Talk:Home sign

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 21 January 2020 and 16 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): JuliaLeary, Rebscar. Peer reviewers: Miajgoldberg, GiannaParisi, Shannon Lee Rose, Becky10, Breannadooling, Madelynrogers, RCovell.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:47, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Article Evaluation
Hello. This page is clear and easy to read, but it is more of a summary. This article would benefit from images, up-to-date sources, more inline citations, and revision of links to nonexisting or scarcely developed Wiki pages. Most of the important content is in the Lead section with vague content headings. I think there should also be some links to the Deaf community or Deaf Culture pages. JuliaLeary (talk) 20:52, 8 March 2020 (UTC)JuliaLeary

Controversial page move rolled back
, I've rolled back the controversial move of this article to Homesign. The term is overwhelmingly two words not one. If you believe it should be renamed to "homesign", please follow the Requested move procedure. Adding Shalor. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 09:34, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 1 May 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jerm (talk) 21:13, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Home sign → Homesign – Looking at recent publications of studies on this topic, these articles refer to this topic as "homesign" or "homesign systems". The results google search for "asl 'home sign'" include this wikipedia page and websites that are not published/maintained by researchers in the field (scrolling past the first few entries on this search are links to articles with the spelling "homesign". These studies and others in the reference section of this article include 1, 2, 3, and 4. Also see Google Scholar search for "home sign" corrects to "homesign" in titles of search results. JuliaLeary (talk) 03:27, 1 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose - Citing a few recent sources doesn't really prove prevalence, and could be WP:CHERRYPICKING. Also, broad "google search" can have its own set of problems. A more narrow set of searches in Google Books comparing deaf+"home sign" and deaf+homesign from 2000-2020 found ample recent use of both. Another concern is that "homesign" reads more like an adjective or verb, but "home sign" seems more like a WP:NOUN. I don't think the current title is a problem with the redirects in place - perhaps in time a clear preference will develop. "Home signing" or "Homesigning" might even be a possible future titles per WP:GERUND. -- Netoholic @ 15:44, 1 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose – I oppose because you are misinterpreting the results for the adjective/noun reason that Netoholic already explained in interpreting hit counts. In the studies Julia cites, the one-word examples are usually adjectives, but the article title of this article represents a noun. You can see the distinction in web tallies by adding a verb to your query to enforce a noun interpretation; for example, "asl 'home sign is' " shows roughly a ten-to-one distinction (two words, one word). At scholar, it's tougher to do this because the numbers are smaller, but there does seem to be a trend towards more usage as one word since 2010 than before 2000 when it was lopsidedly two words. Ngrams is inconclusive, partly because there's no data for the "is" case, and using "and" pollutes the data because it could include adjectival cases (e.g., "in homesign and gestural systems"). Perhaps academia is moving in the direction of one-word usage, but I don't think it's there yet. Mathglot (talk) 18:15, 4 May 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Adjectival usage
Just wanted to add, that however the move request above turns out, it only applies to the article title itself, i.e., "Home sign" vs. "Homesign", as a Wikipedia article title, and by extension, as a noun when identifying the article topic in the body of the article. Usage of derived terms, such as adjectival usage in expressions like "home sign systems..." are not covered by the discussion above. In fact, I've seen some anecdotal evidence that when used adjectivally, the one-word expression may be more common (e.g., "homesign systems..."); however, that is a subject for a related, but separate discussion. Mathglot (talk) 19:14, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Home signer David
, in this edit, you added a lot of information about a single home signer by the name of "David". If this one case is a widely known and studied one in the literature, such as, say, the "John/Joan case" in gender studies is, then this addition is fine. But if it's not, then adding this much text about a single individual, would give it undue weight with respect to the rest of the article. Can you elaborate whether "David" is a famous case that is widely studied, and deserving of this much space in the article? If not, you should consider cutting it back to a proportionate amount of space, or eliminate it. Adding Shalor. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 09:47, 28 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I have edited this section in my sandbox and removed the David home sign study from this portion of the article. I have also added new information based on recent studies of adult home signers that are a better fit to this section of the article in terms of identifying general features of home sign systems. I am considering adding a short note about David to the "Examples of Home Sign Systems" section because it is a well known case in home sign studies and research. JuliaLeary (talk) 04:22, 4 May 2020 (UTC)JuliaLeary


 * , that looks like an improvement to me. The guiding principle here should be WP:DUEWEIGHT; depending how well-known it is, you could expand/contract the coverage given to it in the article, so that it has approximately the proportionate amount of space here, as it would if one compared the number of studies about David compared to all the published studies about home sign as a general topic. Mathglot (talk) 02:36, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Prominent studies section
, I question the organization of this section, in the current version of the article. There are several problems with it: The topic is Home sign, for which studies like those listed here are appropriate, because they are secondary sources for the topic of "home signs". I think this section should be removed, with its content merged into the article. The citations in the section appear to be good sources that are relevant to the article topic, and could be reused to validate assertions elsewhere in the article. If it's not clear where or how, then as a first step, the citations could be moved to a new, Further reading section to keep them in view, and then incorporated later into the article body, as appropriate. Adding Shalor. Mathglot (talk) 23:43, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Section focus – what is the point of this section, and how does it contribute to the article topic, which is "Home sign"? Wikipedia does not usually organize content as a survey of prominent authors on a topic, organized by author.  The sources you give in this section look like reliable, independent, secondary sources; so that's good. Normally, sources like these are used as citations to verify assertions about the article topic made in the body of the article.
 * List format – The content should be organized more as a prose narrative. This article is not a list article. If the article topic were List of academic studies about home signs, then this section would be okay as is. But that is an unlikely topic for the encyclopedia, and in any case, per WP:AT, is not the topic of this article. If this section belongs here at all, it should be recast as prose.
 * Secondary vs. primary sources – the section is a mix of content, some of which talks about the studies themselves, for which the study citations are WP:PRIMARY, and thus inappropriate.

This comment is being addressed and the content of the Prominent Studies section is going to be merged into the article. It will be removed after Rebscar and I work on restructuring the information in our sandbox. JuliaLeary (talk) 14:12, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

The Prominent Studies section has been removed and the information has been merged into the article.Rebscar (talk) 20:52, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Examples section
, similar to the discussion above about the Prominent studies section, I have some issues with the organization of the Examples section in the article. The main issue is the use of a bulletized list format. I believe it would be better as a narrative.

Rather than just "examples", which as a section title is kind of a loose connector, what is this section really supposed to be about, in your mind? To me, it looks like a nascent section about the history of home sign usage in the world. But it's your section, perhaps you conceived of it differently? Imagine if the section were 100% complete at some future point; what would it look like then? That should give you your section title, based on the unifying theme of the section. If it's about the history of home sign, then it could be organized chronologically, or geographically, as now appears to be the case.

If it's about history, then it's missing what to me is perhaps the most famous case of home sign, or one of the most interesting at least, namely, that of deaf student Alice Cogswell and her classmates, who cobbled together their individual home signs to form a lingua franca or incipient pidgin in the classroom of Laurent Clerc, recruited from France by Thomas Gallaudet to be the first teacher in the first deaf school in the United States, still in operation today as the American School for the Deaf. Alice and that first class were educated by Clerc in the "methodical signs" method created by the Abbe de l'Epee in Paris (now known as OSFL—Old French Sign Language), and the combination of Epee's methodical signs as taught by Clerc to the children and their pidginized home signs from contact with other students, became creolized over time and led to the creation of ASL. I'm not sure how much is known about the children's home signs, but if something could be found, it would make a wonderful addition to the article, imho. I'd love to see this story told. Adding Shalor. Adding User:Ncaselli; maybe she is already telling it, and can advise you. Mathglot (talk) 04:20, 5 May 2020 (UTC) , I agree with Mathglot - this should be written into prose. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:38, 5 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Rennellese Sign Language of the Solomon Islands was used by a single deaf individual and his friends and family, and ended with his death.
 * Following the establishment of the first deaf schools in Nicaragua in the 1970s, the previously isolated deaf children quickly developed their own sign language, now known as Nicaraguan Sign Language, from the building blocks of their own diverse home sign systems.
 * For several reported sign languages, it is not clear if they are a collection of home sign used by various families, with similarities due to the common system of gestures used by the hearing population augmented by mime, or an incipient coherent sign language. Such systems include Marajo Sign Language in Brazil, described primarily between deaf mothers and their young children, Maxakali Sign Language, also in Brazil, which at the least is a very young language, and Mehek Sign Language in northwestern Papua New Guinea, in which signs are quite variable between families, with only a few dozen held in common, all of which are highly mimetic.
 * Navajo family sign, distinct from the hearing Navajo way of signing, is more linguistically complex than general home sign systems where children are isolated from deaf peers. Navajo family sign was used inter-generationally among deaf family members and were not replaced when the deaf children were exposed to standard sign language.
 * According to Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller had developed over sixty home signs long before she was taught to communicate through finger spelling.
 * One of Susan Goldin-Meadow's prominent studies focuses on the home sign system of a young boy named David. It was found that David used five handshapes (fist, O-shape, C-shape, flat palm, and pointing) that accounted for 98% of all handshapes in his home sign system, and eight different types of motions that accounted for 100% of the signs produced.
 * Adam Kendon published a celebrated study of the signing system of a deaf Enga woman from the Papua New Guinea highlands, in which he investigated the notion of iconicity in language and gesture. This Enga Sign Language is used by a range of hearing and deaf individuals.
 * Two deaf sisters in Japan, studied by Torigoe & Takei in 2002, developed their own communication system from their homesign system, which incorporated devices that enabled complex forms comparable to language.


 * No change since; moved the #Examples section here, for further work on addressing the issues identified above. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 06:12, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Template message removal
Looking for consensus as to whether the template message under the title of the article (from May 2019) should be removed. Since then more inline citations and clear sources have been incorporated to the article and updated. JuliaLeary (talk) 14:45, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ Yes, this passes WP:WTRMT. Mathglot (talk) 18:57, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Lead edit
The lead in the former version of this article contained a majority of the content (when there were less developed subsections and updated information about this topic), as well as a lack of inline citations. Rebscar and I have published an edited version of the original lead that is more concise, includes inline citations, and contains information that is expanded upon in the subsections of the article. JuliaLeary (talk) 21:16, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , thanks for improving this. There are still some things that need addressing, in particular, the fact that the lead must summarize the content in the body, and not contain unique information not already mentioned and sourced in the body. I'm not going to pick out every item for you, but as an example, you mention linguistic isolates in the lead, but there is nothing about that in the body at all, other than in the See also section, and a sort of ghost of it in the Nicaragua example. So, the linguistic isolates has to come out of the lead; or perhaps better, just move it to the article body someplace.  Since the lead is a summary, you will have to decide whether it's worth saying anything at all in the lead about linguistic isolates; if you do, it should be a much briefer version of whatever is in the article body about the topic. For the same reason that the lead is a summary of body content, the lead generally does not need to have footnotes, based on the fact that if it's merely summarizing info already in the body, and that body content is properly footnoted, that does not need to be repeated in the lead.  So, if and when you move linguistic isolates along with the two footnotes you added to the body, and you decide that it's important enough to summarize in the lead, in that case you won't have to repeat those footnotes again in the lead; that will already be considered covered by the footnotes that will be in the body.  I have not combed through the rest of the lead to verify it, but you should; just make sure that there is no unique information there that is not in the body, and that the lead is a summary, in proportion to the amount of coverage of major points in the article. The footnotes don't need to be there, though they are not prohibited, but having a footnote in the lead that is used nowhere else in the article might be an indicator of something missing in the body.  Adding Rebscar, Shalor. Mathglot (talk) 19:08, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Had to add just one more example, because I was curious about the origin of home sign, i.e., who comes up with it, the parents? siblings? the deaf child? deaf children in play groups together? I didn't see much in the article about it. The very first sentence says it's "often invented spontaneously by a deaf child". That seems to me a subject of central importance to the topic of the article, and should be covered in the body in as much detail as feasible, and then, of course, summarized in the lead (where the footnote would no longer be required). An entire top-level section about this would not be too much, if you can find the material. Mathglot (talk) 19:23, 8 May 2020 (UTC)