An international team of linguistics experts has traced the origins of the most common modern sign languages using a computer model to compare them against one another. The research is published in the journal Science.
In this new effort, the research team noted that while studies have traced the linguistic history of written languages, little work has been done on the origin of sign languages. They state that there are more than 300 sign languages used by hearing-impaired people around the globe, and little is known about their origins or how they might have impacted one another.
Sign languages, like spoken and written languages, are unique to groups or cultures, with many corresponding to their written counterparts—there is a Spanish sign language, for example, and French, Spanish and Japanese.
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