Verbs in Igbo Home Signs

Abstract

Home sign is a gestural communication system, often invented spontaneously by a deaf child who lacks accessible linguistic input. This paper on verb in Igbo home signs sets to investigate how deaf persons who lack input from a language model in their environment express Igbo verbs during communications. The linguistic data for the study were collected from our informants who are the deaf persons that make use of home signs for communication, and their relatives who understand them very well. These set of individuals were reached in their various homes and some basic were administered to them in order to capture their real signs and interpretations. The picture/video recording of each of the words (verbs) were taken and analysed. Observations show that these deaf persons’ form of expression of action words is basically the demonstration of the act through gestures. This work therefore suggests more scholarly investigations into Igbo home signs and its development in order to have a formal and more intelligible form of signing in Igbo. Thus, in this era of global dispensation, a call for development and establishment of a standard sign language model that will be learnt by both the deaf persons and the hearing persons i.e. the Igbo sing language (ISL) is recommended.