From compensation to integration: Effects of the pro-tactile movement on the sublexical structure of Tactile American Sign Language

This article examines a divergence in the sublexical structure of Visual American Sign Language (VASL) and Tactile American Sign Language (TASL). My central claim is that TASL is a language, not just a relay for VASL. In order to make that case, I show how changes in the structure of interaction, driven by the aims of the “pro-tactile” social movement, contributed to a redistribution of complexity across grammatical sub-systems. I argue that these changes constitute a departure from the structure of VASL and the emergence of a new, tactile language. In doing so, I apprehend language emergence not as a “liberation” from context, but as a process of contextual integration.