Victoria Nyst defended her PhD thesis titled ‘A Descriptive Analysis of Adamorobe Sign Language (Ghana)’ at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) two weeks ago (March 30). The local university website wrote a short piece about this Unique sign language in African village with high hereditary deafness.

example
One claim is that AdaSL is highly iconic; can you guess this sign? (source)

The village Adamorobe has a high incidence of hereditary deafness so there is a local sign language that both deaf and hearing villagers use. In the summaries there are some speculative claims about the different ways a sign language can develop or has developed in this case. Whether or not there is a large and isolated Deaf community is suggested to be the main factor in the arguments.

* Kennislink.nl provides a good summary in Dutch.
* The Foundation for Endangered Languages also has its eye on AdaSL.
* Promotors are Prof. Anne Baker (UvA), Prof. Maarten Mous (Leiden University)