title: Earthworm

text: It has a central and peripheral nervous system. Its central nervous system consists of two ganglia above the mouth, one on either side, connected to a nerve running along its length to motor neurons and sensory cells in each segment. Large numbers of chemoreceptors concentrate near its mouth.


title: Earthworm

text: Circumferential and longitudinal muscles edging each segment let the worm move. Similar sets of muscles line the gut, and their actions move digesting food toward the worm's anus.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms are hermaphrodites: each carries male and female reproductive organs. When mating, two individual earthworms will exchange sperm and fertilize each other's eggs. Each individual has both male and female genital pores. As invertebrates, they lack a true skeleton, but they maintain their structure with fluid-filled coelom chambers that function as a hydrostatic skeleton.


title: Earthworm

text: "Earthworm" is the common name for the largest members of Oligochaeta (which is a class or subclass depending on the author). In classical systems, they were in the order Opisthopora since the male pores opened posterior to the female pores, although the internal male segments are anterior to the female. Theoretical cladistic studies have placed them in the suborder Lumbricina of the order Haplotaxida, but this may soon change. Folk names for the earthworm include "dew-worm", "rainworm", "nightcrawler", and "angleworm" (from its use as fishing bait).


title: Earthworm

text: Larger terrestrial earthworms are also called megadriles (translates to "big worms") as opposed to the microdriles ("small worms") in the semiaquatic families Tubificidae, Lumbricidae, and Enchytraeidae. The megadriles are characterized by a distinct clitellum (more extensive than that of microdriles) and a vascular system with true capillaries.


title: Earthworm

text: Depending on the species, an adult earthworm can be from long and wide to long and over wide, but the typical "Lumbricus terrestris" grows to about long. Probably the longest worm on confirmed records is "Amynthas mekongianus" that extends up to 3 m (10 ft) in the mud along the banks of the 4,350 km (2,703 mi) Mekong River in Southeast Asia.


title: Earthworm

text: From front to back, the basic shape of the earthworm is a cylindrical tube-in-a-tube, divided into a series of segments (called metameres) that compartmentalize the body. Furrows are generally externally visible on the body demarking the segments; dorsal pores and nephridiopores exude a fluid that moistens and protects the worm's surface, allowing it to breathe. Except for the mouth and anal segments, each segment carries bristlelike hairs called lateral setae used to anchor parts of the body during movement; species may have four pairs of setae on each segment or more than eight sometimes forming a complete circle of setae per segment. Special ventral setae are used to anchor mating earthworms by their penetration into the bodies of their mates.


title: Earthworm

text: Generally, within a species, the number of segments found is consistent across specimens, and individuals are born with the number of segments they will have throughout their lives. The first body segment (segment number 1) features both the earthworm's mouth and, overhanging the mouth, a fleshy lobe called the prostomium, which seals the entrance when the worm is at rest, but is also used to feel and chemically sense the worm's surroundings. Some species of earthworm can even use the prehensile prostomium to grab and drag items such as grasses and leaves into their burrow.


title: Earthworm

text: An adult earthworm develops a belt-shaped glandular swelling, called the clitellum, which covers several segments toward the front part of the animal. This is part of the reproductive system and produces egg capsules. The posterior is most commonly cylindrical like the rest of the body, but depending on the species, it may also be quadrangular, octagonal, trapezoidal, or flattened. The last segment is called the periproct; the earthworm's anus, a short vertical slit, is found on this segment.


title: Earthworm

text: The exterior of an individual segment is a thin cuticle over the skin, commonly pigmented red to brown, which has specialized cells that secrete mucus over the cuticle to keep the body moist and ease movement through the soil. Under the skin is a layer of nerve tissue, and two layers of muscles—a thin outer layer of circular muscle, and a much thicker inner layer of longitudinal muscle. Interior to the muscle layer is a fluid-filled chamber called a coelom that by its pressurization provides structure to the worm's boneless body. The segments are separated from each other by septa (the plural of "septum") which are perforated transverse walls, allowing the coelomic fluid to pass between segments. A pair of structures called nephrostomes are located at the back of each septum; a nephric tubule leads from each nephrostome through the septum and into the following segment. This tubule then leads to the main body fluid filtering organ, the nephridium or metanephridium, which removes metabolic waste from the coelomic fluid and expels it through pores called nephridiopores on the worm's sides; usually, two nephridia (sometimes more) are found in most segments. At the centre of a worm is the digestive tract, which runs straight through from mouth to anus without coiling, and is flanked above and below by blood vessels (the dorsal blood vessel and the ventral blood vessel as well as a subneural blood vessel) and the ventral nerve cord, and is surrounded in each segment by a pair of pallial blood vessels that connect the dorsal to the subneural blood vessels.


title: Earthworm

text: Many earthworms can eject coelomic fluid through pores in the back in response to stress; the Australian "Didymogaster sylvaticus" (known as the "blue squirter earthworm") can squirt fluid as high as .


title: Earthworm

text: The CNS consists of a bilobed brain (cerebral ganglia, or supra-pharyngeal ganglion), sub-pharyngeal ganglia, circum-pharyngeal connectives and a ventral nerve cord.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms' brains consist of a pair of pear-shaped cerebral ganglia. These are located in the dorsal side of the alimentary canal in the third segment, in a groove between the buccal cavity and pharynx.


title: Earthworm

text: A pair of circum-pharyngeal connectives from the brain encircle the pharynx and then connect with a pair of sub-pharyngeal ganglia located below the pharynx in the fourth segment. This arrangement means the brain, sub-pharyngeal ganglia and the circum-pharyngeal connectives form a nerve ring around the pharynx.


title: Earthworm

text: The ventral nerve cord (formed by nerve cells and nerve fibers) begins at the sub-pharyngeal ganglia and extends below the alimentary canal to the most posterior body segment. The ventral nerve cord has a swelling, or ganglion, in each segment, i.e. a segmental ganglion, which occurs from the fifth to the last segment of the body. There are also three giant axons, one medial giant axon (MGA) and two lateral giant axons (LGAs) on the mid-dorsal side of the ventral nerve cord. The MGA is 0.07 mm in diameter and transmits in an anterior-posterior direction at a rate of 32.2 m/s. The LGAs are slightly narrower at 0.05 mm in diameter and transmit in a posterior-anterior direction at 12.6 m/s. The two LGAs are connected at regular intervals along the body and are therefore considered one giant axon.


title: Earthworm

text: The sympathetic nervous system consists of nerve plexuses in the epidermis and alimentary canal. (A plexus is a web of connected nerve cells.) The nerves that run along the body wall pass between the outer circular and inner longitudinal muscle layers of the wall. They give off branches that form the intermuscular plexus and the subepidermal plexus. These nerves connect with the cricopharyngeal connective.


title: Earthworm

text: On the surface, crawling speed varies both within and among individuals. Earthworms crawl faster primarily by taking longer "strides" and a greater frequency of strides. Larger "Lumbricus terrestris" worms crawl at a greater absolute speed than smaller worms. They achieve this by taking slightly longer strides but with slightly lower stride frequencies.


title: Earthworm

text: Touching an earthworm, which causes a "pressure" response as well as (often) a response to the dehydrating quality of the salt on human skin (toxic to earthworms), stimulates the subepidermal nerve plexus which connects to the intermuscular plexus and causes the longitudinal muscles to contract. This causes the writhing movements observed when a human picks up an earthworm. This behaviour is a reflex and does not require the CNS; it occurs even if the nerve cord is removed. Each segment of the earthworm has its own nerve plexus. The plexus of one segment is not connected directly to that of adjacent segments. The nerve cord is required to connect the nervous systems of the segments.


title: Earthworm

text: The giant axons carry the fastest signals along the nerve cord. These are emergency signals that initiate reflex escape behaviours. The larger dorsal giant axon conducts signals the fastest, from the rear to the front of the animal. If the rear of the worm is touched, a signal is rapidly sent forwards causing the longitudinal muscles in each segment to contract. This causes the worm to shorten very quickly as an attempt to escape from a predator or other potential threat. The two medial giant axons connect with each other and send signals from the front to the rear. Stimulation of these causes the earthworm to very quickly retreat (perhaps contracting into its burrow to escape a bird).


title: Earthworm

text: The presence of a nervous system is essential for an animal to be able to experience nociception or pain. However, other physiological capacities are also required such as opioid sensitivity and central modulation of responses by analgesics. Enkephalin and α-endorphin-like substances have been found in earthworms. Injections of naloxone (an opioid antagonist) inhibit the escape responses of earthworms. This indicates that opioid substances play a role in sensory modulation, similar to that found in many vertebrates.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms do not have eyes (although some worms do); however, they do have specialized photosensitive cells called "light cells of Hess". These photoreceptor cells have a central intracellular cavity (phaosome) filled with microvilli. As well as the microvilli, there are several sensory cilia in the phaosome which are structurally independent of the microvilli. The photoreceptors are distributed in most parts of the epidermis but are more concentrated on the back and sides of the worm. A relatively small number occurs on the ventral surface of the first segment. They are most numerous in the prostomium and reduce in density in the first three segments; they are very few in number past the third segment.


title: Earthworm

text: These receptors are abundant and distributed all over the epidermis. Each receptor shows a slightly elevated cuticle which covers a group of tall, slender and columnar receptor cells. These cells bear small hairlike processes at their outer ends and their inner ends are connected with nerve fibres. The epidermal receptors are tactile in function. They are also concerned with changes in temperature and respond to chemical stimuli. Earthworms are extremely sensitive to touch and mechanical vibration.


title: Earthworm

text: These receptors are located only in the epithelium of the buccal chamber. These receptors are gustatory and olfactory (related to taste and smell). They also respond to chemical stimuli. (Chemoreceptor)


title: Earthworm

text: The gut of the earthworm is a straight tube that extends from the worm's mouth to its anus. It is differentiated into an alimentary canal and associated glands which are embedded in the wall of the alimentary canal itself. The alimentary canal consists of a mouth, buccal cavity (generally running through the first one or two segments of the earthworm), pharynx (running generally about four segments in length), esophagus, crop, gizzard (usually), and intestine.


title: Earthworm

text: Food enters at the mouth. The pharynx acts as a suction pump; its muscular walls draw in food. In the pharynx, the pharyngeal glands secrete mucus. Food moves into the esophagus, where calcium (from the blood and ingested from previous meals) is pumped in to maintain proper blood calcium levels in the blood and food pH. From there the food passes into the crop and gizzard. In the gizzard, strong muscular contractions grind the food with the help of mineral particles ingested along with the food. Once through the gizzard, food continues through the intestine for digestion. The intestine secretes pepsin to digest proteins, amylase to digest polysaccharides, cellulase to digest cellulose, and lipase to digest fats. Earthworms use, in addition to the digestive proteins, a class of surface active compounds called drilodefensins, which help digest plant material. Instead of being coiled like a mammalian intestine, in an earthworm's intestine a large mid-dorsal, tongue-like fold is present, called typhlosole which increases surface area to increase nutrient absorption by having many folds running along its length. The intestine has its own pair of muscle layers like the body, but in reverse order—an inner circular layer within an outer longitudinal layer.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms have a dual circulatory system in which both the coelomic fluid and a closed circulatory system carry the food, waste, and respiratory gases. The closed circulatory system has five main blood vessels: the dorsal (top) vessel, which runs above the digestive tract; the ventral (bottom) vessel, which runs below the digestive tract; the subneural vessel, which runs below the ventral nerve cord; and two lateroneural vessels on either side of the nerve cord.


title: Earthworm

text: The dorsal vessel is mainly a collecting structure in the intestinal region. It receives a pair commissural and dorsal intestines in each segment. The ventral vessel branches off to a pair of ventro-tegumentaries and ventro-intestinals in each segment. The subneural vessel also gives out a pair of commissurals running along the posterior surface of the septum.


title: Earthworm

text: The pumping action on the dorsal vessel moves the blood forward, while the other four longitudinal vessels carry the blood rearward. In segments seven through eleven, a pair of aortic arches ring the coelom and acts as hearts, pumping the blood to the ventral vessel that acts as the aorta. The blood consists of ameboid cells and haemoglobin dissolved in the plasma. The second circulatory system derives from the cells of the digestive system that line the coelom. As the digestive cells become full, they release non-living cells of fat into the fluid-filled coelom, where they float freely but can pass through the walls separating each segment, moving food to other parts and assist in wound healing.


title: Earthworm

text: The excretory system contains a pair of nephridia in every segment, except for the first three and the last ones. The three types of nephridia are: integumentary, septal, and pharyngeal. The integumentary nephridia lie attached to the inner side of the body wall in all segments except the first two. The septal nephridia are attached to both sides of the septa behind the 15th segment. The pharyngeal nephridia are attached to the fourth, fifth and sixth segments. The waste in the coelom fluid from a forward segment is drawn in by the beating of cilia of the nephrostome. From there it is carried through the septum (wall) via a tube which forms a series of loops entwined by blood capillaries that also transfer waste into the tubule of the nephrostome. The excretory wastes are then finally discharged through a pore on the worm's side.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms have no special respiratory organs. Gases are exchanged through the moist skin and capillaries, where the oxygen is picked up by the haemoglobin dissolved in the blood plasma and carbon dioxide is released. Water, as well as salts, can also be moved through the skin by active transport.


title: Earthworm

text: At birth, earthworms emerge small but fully formed, lacking only their sex structures which develop in about 60 to 90 days. They attain full size in about one year. Scientists predict that the average lifespan under field conditions is four to eight years, while most garden varieties live only one to two years.


title: Earthworm

text: Several common earthworm species are mostly parthenogenetic, meaning that growth and development of embryos happens without fertilization.


title: Earthworm

text: Among lumbricid earthworms, parthenogenesis arose from sexual relatives many times. Parthenogenesis in some "Aporrectodea trapezoides" lineages arose 6.4 to 1.1 million years ago from sexual ancestors. A few species exhibit pseudogamous parthogenesis, meaning that mating is necessary to stimulate reproduction, even though no male genetic material passes to the offspring.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworm mating occurs on the surface, most often at night. Earthworms are hermaphrodites; that is, they have both male and female sexual organs. The sexual organs are located in segments 9 to 15. Earthworms have one or two pairs of testes contained within sacs. The two or four pairs of seminal vesicles produce, store and release the sperm via the male pores. Ovaries and oviducts in segment 13 release eggs via female pores on segment 14, while sperm is expelled from segment 15. One or more pairs of spermathecae are present in segments 9 and 10 (depending on the species) which are internal sacs that receive and store sperm from the other worm during copulation. As a result, segment 15 of one worm exudes sperm into segments 9 and 10 with its storage vesicles of its mate. Some species use external spermatophores for sperm transfer.


title: Earthworm

text: In "Hormogaster samnitica" and "Hormogaster elisae" transcriptome DNA libraries were sequenced and two sex pheromones, Attractin and Temptin, were detected in all tissue samples of both species. Sex pheromones are probably important in earthworms because they live in an environment where chemical signaling may play a crucial role in attracting a partner and in facilitating outcrossing. Outcrossing would provide the benefit of masking the expression of deleterious recessive mutations in progeny (see Complementation).


title: Earthworm

text: Copulation and reproduction are separate processes in earthworms. The mating pair overlap front ends ventrally and each exchanges sperm with the other. The clitellum becomes very reddish to pinkish in colour. Sometime after copulation, long after the worms have separated, the clitellum (behind the spermathecae) secretes material which forms a ring around the worm. The worm then backs out of the ring, and as it does so, it injects its own eggs and the other worm's sperm into it. Thus each worm becomes the genetic father of some of their offspring (due to its own sperm transferred to other earthworm) and the genetic mother (offsprings from its own egg cells) of the rest. As the worm slips out of the ring, the ends of the cocoon seal to form a vaguely onion-shaped incubator (cocoon) in which the embryonic worms develop. Hence fertilization is external. The cocoon is then deposited in the soil. After three weeks, 2 to 20 offspring hatch with an average of 4. Development is direct i.e. without formation of any larva.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms travel underground by means of waves of muscular contractions which alternately shorten and lengthen the body (peristalsis). The shortened part is anchored to the surrounding soil by tiny clawlike bristles (setae) set along its segmented length. In all the body segments except the first, last and clitellum, there is a ring of S-shaped setae embedded in the epidermal pit of each segment (perichaetine). The whole burrowing process is aided by the secretion of lubricating mucus. As a result of their movement through their lubricated tunnels, worms can make gurgling noises underground when disturbed. Earthworms move through soil by expanding crevices with force; when forces are measured according to body weight, hatchlings can push 500 times their own body weight whereas large adults can push only 10 times their own body weight.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms have the ability to regenerate lost segments, but this ability varies between species and depends on the extent of the damage. Stephenson (1930) devoted a chapter of his monograph to this topic, while G. E. Gates spent 20 years studying regeneration in a variety of species, but "because little interest was shown", Gates (1972) published only a few of his findings that, nevertheless, show it is theoretically possible to grow two whole worms from a bisected specimen in certain species.


title: Earthworm

text: Within the world of taxonomy, the stable 'Classical System' of Michaelsen (1900) and Stephenson (1930) was gradually eroded by the controversy over how to classify earthworms, such that Fender and McKey-Fender (1990) went so far as to say, "The family-level classification of the megascolecid earthworms is in chaos." Over the years, many scientists have developed their own classification systems for earthworms, which led to confusion, and these systems have been and still continue to be revised and updated. The classification system used here which was developed by Blakemore (2000), is a modern reversion to the Classical System that is historically proven and widely accepted.


title: Earthworm

text: Categorization of a megadrile earthworm into one of its taxonomic families under suborders Lumbricina and Moniligastrida is based on such features as the makeup of the clitellum, the location and disposition of the sex features (pores, prostatic glands, etc.), number of gizzards, and body shape. Currently, over 6,000 species of terrestrial earthworms are named, as provided in a species name database, but the number of synonyms is unknown.


title: Earthworm

text: From a total of around 7,000 species, only about 150 species are widely distributed around the world. These are the peregrine or cosmopolitan earthworms.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms are classified into three main ecophysiological categories: (1) leaf litter- or compost-dwelling worms that are nonburrowing, live at the soil-litter interface and eat decomposing organic matter (epigeic) e.g. "Eisenia fetida"; (2) topsoil- or subsoil-dwelling worms that feed (on soil), burrow and cast within the soil, creating horizontal burrows in upper 10–30  cm of soil (endogeic); and (3) worms that construct permanent deep vertical burrows which they use to visit the surface to obtain plant material for food, such as leaves (anecic, meaning "reaching up"), e.g. "Lumbricus terrestris".


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworm populations depend on both physical and chemical properties of the soil, such as temperature, moisture, pH, salts, aeration, and texture, as well as available food, and the ability of the species to reproduce and disperse. One of the most important environmental factors is pH, but earthworms vary in their preferences. Most favour neutral to slightly acidic soils. "Lumbricus terrestris" is still present in a pH of 5.4, "Dendrobaena octaedra" at a pH of 4.3 and some Megascolecidae are present in extremely acidic humic soils. Soil pH may also influence the numbers of worms that go into diapause. The more acidic the soil, the sooner worms go into diapause, and remain in diapause the longest time at a pH of 6.4.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms are preyed upon by many species of birds (e.g. robins, starlings, thrushes, gulls, crows), snakes, wood turtles, mammals (e.g. bears, boars, foxes, hedgehogs, pigs, moles) and invertebrates (e.g. ants, flatworms, ground beetles and other beetles, snails, spiders, and slugs). Earthworms have many internal parasites, including protozoa, platyhelminthes, and nematodes; they can be found in the worms' blood, seminal vesicles, coelom, or intestine, or in their cocoons.


title: Earthworm

text: Nitrogenous fertilizers tend to create acidic conditions, which are fatal to the worms, and dead specimens are often found on the surface following the application of substances such as DDT, lime sulphur, and lead arsenate. In Australia, changes in farming practices such as the application of superphosphates on pastures and a switch from pastoral farming to arable farming had a devastating effect on populations of the giant Gippsland earthworm, leading to their classification as a protected species. Globally, certain earthworms populations have been devastated by deviation from organic production and the spraying of synthetic fertilizers and biocides, with at least three species now listed as extinct but many more endangered.


title: Earthworm

text: This earthworm activity aerates and mixes the soil, and is conducive to mineralization of nutrients and their uptake by vegetation. Certain species of earthworm come to the surface and graze on the higher concentrations of organic matter present there, mixing it with the mineral soil. Because a high level of organic matter mixing is associated with soil fertility, an abundance of earthworms is generally considered beneficial by farmers and gardeners. As long ago as 1881 Charles Darwin wrote: "It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures."


title: Earthworm

text: Also, while, as the name suggests, the main habitat of earthworms is in soil, they are not restricted to this habitat. The brandling worm "Eisenia fetida" lives in decaying plant matter and manure. "Arctiostrotus vancouverensis" from Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula is generally found in decaying conifer logs. "Aporrectodea limicola", "Sparganophilus" spp., and several others are found in mud in streams. Some species are arboreal, some aquatic and some euryhaline (salt-water tolerant) and littoral (living on the sea-shore, e.g. "Pontodrilus litoralis"). Even in the soil species, special habitats, such as soils derived from serpentine, have an earthworm fauna of their own.


title: Earthworm

text: Vermicomposting of organic "wastes" and addition of this organic matter to the soil, preferably as a surface mulch, will provide several species of earthworms with their food and nutrient requirements, and will create the optimum conditions of temperature and moisture that will stimulate their activity.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms are environmental indicators of soil health. Earthworms feed on the decaying matter in the soil and analyzing the contents of their digestive tracts gives insight into the overall condition of the soil. The earthworm gut accumulates chemicals, including heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury, zinc, and copper. The population size of the earthworm indicates the quality of the soil as healthy soil would contain a larger number of earthworms.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms accelerate nutrient cycling in the soil-plant system through fragmentation & mixing of plant debris – physical grinding & chemical digestion. The earthworm's existence cannot be taken for granted. Dr. W. E. Shewell-Cooper observed "tremendous numerical differences between adjacent gardens", and worm populations are affected by a host of environmental factors, many of which can be influenced by good management practices on the part of the gardener or farmer.


title: Earthworm

text: Darwin estimated that arable land contains up to (of worms, but more recent research has produced figures suggesting that even poor soil may support , whilst rich fertile farmland may have up to , meaning that the weight of earthworms beneath a farmer's soil could be greater than that of the livestock upon its surface. Richly organic topsoil populations of earthworms are much higher – averaging and up to 400 g2 – such that, for the 7 billion of us, each person alive today has support of 7 million earthworms.


title: Earthworm

text: The ability to break down organic materials and excrete concentrated nutrients makes the earthworm a functional contributor in restoration projects. In response to ecosystem disturbances, some sites have utilized earthworms to prepare soil for the return of native flora. Research from the Station d'écologie Tropicale de Lamto asserts that the earthworms positively influence the rate of macroaggregate formation, an important feature for soil structure. The stability of aggregates in response to water was also found to be improved when constructed by earthworms.


title: Earthworm

text: Though not fully quantified yet, Greenhouse gas emissions of earthworms likely contribute to global warming, especially since top-dwelling earthworms increase the speed of carbon cycles and have been spread by humans into many new geographies.


title: Earthworm

text: Various species of worms are used in vermiculture, the practice of feeding organic waste to earthworms to decompose food waste. These are usually "Eisenia fetida" (or its close relative "Eisenia andrei") or the Brandling worm, commonly known as the tiger worm or red wiggler. They are distinct from soil-dwelling earthworms. In the tropics, the African nightcrawler "Eudrilus eugeniae" and the Indian blue "Perionyx excavatus" are used.


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms are sold all over the world; the market is sizable. According to Doug Collicutt, "In 1980, 370 million worms were exported from Canada, with a Canadian export value of $13 million and an American retail value of $54 million."


title: Earthworm

text: Earthworms provide an excellent source of protein for fish, fowl and pigs but were also used traditionally for human consumption. "Noke" is a culinary term used by the Māori of New Zealand, and refers to earthworms which are considered delicacies for their chiefs.


title: Jason Bateman filmography

text: Jason Bateman is an American actor, director and producer. The following are his roles in film, television and video games.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Mr. Miyagi (June 9, 1925 – November 15, 2011) is a fictional character in the original films (1984-1994) of the "Karate Kid" franchise. He is a karate master (portrayed by Pat Morita) who mentors Daniel LaRusso and Julie Pierce. Although he died in 2011, Miyagi is frequently referenced in the series "Cobra Kai" (2018–present), which is itself thematically structured via "The Miyagi-Verse" (characters who knew Mr. Miyagi).


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Mr. Miyagi's given name is inconsistent in the series. In "The Karate Kid", the name Hideo Miyagi, which translates to "hero" Miyagi and is the real given name of Pat Morita's brother, can be seen stamped in reverse on his World War II dog tags, being used as a keychain for the car he gives Daniel as a birthday present. As written in Japanese characters in "The Karate Kid Part II", his name is 宮城成義 ("Miyagi Nariyoshi"), which translates as Nariyoshi Miyagi, which is also seen on his gravestone in "Cobra Kai (season 1), Episode 5". He is called Keisuke Miyagi at the start of "The Next Karate Kid".


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Mr. Miyagi's ancestor was Shimpo Miyagi, who in 1625 accidentally landed in China. He returned to Okinawa many years later with a wife, children, and the art of Karate. Once back in Okinawa, he developed the style of Karate specific to the Miyagi family.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Mr. Miyagi was born on June 9, 1925, in Tomi Village Okinawa, Japan. He had a job working for his best friend Sato's father, who was the richest man in the village. In addition, he learned karate and fishing from his father Miyagi Chōjun, a fisherman. Breaking family tradition, his father also taught karate to Sato (as Karate was traditionally only passed down from father to son).


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Their friendship soured when they were teenagers, however, because Miyagi fell in love with Yukie, a young woman from one of the poorest families in the village. However, her marriage had already been arranged to Sato. Miyagi rebelled against convention and declared his love for Yukie in a public speech. Dishonored by their love, Sato challenged Miyagi to a fight to the death. Miyagi was not only a sensei he became a Japanese staff sergeant in World War II


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Rather than fight his friend, Miyagi secretly left Okinawa, and emigrated to Hawaii where he worked as a farm laborer in the Hawaiian cane fields. While working in the cane fields, he met a young woman who would become his wife.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: He and his wife were later interned in the Manzanar Japanese-American internment camp at the onset of World War II. During this time, Miyagi joined the U.S. Army and received the Medal of Honor. He was a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, historically the most highly decorated regiment, for its size, of the United States Armed Forces, including 21 Medal of Honor recipients (at the time of the "Karate Kid" film series, there was only one regiment member awarded the Medal of Honor—Sadao S. Munemori, who received it posthumously in 1946; 20 other regiment members were upgraded from the Distinguished Service Cross in 2000). During this time, his commanding officer Lieutenant Jack Pierce saved his life. As a way of saying "thank you," Miyagi taught him karate (and Pierce taught him ballroom dancing).


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: While still fighting overseas, he received a telegram informing him that on November 2, 1944, his wife and newborn child (who were still interned at Manzanar) died due to "complications arising from childbirth." Forty years later, when telling the story to Daniel in "The Karate Kid", he says that despite being the "Land of the Free" and "Home of the Brave," they died because there were no doctors there to help her.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Listed below are the medals and service awards displayed on Miyagi's Staff Sergeant's uniform in the first film.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Miyagi never fully recovered from the loss of his wife and child. At some point prior to 1984, he became an apartment complex maintenance man, and built a traditional Japanese garden in the back of his home (which is shown in the opening sequence of "Cobra Kai (season 2)," Episode 6) where he lived alone. He also restored classic cars.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: In 1984, Miyagi (who is now 59 years old) is working as a maintenance man at the South Seas apartment complex Daniel LaRusso and his mother have just moved into. When Daniel throws away his bike after it is damaged in an ambush by Johnny Lawrence (who is jealous that Daniel is dating Ali) and other members of "Cobra Kai", Miyagi repairs and returns it. He later rescues Daniel after he is beaten up by the same bullies during a Halloween party, fending off all the attackers easily. When Daniel realizes that Miyagi saved him, he asks to be taught karate. Miyagi initially declines, wanting instead to prevent the bullying entirely. However, a meeting with the arrogant and merciless John Kreese – a former Special Forces veteran running the Cobra Kai dojo and the bullies' sensei – proves largely futile.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Kreese finally consents to a cessation of hostilities until the time of The All-Valley Karate tournament, where Daniel and the bullying Cobra Kai students will compete. For his part, Miyagi agrees to teach Daniel. Miyagi starts Daniel's training with several seemingly non-karate-related house chores, albeit with specific rhythmic patterns: the first day of training sees Daniel waxing Miyagi's various cars; on the second, he sands the wooden floors of Miyagi's house; on the third, he paints a fence with vertical strokes; on the fourth, he paints Miyagi's house with horizontal strokes. Not understanding his mentor's methods, a frustrated Daniel gets upset and threatens to leave, but Miyagi shows him that the chores were in fact training Daniel to block attacks through muscle memory. Miyagi then begins training Daniel in earnest, and the two develop a deep friendship. One night, Daniel comes upon Miyagi drunkenly lamenting the death of both his wife and newborn son during childbirth at Manzanar while he was serving with the 442nd Infantry Regiment in Europe during World War II (where he received the Medal of Honor). Miyagi's karate teachings also include important life lessons such as personal balance, reflected in the principle that martial arts training is as much about training the spirit as it is about physical techniques.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Miyagi accompanies Daniel to the All Valley, where Daniel goes on to win in the finals with a proud Miyagi looking on.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: This film begins at the moment where the previous one ended. After the end of the All-Valley, Daniel and Miyagi discuss Daniel's future. While walking into the parking lot, Daniel meets his first fans and signs autographs, as Mr. Miyagi tells him it's time to meet his mother and Ali for dinner. However, they are distracted by an argument between Kreese in his students. As Kreese begins to physically attack Johnny Lawrence, Miyagi walks over to him and asks him to end the fight. When Kreese refuses, Miyagi intervenes and pulls Johnny out from Kreese's grip. Kreese then turns his anger towards Miyagi, who dodges his fists, leading Kreese to accidentally break the windows instead. Miyagi eventually subdues Kreese, behaving as if he will kill him. Instead, Miyagi "honks" his nose and throws him to the ground. He and Daniel then leave for dinner.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: In 1985, after Daniel's Senior Prom ends in disaster (he and Ali break up and Mr. Miyagi's car is damaged), Miyagi invites Daniel to stay with him rather than relocating with his mother. However, as they are building his room, a special letter comes in the mail informing Miyagi that his father Miyagi Chōjun (who lives in Okinawa) is dying. Mr. Miyagi then makes plans to go to Okinawa, and Daniel decides to use his college fund to join him.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: While traveling to Okinawa, Miyagi recounts to Daniel his unfortunate history with Sato and Yukie. Upon arriving, the two are greeted by Sato's nephew Chozen, who drives Miyagi and Daniel to a warehouse where Sato is waiting. Sato tells Miyagi that after Miyagi visits his father, they will fight to the death to restore Sato's honor. Once at the village, Miyagi and Daniel are welcomed by Yukie and her niece, Kumiko. They explain that Sato owns the village's land title and the villagers are forced to rent their property from him. Yukie also reveals that she never married because of her love for Miyagi.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Miyagi's father requests audience with both Sato and Miyagi and, just before dying, grips their hands together as a final — but ultimately unsuccessful — request that they put aside their differences. Sato, out of respect for his teacher, gives Miyagi three days to mourn before their fight. Daniel supports Miyagi through his grief and Miyagi shows Daniel the secret to his family's karate: a handheld drum that twists back and forth, illustrating a block-and-defense karate move called the "drum technique". After Chozen and his crew vandalize Miyagi's family property and attack Daniel, Miyagi decides to return to California before the situation worsens. Sato then shows up with bulldozers, threatening to destroy the village if Miyagi flees again. Now forced to comply, Miyagi gives in on the condition that Sato sign the land title over to the villagers regardless of the fight's outcome. Sato initially balks at the suggestion but agrees after Miyagi describes it as a "small price to pay" for his honor.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: On the day before their fight, a typhoon strikes the village, leaving Sato trapped under the ruins of a dojo toppled by the storm. Miyagi rescues Sato and they hide in a nearby pillbox with Chozen and other village folk. Daniel rushes into the storm after seeing Yuna stuck on top of a bell tower; Sato demands that his nephew help Daniel, but Chozen refuses. Sato assists Daniel himself, after which he disowns Chozen; Chozen runs out into the storm. The next morning, the bulldozers return — to help rebuild the village this time — while Sato hands over the village's land title and asks forgiveness from Miyagi, who accepts. They later attend an Obon festival at the castle near the village. A vengeful Chozen takes Kumiko hostage and challenges Daniel to fight to the death. Miyagi and others in the festival begin using handheld drums to motivate Daniel, inspiring him to subdue Chozen and rescue Kumiko. Daniel and Kumiko share a hug to celebrate their victory over Chozen while the villagers cheer for them and Miyagi looks upon Daniel proudly.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: This film begins in 1985 at the moment where the previous one ended. Miyagi and Daniel return to California and discover that the South Seas apartment complex has been sold and is being slated for development, leaving Daniel homeless and Miyagi unemployed. Miyagi offers Daniel the choice to stay at his house for a time. Daniel uses his college funding to help Miyagi open up a nursery shop for bonsai trees. Miyagi thanks Daniel by making him a partner in the new business.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Meanwhile, John Kreese is attempting to resurrect Cobra Kai and get revenge on Daniel and Miyagi with the help of his longtime friend, and co-founder of Cobra Kai, Terry Silver, who hires Mike Barnes, a vicious karate expert. Daniel chooses not to defend his title in the next competition, though he continues his training under Miyagi. Silver approaches them and claims that Kreese has died and requests forgiveness for Kreese's behavior. Barnes attempts to goad Daniel into entering the tournament by picking a fight with him that goes badly for Daniel until Miyagi intervenes and fends Barnes off. The two later find that their bonsai trees have been stolen and replaced with an application for the tournament.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: To save the store, Daniel and his newly befriended neighbor, Jessica Andrews, decide to collect and sell a valuable bonsai tree that Miyagi had brought back from Okinawa and planted halfway down an ocean basin. However, Barnes returns while Daniel and Jessica ascend uphill, holding them hostage until Daniel agrees to compete in the tournament. Barnes then snaps the tree in half. Daniel takes the broken bonsai tree to Miyagi; he performs triage on the bonsai while confessing that he sold his truck in order to obtain a new stock of trees and that he cannot train Daniel for the tournament.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Daniel accepts training under Silver's brutal conditions and ends up attacking a man at a nightclub by punching him and breaking his nose (due to Silver bribing the man into instigating a fight with Daniel and Jessica). Horrified at seeing what he has become, Daniel apologizes to Miyagi and Jessica soon afterward. When Daniel decides not to compete after all, Silver unveils his true agenda: Barnes and Kreese appear and attack Daniel. Miyagi intervenes and defends Daniel, agreeing to train him once more. The two repair their friendship and replant the now-healed bonsai tree. At the tournament, Daniel defeats Barnes and shares a hug with Miyagi to celebrate his second tournament victory, while Silver and Kreese speculate that Cobra Kai is finished for good.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Years later in 1994, Miyagi travels to Arlington National Cemetery for a commendation for Japanese-Americans who fought in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II. He meets Louisa Pierce, the widow of his commanding officer Jack Pierce, and they both listen to the opening speech given by Senator Daniel Inouye.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: When Louisa brings Miyagi to her home in Boston, he meets her granddaughter Julie Pierce. Julie has behavioral and anger problems stemming from both the loss of her parents in an automobile accident, and frequent bullying at school by a school security fraternity called the Alpha Elite. Miyagi invites Louisa to stay in his house in Los Angeles to relax, and he himself stays in Boston to act as Julie's caretaker. Julie's issues cause friction at school and with Miyagi; he watches as she attempts to leave and narrowly misses being struck by a car by managing to jump into a tiger crouch onto the hood. Julie explains that she learned rudimentary karate from her father, Jack's son; Jack had taught his son what he learned from Miyagi. After Julie is arrested during a two-week suspension from school, Miyagi uses the remainder of the time to take Julie to a Buddhist monastery. There, he teaches Julie the true ways of karate – balance, coordination, awareness, and respect for all life – and helps her overcome her anger issues. As Julie is preparing for her high school prom, Miyagi teaches her to dance and buys her a dress. While Julie attends the prom, Miyagi goes bowling with the Buddhist Monks. Things go awry when Julie and her date, Eric McGowen, come under siege by Colonel Dugan and the Alpha Elite. Eric's car is set on fire and Eric is saved by Julie and Miyagi. The fiasco ends when Miyagi challenges Colonel Dugan to a fight and easily defeats him.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Prior to his death, Mr. Miyagi becomes close with Daniel's wife Amanda and his daughter Samantha. In Season 1, Episode 5 of "Cobra Kai", Daniel visits Mr. Miyagi's grave. The gravestone reads: Nariyoshi Miyagi/June 9, 1925 - November 15, 2011. Mr. Miyagi left his house and all of his belongings to Daniel.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Although he died in 2011 (prior to the first season of "Cobra Kai" which began in the fall of 2017), Mr. Miyagi is either frequently referenced, or appears via archival footage throughout the series. Among other details, his gravestone lists him as a member of the famed Japanese-American 442nd Regiment along with a Combat Service Identification Badge and a Medal of Honor. Alongside the marker is a bonsai tree. Daniel regularly comes to visit the grave and trim the bonsai; he considers "a few months" to be a long time between visits.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Pat Morita gained particular fame during the 1980s for his work as Mr. Miyagi. In 2015, Mr. Miyagi was inducted into the Fictitious Athlete Hall of Fame in the Contributor Category.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: "The Karate Kid" screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen stated that Mr. Miyagi was named after Chōjun Miyagi, the founder of the Goju-ryu karate style, and that Fumio Demura was the inspiration for the character. The original preferred choice for the role was Toshiro Mifune, who had appeared in the Akira Kurosawa films "Rashomon" (1950), "Seven Samurai" (1954), and "The Hidden Fortress" (1958), but the actor did not speak English. Morita later auditioned for the role, but was initially rejected for the part due to his close association with stand-up comedy, and with the character Arnold from "Happy Days". Producer Jerry Weintraub in particular did not want Morita, as he saw him as a comedic actor. Morita eventually tested five times before Weintraub himself offered him the role, ultimately winning it because he grew a beard and patterned his accent after his uncle. After he was cast and although he had been using the name Pat for years, Weintraub suggested that he be billed with his given name to sound "more ethnic."


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: In the first film, in "The Karate Kid" (1984), he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a corresponding Golden Globe Award, for his role as the wise karate teacher Mr. Miyagi who taught bullied teenager Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) the art of Goju-ryu karate . He was recognized as Noriyuki "Pat" Morita at the 57th Academy Awards ceremony. He reprised the role two more times with Macchio in "The Karate Kid Part II" (1986) and"The Karate Kid Part III" (1989). In 1994, he starred in "The Next Karate Kid" with Hilary Swank (as bullied teenager Julie Pierce) instead of Macchio.


title: Mr. Miyagi

text: Although Morita died in 2005, Macchio wrote in an imaginary 2022 letter to him that (due to the 2018–present show "Cobra Kai") the "legacy of your work and contribution to the world in your portrayal of Mr. Miyagi shines brighter than ever." "Cobra Kai" itself is structured through the concept of the "Miyagi-verse," a phrase which refers to the fact that "anyone who knew Mr. Miyagi" is potentially capable of appearing in the series.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Urban Frank Meyer III (born July 10, 1964) is an American football coach. He served as the head coach of the Bowling Green Falcons from 2001 to 2002, the Utah Utes from 2003 to 2004, the Florida Gators from 2005 to 2010, and the Ohio State Buckeyes from 2012 to 2018. He retired from coaching in 2019 at the end of the Rose Bowl, and stayed at Ohio State as an assistant athletic director and was also an analyst for Fox Sports, appearing weekly on their "Big Noon Kickoff" pre-game show. In 2021, Meyer came out of retirement to take his first National Football League (NFL) job as head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, but was fired thirteen games into his first and only season.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Meyer was born in Toledo, Ohio, grew up in Ashtabula, Ohio, and attended the University of Cincinnati, where he played football as a defensive back. During his time at the University of Florida, he coached the Gators to two BCS National Championship Game victories, during the 2006 and 2008 seasons. Meyer's winning percentage through the conclusion of the 2009 season (.842) was the highest among all active coaches with a minimum of five full seasons at a Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) program.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Following his temporary retirement in 2011, he worked as a college football analyst for the television sports network ESPN before joining Ohio State to become their head coach. In 2014, he led the Buckeyes to their first Big Ten Conference title under his tenure as well as the program's eighth national championship. Meyer is one of four coaches, along with Pop Warner, Howard Jones, and Nick Saban, to win a major college football national championship at two universities.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Meyer was born on July 10, 1964, in Toledo, Ohio, and grew up in Ashtabula, Ohio. He graduated from Ashtabula's Saint John High School in 1982. Meyer was selected in the 13th round of the 1982 Major League Baseball Draft by the Atlanta Braves as a shortstop, where he spent two seasons playing minor league baseball in the Braves organization. He concurrently played defensive back at the University of Cincinnati before earning his bachelor's degree in psychology in 1986. During his undergraduate studies, Meyer was a member of Sigma Chi Fraternity (Zeta Psi Chapter).


title: Urban Meyer

text: Meyer went on to earn his master's degree in sports administration in 1988 from Ohio State University.


title: Urban Meyer

text: In 2004, Meyer was recognized as the college football coach of the year by both sportswriters (Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year) and television commentators (Home Depot Coach of the Year Award). He then had twenty years of college coaching experience, including nine as a head coach. His overall record as a head coach through the end of the 2009 season was 96–18, and he was 49–14 in conference play. His winning percentage (.842) through the end of the 2009 season ranked first nationally among active college football head coaches. By winning the 2009 BCS Championship game on January 8, 2009, Meyer moved past Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops into second place on the list of active Division I coaches ranked by winning percentage.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Meyer is Catholic, and on several occasions has referred to the head coaching position at the University of Notre Dame as his "dream job", leading to speculation that he would someday wish to coach there. However, according to a July 2009 newspaper report, Meyer insisted he would never leave Florida for Notre Dame. And when the employment status of Irish coach Charlie Weis came into question in November 2009, Meyer held a press conference to dispel rumors linking him to the possible opening, stating that he would remain at Florida for "as long as they'll have me". The University of Cincinnati's Brian Kelly was eventually hired for the job.


title: Urban Meyer

text: On December 26, 2009, Meyer announced he would resign following the team's bowl game against Cincinnati, citing health concerns. However, the following day Meyer announced that he would instead take an indefinite leave of absence, and he resumed his coaching duties in time for the beginning of the Gators' spring practice on March 17, 2010.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley announced Meyer's resignation on December 8, 2010, but stated that Meyer would remain as the head coach through the Gators' appearance in the Outback Bowl on January 1, 2011.


title: Urban Meyer

text: After playing as a defensive back and placeholder for the University of Cincinnati, Meyer spent one season interning as a defensive back coach at Saint Xavier High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1985 under the mentorship of legendary St. Xavier head coach Steve Rasso, where he met members of the Ohio State coaching staff. His first collegiate coaching position was a two-year stint as a graduate assistant coaching tight ends at Ohio State under head coach Earle Bruce. He spent the next thirteen years as an assistant—two at Illinois State, six at Colorado State, and five at Notre Dame.


title: Urban Meyer

text: One of the talents he coached at Colorado State was WR Greg Primus (3,096 yards and 17 TD in 3 years). He put up over 1,000 yards receiving from 1990 to 1992 under Meyer's tutelage. At Notre Dame, he coached WR Bobby Brown who would finish his career with 1,521 yards and 12 TD receiving. At Notre Dame in 2000, he coached WR David Givens who would later be drafted by the New England Patriots.


title: Urban Meyer

text: In 1990, while still the linebacker coach at Illinois State, he called Toledo head coach Nick Saban's home and spoke to Saban's wife to inquire if a position was available. Saban, however, never returned the call. Saban later said "I was so kind of caught up and busy with what I was doing, I never really followed up on that. Obviously, that was a huge mistake on my part because the guy's a fantastic coach."


title: Urban Meyer

text: In 2001, Meyer took his first head coaching job at Bowling Green. In his first season there, he engineered one of the greatest turnarounds in the NCAA football history, going 8–3 and capping off the season with a 56–21 victory over Bowling Green's rival, the University of Toledo Rockets. He also earned Mid-American Conference coach of the year honors. The next year, Bowling Green finished with a 9–3 record. After a 17–6 overall record, Meyer left for the University of Utah.


title: Urban Meyer

text: He helped turn around a team that had gone 2–9 in 2000 in large part due to QB Josh Harris, a player tailor-made for Meyer's scheme. In a part-time play in 2001, Harris passed for 1,022 yards with 9 touchdowns and ran for 600 yards and 8 touchdowns. The next year, he passed for 2,425 yards with 19 TD and ran for 737 yards with 20 TD. Meyer would later use such quarterbacks as Alex Smith and Tim Tebow in a fashion similar to the way Meyer used Harris.


title: Urban Meyer

text: After two seasons at Bowling Green, he took the job at Utah in 2003. In his first year there, Meyer was named the Mountain West Conference's Coach of the Year with a 10–2 record, the best ever for a coach's first season at Utah. He also earned honors as "The Sporting News" National Coach of the Year, the first Utes coach to do so. They also won the program's first outright conference championship since the 1957 team won the Skyline Conference title.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Meyer's success can be attributed to his unique offensive system, which is an offshoot of Bill Walsh's West Coast Offense, relying on short pass routes. Meyer's base offense spreads three receivers and puts the quarterback in shotgun formation. Then, he introduces motion in the backfield and turns it into an option attack, adding elements of the traditional run-oriented option offense.


title: Urban Meyer

text: In 2004, Meyer led the undefeated Utes to a Bowl Championship Series bid, something that had not been done by a team from a non-automatically qualifying BCS conference since the formation of the BCS in 1998. He remained at Utah long enough to coach the team to a Fiesta Bowl win over Pittsburgh, capping off the Utes' first perfect season (12–0) since 1930.


title: Urban Meyer

text: In 2003, Utes quarterback Alex Smith threw for 2,247 yards and 15 touchdowns and ran for 452 yards with five touchdowns. In 2004, he threw for 2,952 yards with 32 touchdowns and ran for 631 yards and 10 touchdowns. His production in Meyer's offensive scheme was a large reason why Smith was considered a first-round pick entering the 2005 NFL Draft.


title: Urban Meyer

text: In the wake of his accomplishments at Utah, both the University of Florida and the University of Notre Dame vied for his services. Meyer chose to become Florida's head coach for the 2005 season, signing a seven-year contract worth $14 million. He later signed a six-year contract extension with the Gators on June 7, 2007; the extended contract paid an average of $3.25 million per year. On August 3, 2009, Meyer received another contract extension that made him the SEC's highest-paid coach during the 2009 season; his 2009 extension was worth $24 million over six years. At the time of the latest contract extension, Meyer was the third highest-paid college football coach, behind only Pete Carroll and Charlie Weis.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Meyer has been criticized by some commentators because 31 of his players were arrested during his six years as the Gators' coach. The seriousness of the charges varied widely, from minor offenses such as possession of alcohol by a minor to the charges of possession of a concealed weapon, "aggravated stalking, domestic violence by strangulation, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and fraudulent use of credit cards". Many of the charges were ultimately dismissed.


title: Urban Meyer

text: In September 2010, after Gator receiver Chris Rainey was arrested for sending a threatening text message to a former girlfriend, Meyer stated that he was "real upset about that. After a while, enough's enough. If there's something that we can improve on, we're certainly looking into that. It's like if our graduation rate stinks then we gotta improve that. If there are other issues in a program, that's our job to get it better. It's people making stupid mistakes, that's something we gotta correct."


title: Urban Meyer

text: In 2005, his first season at Florida, Meyer's Gators team finished the season 9–3 (5–3 in the Southeastern Conference). The season included an undefeated record at home and a bowl victory against Iowa in the Outback Bowl in Tampa, Florida. The Gators would have faced LSU in the , but they lost to South Carolina and former Florida head coach Steve Spurrier in the SEC regular-season finale.


title: Urban Meyer

text: In 2006, Meyer coached the Gators to a 13–1 (8–1 in the SEC) record, with the one loss coming to the Auburn Tigers. After clinching the SEC East, the Gators won the on December 2 over Arkansas by a score of 38–28. The Gators defeated the Ohio State Buckeyes, 41–14, in the 2007 BCS National Championship Game to win the national championship. It was the first BCS bowl berth for the Gators since the Orange Bowl that capped off the 2001 campaign, and Florida's first national championship appearance and victory since winning the 1997 Sugar Bowl.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Meyer has been known for winning big games. In addition to his 5–1 record in bowl games at Florida, Meyer compiled a 16–2 record against three of the Gators' biggest opponents—Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida State.


title: Urban Meyer

text: The Gators managed a 9–3 regular season record in 2007, including blowout wins over rivals Tennessee and FSU but once again losing to Auburn. During his tenure at the University of Florida, Coach Meyer never defeated Auburn. Quarterback Tim Tebow also became Coach Meyer's first Heisman Trophy winner. The team led the conference in scoring, but struggles on defense made it difficult for the Gators to reach a BCS bowl game. The Gators lost the to Michigan 41–35 on January 1, 2008. Meyer served as a pre-game and halftime analyst for the 2008 BCS National Championship Game.


title: Urban Meyer

text: In 2008, Meyer led the Gators to a 13–1 overall record and the BCS National Championship over Oklahoma, including wins over six ranked teams. The team's lone defeat came at the hands of Ole Miss on September 27, 2008, a game in which Florida led in time of possession and passing yards, but had three turnovers. Eleven of the Gators' twelve wins in the 2008 regular season were by 20 points or more. On December 6, 2008, Meyer led the Gators to a 31–20 victory over then top-ranked Alabama in the SEC title game. Leading in time of possession, rushing yards, and passing yards, the Gators rallied from behind after a third-quarter deficit to score two touchdowns and hold Alabama scoreless in the fourth quarter. The victory would vault Florida to No. 1 in the Associated Press Poll, No. 2 in the USA Today Coaches' Poll, and No. 2 in the BCS rankings, setting up a showdown against Oklahoma in the BCS Championship Game on January 8, 2009, at Dolphin Stadium in Miami, Florida. The Gators won 24–14, securing their second national championship under Meyer.


title: Urban Meyer

text: In 2009, Meyer's Gators began the season ranked No. 1 by the largest margin in the history of the AP preseason poll. Though the team struggled on offense at times, and quarterback Tim Tebow suffered a frightening concussion in a September victory over Kentucky, Florida finished the regular season 12–0 and still ranked No. 1. The winning streak ended in the SEC Championship Game, when they lost 32–13 to Alabama.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Florida was selected to play the undefeated Cincinnati Bearcats in the 2010 Sugar Bowl. The Gators won 51–24 to finish the season with a 13–1 record for the second consecutive year.


title: Urban Meyer

text: In the early morning of December 6, 2009, soon after returning home following his team's loss in the 2009 SEC Championship Game, Meyer was quietly admitted into a Gainesville hospital suffering from chest pains and dehydration. He was released later in the day, and the incident was not announced to the public at the time.


title: Urban Meyer

text: On December 26, after discussions with his family, Meyer revealed his medical scare and announced that he would resign as Florida's head coach due to health and family concerns following his team's New Year's Day Sugar Bowl appearance. Meyer stated: "I have ignored my health for years, but recent developments have forced me to re-evaluate my priorities of faith and family." He also said: "I'm proud to be a part of the Gainesville community and the Gator Nation and I plan to remain in Gainesville and involved with the University of Florida." Meyer admitted that he had suffered frequent chest pains, later discovered to be caused by Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and occasional severe headaches due to an arachnoid cyst for years, and that they were related to stress.


title: Urban Meyer

text: On December 27, Meyer announced that he would take an indefinite leave of absence instead of resigning. He was unsure if he would return for the 2010 season but stated that "I do in my gut believe that will happen." Offensive coordinator Steve Addazio would serve as the interim coach in Meyer's absence.


title: Urban Meyer

text: On January 1, 2010, Meyer coached the Gators in their 51–24 Sugar Bowl victory over the Cincinnati Bearcats. In a post-game interview, Meyer again suggested that he would return to coach the Gators at some point by saying: "I plan on being the coach of the Gators."


title: Urban Meyer

text: Meyer took significant time off from his coaching duties after the bowl game in an attempt to improve his personal health. While he did stay in touch with potential new players during the busy recruiting season, Meyer did much less traveling to visit recruits than usual. Nevertheless, the Gators still signed the consensus No. 1 recruiting class in the nation in February.


title: Urban Meyer

text: On March 17, 2010, Meyer returned full-time to his position for the start of the Gators' spring practice and continued in that role into the 2010 season.


title: Urban Meyer

text: With his victory over Kentucky on September 25, 2010, Meyer achieved his 100th career win as a coach. With that win, his record was at 100–18 over the course of 10 seasons. He became the sixth fastest NCAA coach to reach that record, following Gil Dobie (108 games), George Woodruff (109 games), Bud Wilkinson (111 games), Fielding Yost (114 games), and Knute Rockne (117 games). He was also the second-fastest to reach 100 wins since Wilkinson in 1945.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Despite reaching this milestone, the season was a difficult one for the Gators, and their 7–5 regular-season record was the worst in Meyer's tenure at Florida. On December 8, 2010, Meyer again announced his retirement from coaching for much the same reasons he mentioned in December 2009: his family and his health.


title: Urban Meyer

text: After a three-month investigation, the "Sporting News" published an exposé titled "How Urban Meyer broke Florida football", suggesting that Meyer had created a toxic culture in the locker room at Florida and departed just before implosion. The article quoted several Florida players who declared that Meyer developed a "Circle of Trust" that included only star players, and that those players received favorable treatment, including not having to complete workouts, lenient punishment, and hiding the player's positive drug tests from the public. Although Meyer stated: "I've never heard of Circle of Trust before in my life", former players contend it was the foundation of Florida's culture under Meyer.


title: Urban Meyer

text: After resigning as the head football coach of the Florida Gators, Meyer worked as a college football commentator and analyst for the American television sports network ESPN.


title: Urban Meyer

text: On November 17, 2011, "Eleven Warriors" reported that Meyer would become the head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes. Meyer denied the report publicly, then asked ESPN to be taken off assignment during the weekend of the Ohio State–Michigan game, adding more to the speculations that he might be named the next head coach of Ohio State. On November 28, WBNS Columbus confirmed that Meyer had accepted the job as Ohio State's head football coach, and was introduced as head coach later that night. The school said Meyer would receive a six-year contract that pays $4 million annually, plus another $2.4 million total in "retention payments". It was reported by CBS Sports on April 13, 2015, that Meyer signed a contract extension with the Buckeyes through 2020.


title: Urban Meyer

text: In Meyer's first year of coaching at Ohio State, he helped lead the Buckeyes to an undefeated 12–0 record and a No. 3 AP Poll ranking. The team was ineligible for all other rankings, as well as postseason play, due to NCAA sanctions. He was surrounded by first-year coaches such as offensive coordinator Tom Herman, co-offensive coordinator Ed Warriner, and co-defensive coordinator Everett Withers.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Meyer's next year was not as good as the previous one, but Ohio State still finished #12 in the BCS rankings and a 12–2 record. Meyer lost talent at the end of the year to the 2014 NFL Draft, including linebacker Ryan Shazier, cornerback Bradley Roby, and running back Carlos Hyde. Roby and Shazier went in the first round, and Hyde went in the second round.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Before the start of the season, Ohio State lost its star quarterback, Braxton Miller, when he sustained a right shoulder injury during practice. Redshirt freshman quarterback J. T. Barrett stepped in as his replacement and led Ohio State to an 11–1 record through the first 12 games of the season. However, in the final game of the regular season, he sustained a broken ankle and was lost for the remainder of the year. Cardale Jones replaced Barrett at quarterback and guided Ohio State to a 59–0 blowout win over Wisconsin in the Big Ten Football Championship Game. With the conference championship and the convincing win over Wisconsin, Ohio State moved up to #4 in the College Football Playoff rankings, jumping the two Big 12 teams in playoff contention, Baylor and TCU, qualifying for the inaugural four-team postseason tournament. They played #1 Alabama in the semifinal Sugar Bowl. Despite being nine-point underdogs and trailing by as much as 15 points in the first half, Ohio State came back to win, 42–35. The Buckeyes then faced Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota and the Oregon Ducks in the College Football Playoff National Championship. The Buckeyes were again underdogs as the #2-ranked Ducks were favored by seven points. Despite giving up four turnovers, Ohio State beat Oregon, 42–20, with MVP performances from running back Ezekiel Elliott and safety Tyvis Powell. The victory marked the eighth national championship in Ohio State's history and gave Meyer his third career national title, following his two with Florida.


title: Urban Meyer

text: On August 1, 2018, Meyer was placed on paid administrative leave by Ohio State after reports surfaced that Meyer knew about spousal abuse allegations against assistant coach Zach Smith prior to Smith's firing the week prior.


title: Urban Meyer

text: After an independent investigative panel reviewed the evidence, the Ohio State Board of Trustees found that Meyer and Ohio State University Athletic Director Gene Smith did not uphold the values of the university. On August 22, the board voted to suspend Meyer for the opening three games of the season for the Buckeyes. He missed the team's games against Oregon State, Rutgers, and TCU.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Ohio State finished the year with a 12–1 record, including winning the Big Ten conference, but was not selected for the College Football Playoff, instead receiving a spot in the 2019 Rose Bowl.


title: Urban Meyer

text: On December 4, 2018, Meyer announced that he would retire from coaching following the team's Rose Bowl game due to health reasons. It was announced that Ryan Day would take over the head coaching position immediately after the Rose Bowl.


title: Urban Meyer

text: On January 14, 2021, Meyer was hired to become the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. On July 1, 2021, the NFL fined Meyer $100,000 for violating practice rules during organized team activities.


title: Urban Meyer

text: In early October, a video appeared to show Meyer inappropriately touching a woman who was not his wife while he was at his Columbus-area restaurant, Urban Meyer's Pint House. Meyer apologized to the team and personnel. Jaguars owner Shahid Khan said that Meyer's behavior had been "inexcusable" and that Meyer "must regain our trust and respect".


title: Urban Meyer

text: The Jaguars won their first regular season game on October 17 against the Miami Dolphins by a score of 23–20. The Jaguars won their second regular season game when they defeated the heavily favored Buffalo Bills by a score of 9–6 on November 7.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Toward the end of the 2021 season, Jaguars players and coaches were critical of Meyer's treatment of them, to which the team officially responded with assertions of Meyer's job security.


title: Urban Meyer

text: On December 15, former Jaguars kicker Josh Lambo publicly accused Meyer of physical abuse, saying that Meyer repeatedly kicked Lambo's leg during warmups prior to the team's final preseason game. Lambo said it was inexcusable for any boss at any workplace to strike an employee. After Lambo told Meyer never to kick him again, Lambo said Meyer responded, "I'm the head ball coach. I'll kick you whenever the fuck I want." Later that day, Lambo reported the incident to his agent, who then reported it to the Jaguars team. Within hours of these new revelations from Lambo, Jaguars owner Shahid Khan made the decision to fire Meyer from his position and informed him of this in the early hours of December 16, 2021.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Meyer recorded a 2–11 (.154) record during his brief tenure. His thirteen-game tenure is tied with Lou Holtz and Bobby Petrino for fourth-shortest coaching tenures in NFL history. Holtz and Petrino also were making their NFL head coaching debuts after previously being a head coach in college. His .154 winning percentage is the worst of any non-interim head coach since Cam Cameron's .063 winning percentage with the Miami Dolphins in 2007.


title: Urban Meyer

text: On January 26, 2022, Meyer spoke publicly for the first time about his tenure with the Jaguars on Dan Dakich's podcast "Don't @ Me", calling it "the worst experience I've had in my professional lifetime", citing the five-game losing streak and the differences in practice time compared to college football. Meyer added that he experienced "depression", and said, "I'd stare at the ceilings and [think] 'are we doing everything possible' because I really believed we had a roster that was good enough to win games. I just don't think we did a great job."


title: Urban Meyer

text: When Meyer got his first head coaching position at Bowling Green, he took trips to visit John L. Smith and Scott Linehan at Louisville, Randy Walker and Kevin Wilson at Northwestern, Bill Snyder at Kansas State, Joe Tiller and Jim Chaney at Purdue, and Rich Rodriguez at West Virginia, all of whom ran some version of the spread offense.


title: Urban Meyer

text: Meyer's teams at Bowling Green, Utah, Florida, and Ohio State all ran the spread, chiefly utilizing a run-first variation most similar to Rodriguez's at West Virginia, but with tweaks to fit the offensive personnel. For example, Meyer's first two years at Florida skewed toward a drop-back passing attack led by Chris Leak, while Tim Tebow led an option run-based spread (as did Alex Smith at Utah). Using this offense, he won two BCS titles, won the inaugural College Football Playoff National Championship, became the first coach to lead a BCS non-automatically qualified conference team (Utah) to a BCS bowl, coached a Heisman trophy winner (Tim Tebow), and graduated a player who became a number one overall pick in the NFL draft (Alex Smith).


title: Urban Meyer

text: While studying at Cincinnati, Meyer met Shelley Mather, a freshman nursing student, at Sigma Chi's Derby Days philanthropy event and they married in 1986. The Meyers have three children: Nicole ("Nicki"), Gisela ("Gigi") and Nathan ("Nate"). His two daughters played Division I volleyball: Nicki played for Georgia Tech and Gigi played for Florida Gulf Coast. He is a practicing Roman Catholic. Meyer resides in Jacksonville, Florida.


title: Ginger Lynn

text: Ginger Lynn Allen (born December 14, 1962), known professionally as Ginger Lynn, is an American pornographic actress and model who was a premier adult-entertainment star of the 1980s. She also had minor roles in various B movies. "Adult Video News" ranked her at #7 of the 50 greatest porn stars of all time in 2002. After ending her pornography career, she began using her full name and found work in a variety of B-movies. She had a late-career return to the adult industry and made a brief series of movies. Allen is a member of AVN, NightMoves Adult Entertainment, and XRCO Halls of Fame.


title: Ginger Lynn

text: Born and raised in Rockford, Illinois, Allen moved to California in 1982 to become her grandfather's caregiver following his heart attack. After he died, she had her "first nice boyfriend" move in with her. Allen, the breadwinner of the two, felt obligated to find a lucrative occupation. When she answered an advertisement from the World Modeling Agency in September 1983, she immediately signed a contract with that agency and did pictorials for "Cheri", "Club", "Hustler", and "Penthouse", which brought her to the attention of the adult entertainment industry.


title: Ginger Lynn

text: Allen began as a nude model and then began performing in hardcore sex films as Ginger Lynn by December 1983. Her first pornographic movie role was in "Surrender in Paradise", in which she starred with Jerry Butler. Allen's "girl next door" good looks led to a quick rise in her popularity and eventually she became one of the most popular female performers in adult-entertainment history. She had her own line of videos through Vivid Entertainment with the director Bruce Seven. Allen received the Best New Starlet award in 1985 and is an inductee to the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) and "Adult Video News" (AVN) halls of fame. Allen signed a contract with Vivid Entertainment founder, Steven Hirsch, making her the first 'Vivid Girl' and beating out the then-underaged Traci Lords. She was later called to testify on Lords' behalf against porn producers; she refused, and according to her, was then targeted by the Internal Revenue Service for falsification of a tax return.<ref name="Collins 3/8/11"></ref>


title: Ginger Lynn

text: In February 1986, Allen left adult video in order to establish herself in mainstream films by using her full name. She appeared in several non-adult films, television shows and interactive movie segments of the "Wing Commander" computer games. She started her career in mainstream features with a small part in the western "Young Guns II", which co-starred her future boyfriend Charlie Sheen's brother, Emilio Estevez.


title: Ginger Lynn

text: Allen was the subject of an episode of the documentary series E! "True Hollywood Story" in 2002. Allen appeared in another episode about her relationship with actor Charlie Sheen in 2010.


title: Ginger Lynn

text: In December 2005, she appeared in "" (2005) playing the supporting role of Nurse Sanders. In the same year, she portrayed Fanny in Rob Zombie's thriller film "The Devil's Rejects" and later starred as Cherry Bomb in Zombie's slasher film "31".


title: Ginger Lynn

text: Allen returned to the adult-entertainment industry in 1999 for three movies: "Torn" (1999), "White Lightning" (2000), and "New Wave Hookers 6" (2000). In March 2006, she became a host of Playboy Radio's Sirius Satellite Radio show, "Night Calls Radio", with former adult-entertainment performer Christy Canyon. In June 2007, Allen performed for two of Kink.com's hardcore websites, "Ultimate Surrender" and "Sex and Submission".


title: Ginger Lynn

text: Allen had a relationship with Charlie Sheen from 1990 to 1992 and accompanied him through drug rehabilitation. Despite the claims that Sheen has been physically violent towards women, Lynn said she never saw the actor become abusive in the slightest. "Not one time did he raise his voice. No violence," she said.<ref name="Collins 3/7/11"></ref> She had a relationship with actor George Clooney.


title: Ginger Lynn

text: In 1991, Lynn served four and a half months in prison for tax evasion. In 1996, Lynn had a son with Steve Hirsch.


title: Sign language

text: Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign languages are full-fledged natural languages with their own grammar and lexicon. Sign languages are not universal and are usually not mutually intelligible, although there are also similarities among different sign languages.


title: Sign language

text: Linguists consider both spoken and signed communication to be types of natural language, meaning that both emerged through an abstract, protracted aging process and evolved over time without meticulous planning. Sign language should not be confused with body language, a type of nonverbal communication.


title: Sign language

text: Wherever communities of deaf people exist, sign languages have developed as useful means of communication and form the core of local Deaf cultures. Although signing is used primarily by the deaf and hard of hearing, it is also used by hearing individuals, such as those unable to physically speak, those who have trouble with oral language due to a disability or condition (augmentative and alternative communication), and those with deaf family members including children of deaf adults.


title: Sign language

text: The number of sign languages worldwide is not precisely known. Each country generally has its own native sign language; some have more than one. The 2021 edition of "Ethnologue" lists 150 sign languages, while the SIGN-HUB Atlas of Sign Language Structures lists over 200 and notes that there are more which have not been documented or discovered yet. As of 2021, Indo Sign Language is the most used sign language in the world, and "Ethnologue" ranks it as the 151st most "spoken" language in the world.


title: Sign language

text: Linguists distinguish natural sign languages from other systems that are precursors to them or obtained from them, such as constructed manual codes for spoken languages, home sign, "baby sign", and signs learned by non-human primates.


title: Sign language

text: Groups of deaf people have used sign languages throughout history. One of the earliest written records of a sign language is from the fifth century BC, in Plato's "Cratylus", where Socrates says: "If we hadn't a voice or a tongue, and wanted to express things to one another, wouldn't we try to make signs by moving our hands, head, and the rest of our body, just as dumb people do at present?" Until the 19th century, most of what is known about historical sign languages is limited to the manual alphabets (fingerspelling systems) that were invented to facilitate the transfer of words from a spoken language to a sign language, rather than documentation of the language itself.


title: Sign language

text: The earliest records of contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples of the Gulf Coast region in what is now Texas and northern Mexico note a fully formed sign language already in use by the time of the Europeans' arrival there. These records include the accounts of Cabeza de Vaca in 1527 and Coronado in 1541.


title: Sign language

text: Spanish monk Pedro Ponce de León (1520–1584) developed the first manual alphabet. This alphabet was based, in whole or in part, on the simple hand gestures used by monks living in silence.


title: Sign language

text: In 1620, Juan Pablo Bonet published ('Reduction of letters and art for teaching mute people to speak') in Madrid. It is considered the first modern treatise of sign language phonetics, setting out a method of oral education for deaf people and a manual alphabet.


title: Sign language

text: In Britain, manual alphabets were also in use for a number of purposes, such as secret communication, public speaking, or communication by or with deaf people. In 1648, John Bulwer described "Master Babington", a deaf man proficient in the use of a manual alphabet, " on the of his fingers", whose wife could converse with him easily, even in the dark through the use of tactile signing.


title: Sign language

text: In 1680, George Dalgarno published "Didascalocophus, or, The deaf and dumb mans tutor", in which he presented his own method of deaf education, including an "arthrological" alphabet, where letters are indicated by pointing to different joints of the fingers and palm of the left hand. Arthrological systems had been in use by hearing people for some time; some have speculated that they can be traced to early Ogham manual alphabets.


title: Sign language

text: The vowels of this alphabet have survived in the modern alphabets used in British Sign Language, Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language. The earliest known printed pictures of consonants of the modern two-handed alphabet appeared in 1698 with (Latin for "Language" [or "Tongue"] "of the Finger"), a pamphlet by an anonymous author who was himself unable to speak. He suggested that the manual alphabet could also be used by mutes, for silence and secrecy, or purely for entertainment. Nine of its letters can be traced to earlier alphabets, and 17 letters of the modern two-handed alphabet can be found among the two sets of 26 handshapes depicted.


title: Sign language

text: Charles de La Fin published a book in 1692 describing an alphabetic system where pointing to a body part represented the first letter of the part (e.g. Brow=B), and vowels were located on the fingertips as with the other British systems. He described such codes for both English and Latin.


title: Sign language

text: By 1720, the British manual alphabet had found more or less its present form. Descendants of this alphabet have been used by deaf communities (or at least in classrooms) in the former British colonies India, Australia, New Zealand, Uganda and South Africa, as well as the republics and provinces of the former Yugoslavia, Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean, Indonesia, Norway, Germany and the United States. During the Polygar Wars against the British, Veeran Sundaralingam communicated with Veerapandiya Kattabomman's mute younger brother, Oomaithurai, by using their own sign language.


title: Sign language

text: Frenchman Charles-Michel de l'Épée published his manual alphabet in the 18th century, which has survived largely unchanged in France and North America until the present time. In 1755, Abbé de l'Épée founded the first school for deaf children in Paris; Laurent Clerc was arguably its most famous graduate. Clerc went to the United States with Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet to found the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817. Gallaudet's son, Edward Miner Gallaudet, founded a school for the deaf in 1857 in Washington, D.C., which in 1864 became the National Deaf-Mute College. Now called Gallaudet University, it is still the only liberal arts university for deaf people in the world.


title: Sign language

text: International Sign, formerly known as Gestuno, is used mainly at international deaf events such as the Deaflympics and meetings of the World Federation of the Deaf. While recent studies claim that International Sign is a kind of a pidgin, they conclude that it is more complex than a typical pidgin and indeed is more like a full sign language. While the more commonly used term is International Sign, it is sometimes referred to as Gestuno, International Sign Pidgin or International Gesture (IG). International Sign is a term used by the World Federation of the Deaf and other international organisations.


title: Sign language

text: In linguistic terms, sign languages are as rich and complex as any spoken language, despite the common misconception that they are not "real languages". Professional linguists have studied many sign languages and found that they exhibit the fundamental properties that exist in all languages. Such fundamental properties include duality of patterning and recursion. Duality of patterning means that languages are composed of smaller, meaningless units which can be combined into larger units with meaning (see below). The term recursion means that languages exhibit grammatical rules and the output of such a rule can be the input of the same rule. It is, for example, possible in sign languages to create subordinate clauses and a subordinate clause may contain another subordinate clause.


title: Sign language

text: Sign languages are not mime—in other words, signs are conventional, often arbitrary and do not necessarily have a visual relationship to their referent, much as most spoken language is not onomatopoeic. While iconicity is more systematic and widespread in sign languages than in spoken ones, the difference is not categorical. The visual modality allows the human preference for close connections between form and meaning, present but suppressed in spoken languages, to be more fully expressed. This does not mean that sign languages are a visual rendition of a spoken language. They have complex grammars of their own and can be used to discuss any topic, from the simple and concrete to the lofty and abstract. Sign languages are not inventions of educators, or ciphers of the spoken language of the surrounding community.


title: Sign language

text: Sign languages, like spoken languages, organize elementary, meaningless units into meaningful semantic units. This type of organization in natural language is often called duality of patterning. As in spoken languages, these meaningless units are represented as (combinations of) features, although coarser descriptions are often also made in terms of five "parameters": handshape (or "handform"), orientation, location (or "place of articulation"), movement, and non-manual expression. (These meaningless units in sign languages were initially called cheremes, from the Greek word for "hand", by analogy to the phonemes, from Greek for "voice", of spoken languages. Now they are sometimes called phonemes when describing sign languages too, since the function is the same, but more commonly discussed in terms of "features" or "parameters".) More generally, both sign and spoken languages share the characteristics that linguists have found in all natural human languages, such as transitoriness, semanticity, arbitrariness, productivity, and cultural transmission.


title: Sign language

text: Common linguistic features of many sign languages are the occurrence of classifier constructions, a high degree of inflection by means of changes of movement, and a topic-comment syntax. More than spoken languages, sign languages can convey meaning by simultaneous means, e.g. by the use of space, two manual articulators, and the signer's face and body. Though there is still much discussion on the topic of iconicity in sign languages, classifiers are generally considered to be highly iconic, as these complex constructions "function as predicates that may express any or all of the following: motion, position, stative-descriptive, or handling information". It needs to be noted that the term classifier is not used by everyone working on these constructions. Across the field of sign language linguistics the same constructions are also referred with other terms such as depictive signs.


title: Sign language

text: Today, linguists study sign languages as true languages, part of the field of linguistics. However, the category "sign languages" was not added to the "Linguistic Bibliography/Bibliographie Linguistique" until the 1988 volume, when it appeared with 39 entries.


title: Sign language

text: There is a common misconception that sign languages are somehow dependent on spoken languages: that they are spoken language expressed in signs, or that they were invented by hearing people. Similarities in language processing in the brain between signed and spoken languages further perpetuated this misconception. Hearing teachers in deaf schools, such as Charles-Michel de l'Épée or Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, are often incorrectly referred to as "inventors" of sign language. Instead, sign languages, like all natural languages, are developed by the people who use them, in this case, deaf people, who may have little or no knowledge of any spoken language.


title: Sign language

text: As a sign language develops, it sometimes borrows elements from spoken languages, just as all languages borrow from other languages that they are in contact with. Sign languages vary in how much they borrow from spoken languages. In many sign languages, a manual alphabet (fingerspelling) may be used in signed communication to borrow a word from a spoken language, by spelling out the letters. This is most commonly used for proper names of people and places; it is also used in some languages for concepts for which no sign is available at that moment, particularly if the people involved are to some extent bilingual in the spoken language. Fingerspelling can sometimes be a source of new signs, such as initialized signs, in which the handshape represents the first letter of a spoken word with the same meaning.


title: Sign language

text: On the whole, though, sign languages are independent of spoken languages and follow their own paths of development. For example, British Sign Language (BSL) and American Sign Language (ASL) are quite different and mutually unintelligible, even though the hearing people of the United Kingdom and the United States share the same spoken language. The grammars of sign languages do not usually resemble those of spoken languages used in the same geographical area; in fact, in terms of syntax, ASL shares more with spoken Japanese than it does with English.


title: Sign language

text: Similarly, countries which use a single spoken language throughout may have two or more sign languages, or an area that contains more than one spoken language might use only one sign language. South Africa, which has 11 official spoken languages and a similar number of other widely used spoken languages, is a good example of this. It has only one sign language with two variants due to its history of having two major educational institutions for the deaf which have served different geographic areas of the country.


title: Sign language

text: Sign languages exploit the unique features of the visual medium (sight), but may also exploit tactile features (tactile sign languages). Spoken language is by and large linear; only one sound can be made or received at a time. Sign language, on the other hand, is visual and, hence, can use a simultaneous expression, although this is limited articulatorily and linguistically. Visual perception allows processing of simultaneous information.


title: Sign language

text: One way in which many sign languages take advantage of the spatial nature of the language is through the use of classifiers. Classifiers allow a signer to spatially show a referent's type, size, shape, movement, or extent.


title: Sign language

text: The large focus on the possibility of simultaneity in sign languages in contrast to spoken languages is sometimes exaggerated, though. The use of two manual articulators is subject to motor constraints, resulting in a large extent of symmetry or signing with one articulator only. Further, sign languages, just like spoken languages, depend on linear sequencing of signs to form sentences; the greater use of simultaneity is mostly seen in the morphology (internal structure of individual signs).


title: Sign language

text: Sign languages convey much of their prosody through non-manual elements. Postures or movements of the body, head, eyebrows, eyes, cheeks, and mouth are used in various combinations to show several categories of information, including lexical distinction, grammatical structure, adjectival or adverbial content, and discourse functions.


title: Sign language

text: At the lexical level, signs can be lexically specified for non-manual elements in addition to the manual articulation. For instance, facial expressions may accompany verbs of emotion, as in the sign for "angry" in Czech Sign Language. Non-manual elements may also be lexically contrastive. For example, in ASL (American Sign Language), facial components distinguish some signs from other signs. An example is the sign translated as "not yet", which requires that the tongue touch the lower lip and that the head rotate from side to side, in addition to the manual part of the sign. Without these features the sign would be interpreted as "late". Mouthings, which are (parts of) spoken words accompanying lexical signs, can also be contrastive, as in the manually identical signs for "doctor" and "battery" in Sign Language of the Netherlands.


title: Sign language

text: While the content of a signed sentence is produced manually, many grammatical functions are produced non-manually (i.e., with the face and the torso). Such functions include questions, negation, relative clauses and topicalization. ASL and BSL use similar non-manual marking for yes/no questions, for example. They are shown through raised eyebrows and a forward head tilt.


title: Sign language

text: Some adjectival and adverbial information is conveyed through non-manual elements, but what these elements are varies from language to language. For instance, in ASL a slightly open mouth with the tongue relaxed and visible in the corner of the mouth means 'carelessly', but a similar non-manual in BSL means 'boring' or 'unpleasant'.


title: Sign language

text: Discourse functions such as turn taking are largely regulated through head movement and eye gaze. Since the addressee in a signed conversation must be watching the signer, a signer can avoid letting the other person have a turn by not looking at them, or can indicate that the other person may have a turn by making eye contact.


title: Sign language

text: Iconicity is similarity or analogy between the form of a sign (linguistic or otherwise) and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness. The first studies on iconicity in ASL were published in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Many early sign language linguists rejected the notion that iconicity was an important aspect of sign languages, considering most perceived iconicity to be extralinguistic. However, mimetic aspects of sign language (signs that imitate, mimic, or represent) are found in abundance across a wide variety of sign languages. For example, when deaf children learning sign language try to express something but do not know the associated sign, they will often invent an iconic sign that displays mimetic properties. Though it never disappears from a particular sign language, iconicity is gradually weakened as forms of sign languages become more customary and are subsequently grammaticized. As a form becomes more conventional, it becomes disseminated in a methodical way phonologically to the rest of the sign language community. Nancy Frishberg concluded that though originally present in many signs, iconicity is degraded over time through the application of natural grammatical processes.