Kailge Sign Language Explained

Kailge Sign Language
States:Papua New Guinea
Region:Kailge, Western Highlands Province
Speakers:?
Familycolor:sign language
Family:village sign
Iso3:none
Glotto:kail1256
Glottorefname:Kailge Sign Language

Kailge Sign Language is a well-developed village sign language of Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. It is spoken over a wide region of small hamlets around the town of Kailge, as well as in Kailge itself, in a Ku Waru–speaking region. It might be characterized as a network of homesign rather than as a single coherent language.[1] Its use of signing space is more similar to that of deaf-community sign languages than that of many village sign languages shared with the hearing community.[2]

KSL has lexical similarities with another village sign language in the region, Sinasina Sign Language.[3]

Notes and References

  1. Lauren Reed & Alan Rumsey (2019), 'Sign Languages in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands'
  2. Lauren Reed & Alan Rumsey, New Research on a Vernacular Sign Language in the New Guinea Highlands, 18 August 2017
  3. Lauren Reed & Alan Rumsey, Initial observations of mouth action distribution, type, and variation in Kailge Sign Language, an undocumented sign language of Papua New Guinea, ALS 2017: Conference of the Australian Linguistics Society, 6 December 2017