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.
手语已成为科学热点。在过去的20年里，语言研究专家才意识到手语是独一无二的一种手势。它们为探索大脑如何生成和理解语言提供了一种新的方法，并为一个古老的科学争议提供了新的线索：语言，包括语法，是我们与生俱来的东西，还是一种习得的行为。目前人们对手语的兴趣源于华盛顿加劳德特大学一位叛逆教师的开拓性工作，该大学是世界上唯一一所为聋人开设的文科大学。
When Bill Stokoe went to Gallaudet to teach English, the school enrolled him in a course in signing. But Stokoe noticed something odd: among themselves, students signed differently from his classroom teacher.
当比尔·斯托科去加劳德特教英语时，学校为他报了一门手语课程。但斯托科注意到了一些奇怪的事情：在他们中间，学生们的签名与他的课堂老师不同。
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 form 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 people dismissed their signing as “substandard”. Stokoe’s idea was academic heresy.
斯托科被教了一种手势代码，手的每一个动作都代表着英语中的一个单词。当时，美式手语被认为只不过是一种混杂英语。但斯托科认为，他的学生们使用的“手语”看起来更丰富。他想知道：聋人可能真的有一门真正的语言吗？这种语言会与地球上其他语言不同吗？那是1955年，即使是聋人也认为他们的手语“不合格”。斯托科的观点是异端邪说。
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 cafe near the Gallaudet campus and explaining how he started a revolution. For decades educators fought 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年过去了。斯托科现在致力于撰写和编辑书籍和期刊，以及制作关于美式手语和聋人文化的视频材料。他正在加劳德特校区附近的一家咖啡馆吃午饭，并解释他是如何发起革命的。几十年来，教育工作者一直反对他的观点，即手语是像英语、法语和日语一样的自然语言。他们认为语言必须基于语音，即声音调节。但手语是建立在手的运动、空间的调节之上的。斯托科解释道：“我的意思是语言不是口头上的，而是大脑里的。”
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