Briefly describes a program that sought to improve the written English skills of deaf adolescents' whose first language was American Sign Language, focusing on first-language skills, metalinguistic skills, translating skills, lexical matching across languages, translation of syntactical structures, and recognition of the importance of the…

Looks at patterns of conceptual encoding in American Sign Language (ASL), drawing from adults' retellings of a story. Results suggest that ASL encodes a great deal of conceptual information about motion events, significantly more than English and presumably more than most other spoken languages. (Author/VWL)

Johnston argues that the impact of science and technology on the Australian Deaf community threatens the viability of the community; this entails that the scientists have a moral duty to record and preserve Auslan for posterity. This response analyzes Johnston's moral imperative through the application of intrinsic and extrinsic values, suggesting…

My response to Johnston's (2004) "W(h)ither the Deaf Community?" is theoretical in nature and sociological in perspective. I comment on how Johnston's particular concern for the possible demise of Australian Sign Language (Auslan) in Australia's currently transforming social and medical context surrounding childhood deafness is legitimate but…

American Sign Language uses the face to express vital components of grammar in addition to the more universal expressions of emotion. The study of ASL facial expressions has focused mostly on the perception and categorization of various expression types by signing and nonsigning subjects. Only a few studies of the production of ASL facial…

Japanese Sign Language (JSL) is currently in a state of transition as various elements within and outside the Deaf community contest the creation of new terms. Represented by the Japanese Federation of the Deaf, the older generation is creating new words in order to compete with the national public television service while at the same time fending…

The article elaborates on the assumption that since sign languages are received and initially processed by the visual system, then the rules for the formation of signs of a sign language would be constrained by the limits of the visual system. (Author/NCR)

The Communication Committee of the South African National Council for the Deaf is currently developing an artificial sign language which could be used with all of the country's ethnolinguistic groups. Guidelines and constraints for developing such an artificial language are outlined. (CB)

The systematic confounding and belittling of deaf people's language systems have negatively affected their language and learning skills. Deaf individuals must recognize this form of oppression and their own personal power by taking control of research and study in this field. (CB)

In a study of sign language interpretive skills, data provided evidence of a definite relationship between lag time and miscue occurrence. As the degree of temporal synchrony between the sign language message and the target language interpretation increased, so did the frequency of miscues. (CB)

Systematic sampling was done of signing between five home-reared chimpanzees who had had 4-7 years of complete immersion in integrating their signing interaction into their nonverbal communication. Eight-eight percent of all signs reported fell into the social categories of reassurance, social interaction, and play. (SL)

Thirty-five deaf children with hearing parents were tested for cheremic perception. Deaf children using sign language, like hearing children using spoken language, have more difficulty discriminating between lexical items that form minimal pairs in their language than between items that differ more. (SL)

Recent sociolinguistic research is used to show that the American Sign Language (ASL)-English contact situation does not result in the emergence of a pidgin as supposed. Variation along the ASL-English continuum can be accounted for by interplay of foreigner talk, judgments of proficiency, and learners' attempts to master the target language.…

Studies the simultaneous language development in American Sign Language and spoken English by a hearing girl. Findings show: (1) a mixture of oral and manual babbling, (2) a code-switching ability across modalities, and (3) a single syntactic system incorporating rules from both languages but with two separate lexicons. (Author/PJM)

Two aspects of a study of the problems hearing people have in acquiring British Sign Language (BSL) are described: (1) the measurement of current skills in BSL of professionals in the field, and (2) current training programs in BSL in the United Kingdom and results of some controlled teaching situations. (Author/PJM)