Aspects of Kenyan sign language (KSL) morphology

Abstract

Morphology examines forms of words and their relationship with other words in existence in a language. Generally, in linguistics, morphology studies how words are formed. However, in signed linguistics, morphology does not just study word formation per se (since SL uses signs) but rather how language makes use of smaller units that are important to construct larger meaningful units or signs. Accordingly, sign language morphology deals with how to put together sign components that are meaningful to construct complex signs. This paper sets out to examine the way that components of signs are put together in KSL to build complicated signs in reference to both sequential (derivation) and simultaneous (inflectional) morphology.