Dr. William C Stokoe, Jr., was the chairman of the English Department at Gallaudet University. He saw the way deaf people communicated and was extremely 1 . He was a hearing person, and signs of the deaf were totally new to him.
Dr. Stokoe decided to propose a study of sign language. Many other teachers were not interested, and though Dr. Stokoe was 2 to think about studying sign language. Even deaf teachers were not very interested in the project. However, Dr. Stokoe did not give up. 3 , he started the Linguistics Research Program in 1957. Stokoe and his two deaf assistants, worked on this project during the summer and after school. The three researchers made films of deaf people signing. The deaf people in the film did not understand 4 the research about and were just trying to be nice to Dr. Stokoe. Many people thought the whole project was silly, but 5 agreed with Dr. Stokoe in order to please him.
Stokoe and his team studied the films of signing. They 6 the films and try to see patterns in the signs. The results of the research were 7 : the signs used by all of the signers followed certain linguistic rules.
Dr. Stokoe was the first linguist to test American Sign Language as a real language. He published the 8 in 1960, but not many people paid attention to the study. Dr. Stokoe was still 9 -he was the only linguist who 10 that sign language was more than gestures. He knew it was a language of its own and not just another form of English.
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