Tegnsprogsforskning: Om tegnsprogets bidrag til viden om sprog

Even though research in sign language is a special field of language research it has contributed with new knowledge about human language because of the visuospatial nature. The article introduces to different issues in sign language research from a cognitive and neuropsychological view. These issues are sign language linguistic, sign aphasia, the neural organization of sign language, signed short-term memory, and the study of speech errors in sign language. The overall purpose of the article is to examine the structure and organization of sign language in comparison to oral language. What linguistics, neural and cognitive similarities and differences are there between signed and oral languages? The article demonstrates that the linguistic, cognitive and neural basis for signed languages overall is similar to oral languages. The similarity of signed and oral languages indicates an amodal cognitive organization of human language.