Sign Language

In the sign languages of the deaf some signs can meaningfully point toward things or can be meaningfully placed in the space ahead of the signer. Such spatial uses of signs are an obligatory part of fluent grammatical signing. There is no parallel for this in vocally produced languages. This book focuses on American Sign Language to examine the grammatical and conceptual purposes served by these directional signs and demonstrates a remarkable integration of grammar and gesture in the service of constructing meaning.

What is the role of meaning in linguistic theory? Generative linguists have severely limited its influence while cognitivist and functionalist linguists believe that meaning pervades and motivates all levels of linguistic structure. This dispute can now be resolved conclusively by evidence from signed language. Language from the Body rebuts the generativist linguistic theories that separate form and meaning and asserts that iconicity can only be described in a cognitivist framework where meaning can influence form.

This is an accessible introduction to the major areas of sociolinguistics as they relate to sign languages and deaf communities. Clearly organized, it brings together a team of leading experts in sign linguistics to survey the field, and covers a wide range of topics including variation, multilingualism, bilingualism, language attitudes, discourse analysis, language policy and planning. Each chapter introduces the key issues in each area of inquiry and provides a comprehensive review of the literature. The book also includes suggestions for further reading and helpful exercises.

Each section focuses on a particular issue and papers that discuss general questions, as well as comment on specific issues are presented at the end of each section. Contents: Preface. Part I: The Syntax and Morphology of Classifiers in Sign Languages. A. Schembri, Rethinking "Classifiers" in Signed Languages. B. Bergman, L. Wallin, Noun and Verbal Classifiers in Swedish Sign Language M. Arnoff, I. Meir, C. Padden, W. Sandler, Classifier Complexes and Morphology in Two Sign Languages. A. Aikhenvald, Commentary: Classifiers in Spoken and in Signed Languages: How to Know More. C. Grinevald, Classifier Systems in the Context of a Typology of Nominal Classification. Part II: Cross-Linguistic Variation in Classifier Constructions and Spatial Language. U. Zeshan, "Classificatory" Constructions in Indo-Pakistani Sign Language: Grammaticalization and Lexicalization Processes. G. Tang, Verbs of Motion and Location in Hong Kong Sign Language: Conflation and Lexicalization. L. Talmy, Commentary: The Representation of Spatial Structure in Spoken and Signed Language. Part III: Classifier Constructions and Gesture. S. Liddell, Sources of Meaning in ASL Classifier Predicates. K. Emmorey, M. Herzig, Categorical Versus Gradient Properties of Classifier Constructions in ASL. T. Supalla, Commentary: Revisiting Visual Analogy in ASL Classifier Predicates. S. Duncan, Gesture in Language: Issues for Sign Language Research. Part IV: The Acquisition of Classifier Constructions. D.I. Slobin, N. Hoiting, M. Kuntze, R. Lindert, A. Weinberg, J. Pyers, M. Anthony, Y. Biederman, H. Thumann, A Cognitive/Functional Development of Reference Switching Encoded Through Body Classifiers in British Sign Language. E.Engberg-Pedersen, How Composite Is a Fall: Adults' and Children's Descriptions of Different Types of Falls in Danish Sign Language.

Once signed languages are recognized as natural human languages, a world of exploration opens up. Signed languages provide a powerful tool for investigating the nature of human language and language processing, the relation between cognition and language, and the neural organization of language. The value of sign languages lies in their modality. Specifically, for perception, signed languages depend upon high-level vision and motion processing systems, and for production, they require the integration of motor systems involving the hands and face. These facts raise many questions: What impact does this different biological base have for grammatical systems? For online language processing? For the acquisition of language? How does it affect nonlinguistic cognitive structures and processing? Are the same neural systems involved? These are some of the questions that this book aims at addressing. The answers provide insight into what constrains grammatical form, language processing, linguistic working memory, and hemispheric specialization for language. The study of signed languages allows researchers to address questions about the nature of linguistic and cognitive systems that otherwise could not be easily addressed.

This volume's ten meticulously prepared chapters reflect the refinements of research in six major sociolinguistics areas. Rob Hoopes' work, "A Preliminary Examination of Pinky Extension: Suggestions Regarding Its Occurrence, Constraints, and Function", commences Part One: Variation with a sound explanation of this American Sign Language (ASL) phonological characteristic. Part Two: Languages in Contact includes findings by Jean Ann on contact between Taiwanese Sign Language and written Taiwanese.

Priscilla Shannon Gutierrez considers the relationship of educational policy with language and cognition in deaf children in Part Three: Language in Education, and in Part Four: Discourse Analysis, Melanie Metzger discusses eye gaze and pronominal reference in ASL. Part Five: Second-Language Learning presents the single chapter "An Acculturation Model for ASL Learners", by Mike Kemp. Sarah E. Burns defines Irish Sign Language as Ireland's second minority language after Gaelic, in Part Six: Language Attitudes, the final area of concentration in this rigorously researched volume. These studies and the others by the respected scholars featured in Pinky Extension and Eye Gaze make it an outstanding and eminently valuable addition to this series.

Over 90% of all deaf children are born to hearing parents. For most of these mothers and fathers, their own child is the first deaf person they have ever met. Raising a child who can hear is a challenging and difficult task, but raising a deaf child can seem like an overwhelming responsibility, especially with the mass of conflicting information and advice offered by professionals and well-meaning friends and family members. In Raising and Educating a Deaf Child, Marc Marschark offers parents and teachers a readable and comprehensive summary including everything a parent would want to know about growing up deaf. Parents of a deaf child, like the parents of any child, want to know the answers to some apparently straightforward questions, such as "What kind of school will provide my child with the best education?" "What language experience is best for my child, sign or speech?" "Will my child be able to get a good job?" Marschark addresses these questions and more, with topics ranging from what it means to be deaf and the uniqueness of Deaf culture to the medical causes of early hearing loss, from technological aids for the deaf such as TTYs and cochlear implants to the educational and social opportunities available to deaf children. He describes the many ways that the environment of home and school can influence a deaf child's chances for success in both academic and social circles. Above all, he emphasizes the need for early detection of hearing loss and the importance of being able to communicate with deaf children from a very early age, recommending that all parents of deaf children learn sign language and use it often. This is not a "how to" book or one with all the "right" answers for raising a deaf child. This is a guide through the many conflicting suggestions and programs for raising deaf children, as well as the likely implications of taking one direction or the other. A leading researcher himself, Marschark makes sense of the most current educational and scientific literature, including his own recent research, and talks to deaf children, their parents, and deaf adults about what is important to them. The result is a readable and enlightening survey of what we know about the language, social, and intellectual development of deaf children, and what educational and practical issues face them and their families. Parents of deaf children can and should make their own decisions, based on what is right for their family and for their child. Armed with Raising and Educating a Deaf Child, parents will have access to the bets information available, allowing them to make informed decisions for their child.

One of the foremost authorities on the use of sign language with hearing children provides a guide for teachers and parents who want to introduce signing in hearing children's language development. Marilyn Daniels provides a complete explanation for its use, a short history of sign language and its primary role within the Deaf community, an identification of the steps to reading success delineated with suggestions for incorporating sign language, and the results of studies and reactions of children, teachers, and parents. She shows how sign language can be used to improve hearing children's English vocabulary, reading ability, spelling proficiency, self-esteem, and comfort with expressing emotions. Signing also facilitates communication, aids teachers with classroom management, and has been shown to promote a more comfortable learning environment while initiating an interest and enthusiasm for learning on the part of students.

Signed languages are the naturally-evolved visual-gestural languages of deaf communities. The realization that they are true languages is one of the great discoveries of the last thirty years of linguistic research. This book examines the linguistic properties of many, including detailed case studies of Hong Kong, British, Mexican and German signed languages. The contributors focus on determining the extent that linguistic structure is influenced by whether a language is signed or spoken. Their answers contribute to further understanding the organization of languages.

The burgeoning of research on signed language during the last two decades has had a major influence on several disciplines concerned with mind and language, including linguistics, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, child language acquisition, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and deaf education. The genealogy of this research can be traced to a remarkable degree to a single pair of scholars, Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima, who have conducted their research on signed language and educated scores of scholars in the field since the early 1970s. The Signs of Language Revisited has three major objectives: * presenting the latest findings and theories of leading scientists in numerous specialties from language acquisition in children to literacy and deaf people; * taking stock of the distance scholarship has come in a given field, where we are now, and where we should be headed; and * acknowledging and articulating the intellectual debt of the authors to Bellugi and Klima--in some cases through personal reminiscences. Thus, this book is also a document in the sociology and history of science.