the Arab world, under Nasser in Egypt, for example) have similarly been largely abandoned, and are now widely regarded as having led to inefficient industries, parasitic bureaucracies and economic corruption.

It is possible that in the twenty–first century China will emerge–perhaps along with Japan and other major states of east Asia such as Indonesia–as a major centre of world power, perhaps the centre of world power. If this happens, there may be some de–Westernisation (de–Europeanisation) of culture throughout the world. Alternatively, the United States may remain the dominant power in the world, probably continuing to pursue policies of international free trade and deregulation of markets, including labour markets. Or moves towards a united Europe (at least on the economic plane) might lead to a resurgence of social–market structures, characterised by markedly redistributive tax systems (reducing income inequality), universal social welfare, and employee participation in what are otherwise capitalist enterprises.

Standard Arabic: an advanced course is designed for students who have mastered a general introduction to the modern standard language (such as Elementary Modern Standard Arabic), and is intended typically to be taught over two academic years. The course can therefore be used with students who have completed one year of intensive Arabic, for example in a three–year undergraduate degree course which does not include a year abroad in the Arab world. In terms of the British university system, where undergraduates spend three years studying Arabic at their home university (possibly with one year at a university or another institution in an Arab country), the twenty chapters of the course would cover the two final years of an undergraduate degree. Chapters 1 to 10 of the course would be typically covered during the penultimate year, while chapters 11 to 20 would be covered during the final year of the degree.

The course is principally topic–based, but within this overall framework it includes material of various genres (academic writing, journalistic writing, highbrow fiction, anecdotal materials), periods (classical and modern), rhetorical text–types (argumentative, narrative, descriptive, instructive), and channels (written and spoken). The course comprises twenty topics laid out in chapters. Each of the chapters is divided into thirteen sections. The sections are described below.

The aim of the course is to develop the four basic language skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening to an advanced level, and to give students general competence in both Arabic>English and English>Arabic translation. The course is also designed to provide students with an insight into important aspects of the Middle East, and to this end the materials chosen are designed to be genuinely interesting and informative (and in some cases controversial). From the point of view of the mechanics of language learning, the topic–based approach allows students to tackle vocabulary and structures in a coherent and concentrated manner.

Basic background material

(a) High culture and popular culture

There is a long tradition of high culture in the Arab world. Much of this high culture relates to Islam, and includes not only the Qur'an and Hadith, but all the related scholarly activities of the Islamic sciences. It also includes poetry, going back to the pre–Islamic era, and the high forms of poetry and prose which developed in Islamic times. More widely, this high culture includes various forms of high art, from calligraphy to architecture, as well as the philosophy, science and medicine which developed as part of this culture.

In addition to this high culture, however, there existed in the Islamic world various forms of more–or–less localised popular culture. These included local traditions and beliefs, styles of dress, designs of household objects, jewellery, and so on. Such popular culture is a feature not only of the Middle East or the Islamic world, but was found in all societies, including western societies, prior to the advent of mass production, mass mobility and instant communication which are the hallmarks of the modern world.

With the coming of the modern world to the Middle East, this traditional popular culture has begun to disappear from everyday life, just as it has now virtually disappeared in the west. People in the Middle East now buy mass–produced clothing and household objects, which may have been manufactured thousands of miles away; they watch television soap–operas, most of which are produced in Egypt, and typically present a glamourised image of westernised, middle–class urban life in Cairo or Alexandria.

Traditional popular culture, however, persists in two ways. Firstly, it remains in areas of the Middle East which are as yet relatively untouched by modernity–typically the poorer and more remote parts of the region. Secondly, it survives by being more or less consciously revived, and intellectualised. From the end of the nineteenth century onwards, scholars began to collect folk–stories and artefacts from the Middle East. Initially, these were western scholars, but increasingly in the twentieth century Arab scholars, and other interested individuals began to take an interest in traditional popular culture– recording stories, both in written form and later on tape, and collecting traditional material objects.

Basic background material

The nature of authority

According to the German sociologist, Max Weber (1864–1920), there are three basic kinds of authority which may exist in a society: traditional authority, charismatic authority, and rational–legal authority. Traditional authority is authority based on a belief in the sanctity of the norms of everyday behaviour. The major example of traditional authority is patriarchalism, where authority is vested in the father, the husband, the senior man in the house, the feudal lord over his vassals, or the king over his subjects. In this form of authority, any infringement of traditional norms results in magical or religious evil.

Charismatic authority is based on the charisma of an individual, where charisma is defined as an extraordinary quality of a person (regardless of whether this quality is actual or imaginary), and typically (in pre–modern societies at least) involves that person having supernatural qualities, being regarded as a hero, and being the recipient of revelations. Charismatic authority implies rule over people, to which those who are ruled submit because of their belief in the particular qualities of the individual.

Legal–rational authority is based not on sacred tradition, nor on the charisma of the individual, but on an impersonal bond to the generally defined duty of office. This office is fixed by rationally established enactments, decrees and regulations. Rational–legal authority is the norm in modern democratic societies.

Max Weber believed that there was a general tendency to move from traditional and charismatic authority to rational–legal authority. Charismatic authority, in particular, he regarded as unstable, particularly with respect to succession following the death of the charismatic leader, because of the unique nature of the leader's claim to rule. For if the charismatic leader's gift of leadership is genuinely unique, there can be no true successor to him and, his movement must die with him.

If the movement is to continue, therefore, and assuming that the successor attempts to justify his claim to rule on charismatic grounds as well, it must be admitted that the charismatic leader's gift is shared by at least one other person.

Basic background material

Systems of government in the Arab world (as of 1997)

Algeria: Republic, with ‘controlled’ opposition. Former ruling party National Liberation Front (FLN), which had been in power since independence, agreed to liberalise the political system following civil unrest in October 1988. However, in the first round of democratic general elections in 1991 the Islamic fundamentalist party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), won a decisive victory. In January 1992, the FLN–based Algerian government annulled the election results shortly before the second and final round. Since then there has been continual violence between the government and supporters of Islamic militant groups, most important of which is the GIA (Armed Islamic Group), amounting to virtual civil war, with 75,000 killed by 1997. Presidential elections called by the government in 1995 and local elections called in 1997 were boycotted by all the major opposition parties, which denounced them as a sham.

Bahrain: Emirate ruled by Emir Isa ibn Sulman al-Khalifa, who is a Sunni Muslim. During 1980s opposition to the regime came increasingly from pro–Iranian elements of the Shi'ite population, who form the majority in Bahrain. This was often severely repressed. In 1992 the government announced the formation of a Consultative Council, although this has little real power. Since then, there have been periodic demonstrations in favour of democracy.

Egypt: Republic under President Husni Mubarak and ruling National Democratic Party. Some opposition groups allowed to function, and take part in elections. Some opposition representation in parliament, mainly as independents.

Iraq: Republic under Saddam Hussein (since 1979) and ruling Ba'th party. All opposition subject to brutal repression, except for time in Kurdish north, where American–backed exclusion zone kept out Iraqi government and allowed holding of free elections in 1992. Subsequent collapse of Kurdish alliances.

Jordan: Monarchy ruled by King Hussein. Within these strictures, democratic local elections held in 1989. Relatively free multi–party general elections held in 1993 (although most citizens of Palestinian origin abstained from voting).