Who Decides 2010? Prescription vs. Description

[billmaghan]

the real asl grows without authority

[DBritzius]

I strongly feel that description is our main conversation use, and would support it due to the fact that its nice to know what people sign as well as their signing, we know where they are from, like hearing people's accents, we know where their location is and often are right in guessing where they are from.  Get my drift? So I support your comment.

Darlene

[intrinsicchaos]

This is not to say that the linguistic arguments for 20-10 or 2(0)10 don't matter -- they are VERY relevant!

In fact, I've seen stronger arguments for 20-10 than for 2(0)10. However, simply because one variant is more linguistically appropriate than the other variant doesn't mean we should ignore the intuition that has led many people to sign 2(0)10 anyway, and the validity of that intuition.

[intrinsicchaos]

Ignoring or invalidating that brings us perilously closer to language prescription--and dare I say it?--oppression.