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Explore the history and evolution of American Sign Language

Georgetown University
Professional Certificate inAmerican Sign Language Science
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What you will learn

  • Identify the historical origins in natural gesture for the emergence of ASL grammar.
  • Describe the degree and types of structural variation within ASL, considering the possible influences from its contacts with other signed and spoken languages.
  • Discuss the role of visual analogy in learning ASL, considering the possible linguistic universals for signed languages.
  • List ways in which language specific variation and historical change for signed languages may compare and contrast to those for spoken languages.
  • Describe the visual, motoric, and cognitive constraints which may give rise to these phenomena.

  • Expert instruction
    4 skill-building courses
  • Self-paced
    Progress at your own speed
  • 4 months
    3 - 5 hours per week
  • Discounted price:$464.40 Original price:$516.00 USD
    For the full program experience

Courses in this program

GeorgetownX's American Sign Language Science Professional Certificate

Meet your instructor
from Georgetown University (GeorgetownX)

Ted Supalla
Ted Supalla

Professor of Neurology, Linguistics, and Psychology

Georgetown University

Experts from Georgetown University (GeorgetownX) committed to teaching online learning

Program endorsements

Center for Gesture, Sign and Language

Ted Supalla’s Sign Language Science program is designed so that students from diverse backgrounds––signers and speakers alike––can profit from this extraordinary journey into visual-manual languages––their history, how they are structured, and how they are learned. The online curriculum presents in one, accessible place everything that is currently known about sign language, and teaches us how sign languages (like all languages) evolve over time to fit the human mind.

Susan Goldin-Meadow, Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor and Co-director of the Center for Gesture, Sign and Language, University of Chicago

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Discounted price:$464.40 Original price:$516.00 USD

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