Signs from lists used with mentally retarded and autistic children and previously rated for visual iconicity were presented tactilely to 13 blind adults. Visual and tactile ratings were very similar across blind and sighted groups, as were statements of relationship between signs and their meanings. (Author/CL)

A longitudinal study of sign language acquisition was conducted with 13 very young children (median age 10 months or outset of study) of deaf parents. A majority of signs in Ss' early vocabularies were not iconic, suggesting that the role of iconicity may have been overrated. (Author/CL)

A training sequence is presented for teaching the manual alphabet beginning with the hand shapes that look most like the letters they represent. Each manual letter is then paired with an associated word. (CL)

Examines how Pierre Desloges--a deaf person who was interested in the aptness of "natural signs" to express complex concepts and who highlighted the community aspect of communication--described and categorized signs used by the Deaf community in Paris in 1779. Presents additional sources of information on communication of deaf people.…

Studied accuracy and use of sequence number string in hearing 3- to 5-year-olds and in deaf 4- to 6-year-olds using the Belgian French Sign Language. Found that deaf children exhibited age-related lags in knowledge of the number sequence, and made different errors from those of hearing children, reflecting the rule-bound nature of sign language.…

Describes the process of the standardization of the basic lexicon of the sign lexicon of the Netherlands (SLN) and the different types of dictionaries that were produced. (Author/VWL)

Presents data from South African Sign Language (SASL) to exemplify the fact that sign languages are able to represent action or events from more than one perspective at the same time. Describes the different ways in which these multiple perspectives may be created and looks specifically at the role of classifier predicates in the creation of…

Discusses the meaning of deaf culture with reference to the views of other specialists in the field. The author observes that he is not floating a rival analysis of the constituents of Deaf culture; attempting to relabel phenomena; searching for the definition; claiming that the idea of deaf cultures is either qualitatively or quantitatively…

While much of the evidence is circumstantial, there is a clear evolutionary line from our primeval forbears in Africa, through imperial China and Rome, Celtic Druid lore, and medieval monks, to the one-hand "abecedario" first used in the education of Deaf children in Spain, the two-hand glove alphabet used by Alexander Graham Bell with deaf…

Introduces an issue of the journal containing articles that investigate candidate components of a prosodic system in sign languages, within the context of particularly relevant issues raised in spoken language research. (Author/VWL)

The story of the Abbe de l'Epee's "methodical signs" is best known as a key moment in Deaf history. However, at the time of the French Revolution this story served a larger political function. The example of de l'Epee's deaf students, and their seemingly miraculous command of ideas learned through gestural signs, helped the French…

This article discusses Johnston's estimate of the number of signing Deaf people in Australia and queries whether it adequately accounts for nonnative signers or reflects the numbers who make use of services in Auslan. It concurs with Johnston's projection of a decline in the size of this population, and discusses the ways in which the Deaf…

This study investigated the effects of noise and filtering on the intelligibility of speech produced during simultaneous communication (SC). Four normal hearing, experienced sign language users were recorded under SC and speech alone (SA) conditions speaking Boothroyd's forced-choice phonetic contrast material designed for measurement of speech…

We examined the influence of sign language iconicity on children's ability to describe the function of objects. Forty-eight hearing preschoolers were divided into three groups and asked to describe the function of 15 high and 15 low iconic signs. We questioned the Hearing/Verbal (H/V) group verbally, Hearing/Verbal+Sign (H/V+S) group verbally with…

To date, much information about Sign Bilingualism, gleaned from parents and/or teachers, has been written from a strong hearing viewpoint. As deaf children should be the main beneficiaries from a Sign Bilingual Education, this project was designed to enable the children to recall their experiences and share their multi-aspect views with other deaf…