A Sketch of Handshape Morphology in Hawai’i Sign Language

Abstract

Hawai‘i Sign Language (HSL) is a critically endangered sign language indigenous to the Hawaiian Islands. Lexicostatistical data gathered by Lambrecht, Earth, and Woodward (2013) have shown that HSL is unrelated to American Sign Language (ASL). This article aims to provide additional descriptive work for this language, demonstrate a grammatical difference between HSL and ASL with respect to handshape morphology, and discuss the usage restrictions of these handshapes in typological perspective, concluding that this grammatical difference between ASL and HSL is significant and the restrictions found in HSL are typologically rare.*