< previous pagepage_xvinext page >Page xvi the forms of a visual language (almost unimaginably alien to one steeped in speech, with a profoundly empathetic sense of content, of others'
states of mind and intentions, that made it possible for Stokoe to establish the linguistic characteristics of
American Sign Languageits grammatical intricacy, its delicacy of meaning.
Current morphologists of sign language have now gone far beyond Stokoe's pioneer workso much so that he is sometimes seen as obsolete or old-fashioned. Yet, no "pure" morphologist,
one feels, could ever have opened the door to anew mode of communication in the first placeand not only a mode of communication, but a mode of cognition,
of sensibility, of identity too.
At 76, Bill Stokoe is as active and creative as ever last year (with his colleagues David Armstrong and Sherman Wilcox) he brought out an audacious new book,
Gesture and the Nature of Language, presenting the hypothesis (with
impressive linguistic,
neural, and ethological evidence to support it) that Sign might be not just a peculiar, specialized language developed by the deaf,
but
one of the universal, primordial forms of language achieved by our species.
Bill Stokoe has dedicated himself to Deaf people and the study of their language for forty years. He has opened, for all of us,
anew era of understanding, and this has been possible because of his rare combination of scientific, humane, and poetic passions,
and a spaciousness of mind that could integrate all of these. Stokoe is, I think, one of the most
remarkable men of our time, and a comprehensive biography of him has been long overdue. I am delighted that, finally, it has been written.
OLIVER SACKS
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