What you will learn
- Identify the historical origins in natural gesture for the emergence of ASL grammar.
- Describe the degree and types of structural variation within ASL, considering the possible influences from its contacts with other signed and spoken languages.
- Discuss the role of visual analogy in learning ASL, considering the possible linguistic universals for signed languages.
- List ways in which language specific variation and historical change for signed languages may compare and contrast to those for spoken languages.
- Describe the visual, motoric, and cognitive constraints which may give rise to these phenomena.
Program Overview
Expert instruction
4 skill-building courses
Self-paced
Progress at your own speed
4 months
3 - 5 hours per week
Discounted price: $464.40
Pre-discounted price: $516USD
For the full program experience
Courses in this program
GeorgetownX's American Sign Language Science Professional Certificate
- Sign Language Science: Emergence and Evolution of Sign Language
- Sign Language Science: Factors Contributing to Nature Structure
- Sign Language Science: Factors Contributing to Natural Learning
- Sign Language Science: Factors Contributing to Natural Change
- Job Outlook
Meet your instructor from Georgetown University (GeorgetownX)
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Program endorsements
![Center for Gesture, Sign and Language](https://www.edx.org/contentful/ii9ehdcj88bc/mFMTDg90tJPwMA0ps4Hvy/f21930e654c34e0e9cd0cb8054bbc014/cgsl1-123m2v1.jpg?w=80&fm=webp&q=75)
Ted Supalla’s Sign Language Science program is designed so that students from diverse backgrounds––signers and speakers alike––can profit from this extraordinary journey into visual-manual languages––their history, how they are structured, and how they are learned. The online curriculum presents in one, accessible place everything that is currently known about sign language, and teaches us how sign languages (like all languages) evolve over time to fit the human mind.
Susan Goldin-Meadow , Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor and Co-director of the Center for Gesture, Sign and Language, University of Chicago
Enrolling Now
Discounted price: $464.40
Pre-discounted price: $516USD
4 courses in 4 months
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