Introduction

Crosslinguistic and crossmodality research has proven to be crucial in understanding the nature of language. In this chapter we seek to contribute to crosslinguistic sign language research and discuss how this research intersects with comparisons across spoken languages. Our point of departure is a series of three pair-wise comparisons between elicited samples of the vocabularies of Mexican Sign Language (la Lengua de Señas Mexicana or LSM) and French Sign Language (la Langue des Signes Française or LSF), Spanish Sign Language (la Lengua de Signos Española or LSE), and Japanese Sign Language (Nihon Syuwa or NS). We examine the extent to which these sample vocabularies resemble each other. Writing about “sound–meaning resemblances” across spoken languages, Greenberg (1957:37) posits that such resemblances are due to four types of causes. Two are historical: genetic relationship and borrowing. The other two are connected to nonhistorical factors: chance and shared symbolism, which we here use to mean that a pair of words happens to share the same motivation, whether iconic or indexic. These four causes are likely to apply to sign languages as well, although – as we point out below – a genetic linguistic relationship may not be the most appropriate account of the development of three of the sign languages discussed in this chapter: LSF, LSM, and LSE.

The history of deaf education through the medium of signs in Mexico sheds light on why the three specific pair-wise comparisons that form the basis of this study are informative.