231 Signed Languages
231 手语
Sign has become a scientific hot button. Only in the past 20 years have specialists in language study realized that signed languages are unique—a speech of the hand. They offer a new way to probe how the brain generates and understands language, and throw new light on an old scientific controversy： whether language, complete with grammar, is something that we are born with, or whether it is a learned behavior. The current interest in sign language has roots in the pioneering work of one rebel teacher at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the world’s only liberal arts university for deaf people.
手语已经成了科学发展的一个热门话题。直到最近20年，语言研究的专家们才认识到手语的独特性——一种用手表达的语言。他们提出了一种全新的方法来探索大脑是怎样产生和理解语言的，并对一个古老的科学争论”有完整语法的语言究竟是与生俱来的，还是后天习得的行为？”带来了新的发现。我们目前对手语的兴趣源于华盛顿嘎劳德特大学的一位具有反叛精神的教师的先驱性工作，该校是世界上唯一一所为聋哑人设立的文科大学。
When Bill Stokoe went to teach English, the school enrolled him in a course in signing. But Stokoe noticed something odd: among themselves, students signed differently form his classroom teacher.
当比尔·斯托科去嘎劳德特大学聱英语时，他报名参加了一门手语课程。但当时斯托科注意到了一些奇怪现象：学生们做的手势和课堂上老师所作的手势有所不同。
Stokoe had been taught a sort of gestural code, each movement of the hands representing a word in English. At the time, American Sign Language (ASL) was thought to be no more than a from of pidgin English. But Stokoe believed the “hand talk” his students used looked richer. He wondered: Might deaf people actually have a genuine language? And could that language be unlike any other on Earth? It was 1955, when even deaf peole dismissed their signing as “substandard”. Stokoe’s idea was academic heresy.
斯托科已经学完了一种手语的代码．手部的每一个动作都代表了英语中的一个单词。那时美国的手语仅仅被视作混杂英语的一种形式。但斯托科认为他的学生们所使用的手语看起来丰富得多。他想知道：也许聋哑人有自己真正的语言；而这种语言究竟是不是和其他语言都不一样呢？那时是1955年，甚至聋哑人本身也认为手语是“不标准的，不符合规格的”。斯托科的观点在那时被认为是异端邪说。
It is 37 years later. Stokoe---now devoting his time to writing and editing books and journals and to producing video materials on ASL and the deaf culture---is having lunch at a café near the Gallaudet campus and explaining how he started a revolution. For decades educators thought his idea that signed languages are natural languages like English, French and Japanese. They assumed language must be based on speech, the modulation of sound. But sign language is based on the movement of hands, the modulation of space. “What I said,” Stokoe explains “is that language is not mouth stuff--- it’s brain stuff.”
37年后的今天．斯托科正致力于撰写和编辑书籍和刊物，并制作关于美国手语和聋哑人文化的视频材料。他在嘎劳德特大学校园附近一家小饭馆边吃饭边解释他如何引发了一场革命。几十年来．教育家们都反对他关于手语就像英语，法语，日语一样，是一种自然的语言这种观点，他们认为语言必须建立在语音的基础上，是声音的调节。但手语是建立在手的运动的基础上，是速度的调节。“我的观点是”。斯托科解释说：“语言不是嘴巴的功能，而是大脑的功能。”