The History of Georgian Sign Language (GESL) Linguistics

Abstract

Sign Language Linguistics is a relatively young area of linguistic research. Its origin dates back to the first analysis of American Sign Language by Stokoe (Stokoe, 1960). However, sign language linguistics in general has a quite long history in comparison to Georgian Sign Language (GESL) linguistics, which only counts several years. Despite its brief history, GESL research includes almost all the linguistic levels and the features of GESL that have already been explored promise high expectations for future discoveries. Research of any unexplored sign language is an indispensable resource for linguists and may produce unexpected results, especially when this sign language deploys such interesting features as GESL. Thus, the results of GESL research is invaluable for not only sign language linguistics, but also for typological studies of sign and spoken languages.