Manually coded English
[2] Manually coded English (MCE) is the result of language planning efforts in multiple countries, especially the United States in the 1970s.[2][3] Deaf sign languages make use of non-sequential morphology, spatial relationships, facial expression, and body positioning, while MCE does not take advantage of Deaf sign language features which do not exist in spoken English, with a "spatially restricted, sequential structure along with a strict word order".[4] Although some research suggests that experience can improve the degree to which the information coded in English (morphologically as well as syntactically) is successfully communicated manually, especially by learners who are hearing and/or already fluent in spoken English, multiple studies have identified a number of potential concerns about the use of MCE systems in place of a natural language.Researchers suggest that this may significantly disrupt communication using these systems, as it may lead to an excessive load on the short term memory compared to natural languages.MCE was proposed to improve the speed and capacity of deaf children's reading, as their literacy in written English has been typically low compared to their hearing peers."[8] Education is still the most common setting where manually coded English is used; not only with deaf students, but also children with other kinds of speech or language difficulties.Multiple researchers note that MCE use by deaf children acquiring it as a first language is typically evaluated according to its adherence to citation forms of spoken English (i.e., MCE utterances are evaluated as if they were spoken English utterances) rather than its intelligibility as a form of communication or a language.While many studies have found MCE to be comprehensible to those familiar with the code, fewer have attempted to evaluate whether it is equivalently suitable for first language acquisition, given the frequency of morpheme deletion or ellipsis.[7] In a study of prelingually deaf children taught exclusively using MCE, S. Supalla documented that these individuals displayed spontaneous (without prior exposure), ASL-like innovations.Additionally, cognitive delays and lower academic achievement may result from or be exacerbated by a lack of complete or comprehensible input by teachers using MCE instead of ASL.Elderly deaf people in the UK and Australia may also use a lot of fingerspelling relative to their younger counterparts as a result of their education.Contact sign drops the initializations and grammatical markers used in other forms of MCE, but retains basic English word order.Cued speech is not traditionally referred to as a form of MCE, in part because it does not use borrowed or invented signs in an attempt to convey English.Anthony identified a list of proposed basic English words, less than half of which he identified American Sign Language (ASL) signs for, as well as a number of slightly different English words which ASL represented similarly with "only minor" stress and movement variations.[16] Nielson et al. argue that SEE-1/MSS is a poor representation of English because it has only 14 bound morphemes in its citation form, noting that it has not been well-studied since the 1990s, and as of the paper's publishing in 2016, was only in use in Amarillo, Texas.While most forms of ASL and MCE are transcribed using English glosses, LOVE is written using the notation system developed by William Stokoe in describing the linguistic features of American Sign Language.It was originated by Zenas Westervelt in 1878, shortly after he opened the Western New York Institute for Deaf-Mutes (presently known as the Rochester School for the Deaf).