You may already be familiar with the legendary Alan B. Crammatte (1911-1996) from his work as a teacher, author, and leader in the American Deaf community, who called him “ABC.”
He was both interviewer and subject in several archival films which Gallaudet has digitized and made available on the Web.
The purpose of this post not his illustrious career, but an enterprising project of the young Crammatte, just before he graduated from Gallaudet in 1932:
During his last semester, Crammatte was either enrolled or serving as a teaching assistant in Irving S. Fusfield‘s English class. This beloved hearing professor seemed to understand the importance of sign language, and his lecture notes included the statement:
“Speech work [is] acquired at the expense of other content subjects.”
In 1937, Dr. Fusfield also served on a committee for the Conference of Executives of American Schools for the Deaf to abolish the terms “deaf-mute, deaf and dumb, semi-mute, semi-deaf, and mute,” in favor of “Deaf” or “Hard of Hearing”. Significant to interpreters, the 1970 (no. 1) issue of VIEWS reported that he had recently become a member of RID. His name sign looks like FINLAND, presumably for the dimple on his chin:
In 1932, Dr. Fusfield’s class participated in a two-part study which would have supported his ongoing research to understand how Deaf people think. Working backwards, Part 2 gave a brief sentence in English, and recorded how different students rendered it into signs. Here is the sentence in Fusfield’s handwriting:
Here’s the transcription:
| Exercise |
| How the deaf mind works in ideation. |
| The sentence: “The cook’s dress is beginning to show signs of age.” Recorded by the observer as different individuals sign it. |
The same file also includes a bundle of paper slips that recorded each student’s response. The experiment had two prompts: the one above was probably for the second one that elicited signed renditions. In Part 1, the experimenter gave a signed prompt (which unfortunately was not recorded or no longer exists), and requested an English translation. These data cards were labeled as belonging to Crammatte, and the Gallaudet Archivist confirmed they are indeed in his handwriting.
Here are two examples of student translations. This one from student Achille Buzzelli offered two different responses for the Signs-to-English prompt:
“A window of the farmhouse needs cleaning”
(or)
“The windows of the farmhouse must be cleaned”
For the English-to-Signs exercise, Buzzelli signed
HER COOK DRESS START SHOW SIGNS OLD
Another student, David A. Davidowitz, gave two options for each response. Crammatte’s field notes include a transcription key that words in (parenthesis) had been fingerspelled. The image below indicates the researcher coded the second response as “conversational” signs, or what we would understand as having more ASL features:
Signs to English:
“The old country or farm house’s windows need cleaning ^ or must be cleaned”
English to Signs:
(First attempt) THE COOK DRESS (IS) SHOW SIGNS (OF) OLD
COOK DRESS APPARENTLY OLD (conversational)
All of these responses were copied onto a master data sheet, again in Crammatte’s handwriting. Here is an example of the signed data:
| O’Brian – HER COOK ER DRESS START SHOW OLD. |
| Davis – DRESS HER COOK ER START SHOW ^ SIGNS YEARS. |
| Gamblin – COOK HER DRESS START SHOW OLD WORN-OUT. |
And here is an excerpt from the English translations:
Like Stokoe would observe 30 years later, the study revealed that there were different varieties of signing, and part of that continuum was very different from English. I am not sure what Crammatte’s role in this experiment was, but it is clear that Dr. Fusfield kept all of his original data for decades.
More details may be waiting to be discovered, but at this writing we can be confident that these materials represent the earliest known systematic analysis of English–Sign translation by a Deaf researcher. Thank you, Alan Benn Crammatte for leaving a record of thorough and careful work, and most of all for being our A-B-C at the beginning of a rich linguistic and entrepreneurial legacy.
Oh, and Happy 106th Birthday from your many grateful heirs.