ABSTRACT
The description of Israeli Sign Language presented in this book is the product of research conducted by applying the well-honed tools of linguistic analysis. It has demonstrated that ISL has complex linguistic structure, grammatical rules, and a rich vocabulary, and that it meets all the diverse communicative needs of its community of users. Studies of other sign languages have established that these conclusions are valid for sign languages in general. Sign languages, then, are like spoken languages: languages in both modalities are fully fledged human languages, the product of the human brain. And just as linguists have investigated a variety of spoken languages, we can assume that they will study and examine a range of sign languages as well. Every language contributes to our knowledge and enhances our understanding of the fundamental nature of human language in general. So it would be reasonable to expect that the contribution made by research on sign languages would be similar to that made by studies of spoken languages, such as English, Chinese, Hungarian, Azerbaijani and Yupik-Eskimo-no more, no less. But this isn’t exactly the case.
