Another fact about sign language – the sentences and signs can be broken down into phonemes which consist of features like hand shape, location, movement, and more. The fact that the sentences and signs used in sign language can be broken down into components is an example of which design feature of language?
Discreteness
The fact that sentences and signs used in sign language can be broken down into phonemes is an example of “discreteness” as a design feature of language.
Discreteness refers to the idea that language is composed of smaller, distinct units that can be combined and recombined to create larger units of meaning. In spoken languages, these units are phonemes, which are individual speech sounds that make up words and can distinguish between one word and another in a language.
Similarly, in sign language, the units are not phonemes, but rather the distinct features of signs such as hand shape, location, and movement. These features can be combined and recombined in systematic ways to create larger units of meaning such as words and sentences, just like in spoken languages. Therefore, the discreteness feature is a fundamental characteristic of all human languages, whether spoken or signed.
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