El lenguaje de signos

Abstract

In the last few years we have witnessed an important and meaningful increase of investigations and publications on sign language. First papers on this subject established its status as a language and its role on deaf children education. Later research work on the American Sign Language (ASL), and other sign languages elaborated a proper linguistic description that will facilitate the construction of a grammar. This paper reviews sign language and its educational applications in four parts: first, the historical evolution, the internal structure and the grammar processes of sign language; second, the principal studies performed on the subject of manual language acquisition; third, the review and evaluation of the research work on the subject of early sign language acquisition and its influence on cognitive, social and linguistic development; finally, the educational value of sign language both in severely deaf children and those with communication deficiencies