The problem with that statement is that it means that unrelated pidgin dialects, and their creole descendant languages, are all related to each other, and not to the tongues of the speakers who invented them, since all pidgins have roughly the same grammar.
English grammar also changed rather sharply between Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, yet the two languages would probably be considered as fairly closely related.
> 2. Sign languages are fully fledged languages that generally are
> unrelated to spoken languages, and don't share the same distribution
> patterns as spoken languages (eg. American sign language has some
> relatedness to French sign language, and both are unrelated to
> British Sign Language)
Not to mention Plains Indian sign language, which covered numerous different tribal groups with very different languages. This is more relevant to this discussion, as _widespread_ deafness-related sign languages are a recent innovation, only a couple centuries old.
> but it isn't too
> difficult to imagine situations in which hearing children fail to
> learn their parents language and improvise a spoken language between
> themselves. Has this happened? Most linguists think it probably has
> not.
The Brithini say otherwise.
> Gloranthan relevance: surely Glorantha has sign languages? And as
> surely glorantha has myths for them too. Are there any deaf/ sign
> language using folk there who could write one up?
Supposedly, modern spoken Brithini is descended from its written form, not its Logical spoken form, as Zzabur had a nasty problem with a magical curse of silence at the "time" of the Unity Battle. The curse was broken during this event. Thereafter, a spoken form was re-created from the written form (much like Modern Hebrew was from the liturgical Hebrew, yielding a language with a severe lack of expletives to delete, or more importantly use after blowing a serve on the tennis court).
Also, I expect that Humakti Sword Speech includes a large signing component, both for military use and to accommodate those with geases against speaking during various periods.
I would be surprised if Pamaltela wasn't loaded with signers, as the low population density is ideal for generating new languages. These people would still need a way to communicate without having to try to re-establish their ancestral tongues whenever they meet.
Finally, I would think that Vulture Country has a lot of signing. Not only between different bands of Waha people (hard to call them Praxians in the far regions of their migration) or between them and Oasis folk, but also for those occasions that "Praxians" and Pentans meet without immediately killing each other.
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