<P> ASL signs have a number of phonemic components, including movement of the face and torso as well as the hands . ASL is not a form of pantomime, but iconicity does play a larger role in ASL than in spoken languages . English loan words are often borrowed through fingerspelling, although ASL grammar is unrelated to that of English . ASL has verbal agreement and aspectual marking and has a productive system of forming agglutinative classifiers . Many linguists believe ASL to be a subject--verb--object (SVO) language, but there are several alternative proposals to account for ASL word order . </P> <P> ASL emerged as a language in the American School for the Deaf (ASD), founded in 1817 . This school brought together Old French Sign Language, various village sign languages, and home sign systems; ASL was created in this situation of language contact . ASL was influenced by its forerunners but distinct from all of them . </P> <P> The influence of French Sign Language (LSF) on ASL is readily apparent; for example, it has been found that about 58% of signs in modern ASL are cognate to Old French Sign Language signs . However, this is far less than the standard 80% measure used to determine whether related languages are actually dialects . This suggests that nascent ASL was highly affected by the other signing systems brought by the ASD students, despite the fact that the school's original director Laurent Clerc taught in LSF . In fact, Clerc reported that he often learned the students' signs rather than conveying LSF: </P> <P> I see, however, and I say it with regret, that any efforts that we have made or may still be making, to do better than, we have inadvertently fallen somewhat back of Abbé de l'Épée . Some of us have learned and still learn signs from uneducated pupils, instead of learning them from well instructed and experienced teachers . </P>

When was asl first recognized as a language