This study undertook iconicity ratings and conducted transparency experiments on Israeli Sign Language (ISL). Experiment 1 compared the iconicity ratings of 520 lexical signs of ten Deaf ISL signers and thirteen hearing non-signers. Ratings were found to be affected by language knowledge, lexical class, and type of iconic mapping, as well as by…

American Sign Language (ASL) education is a relatively new field. Thus, further research is necessary, especially regarding developing assessment tools. The goal of this study was to determine the types of assessment tools ASL level 1 teachers use in the classroom and how those teachers measure students' language progression. This study is…

Writing often begins during the early years of childhood. Teachers' beliefs about early writing development can influence children's process in learning to write. The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine deaf education teachers' beliefs and practices regarding the process of development of Deaf children's emergent writing. An online…

Foreign language classrooms have historically used classroom lecture-based approaches for instruction. However, the flipped pedagogical approach was recently introduced into foreign language and other classrooms. Studies of the flipped classroom approach in spoken L2 classrooms have generally found a positive impact on student learning outcomes,…

Children's gaze behavior reflects emergent linguistic knowledge and real-time language processing of speech, but little is known about naturalistic gaze behaviors while watching signed narratives. Measuring gaze patterns in signing children could uncover how they master perceptual gaze control during a time of active language learning. Gaze…

Sign language phonological parameters are somewhat analogous to phonemes in spoken language. Unlike phonemes, however, there is little linguistic literature arguing that these parameters interact at the sublexical level. This situation raises the question of whether such interaction in spoken language phonology is an artifact of the modality or…

The goal of this dissertation is to describe and analyze the interaction of pluractionality, a kind of event plurality, and the progressive aspect. Based on original fieldwork, I present novel data showing that, in Balinese, when pluractional VPs combine with progressive aspect, we get some kinds of pluractional interpretations but not others. In…

This paper examines recent lexical expansion in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) in the context of change in the status of the language and ongoing contact with other (spoken and signed) languages. We categorised 917 new signs documented in the past five years according to their source, semantic field, and sign formation mechanism(s), both…

Sign language learners with a spoken language background face the challenge of acquiring a second language in a different modality. In the course of this endeavor, one of the modality-specific phenomena they encounter is the use of classifier predicates, also known as depicting signs. Classifier predicates contain a meaningful hand configuration…

There is a lack of tests available for assessing sign language proficiency among L2 learners. We have therefore developed a sign repetition test, SignRepL2, with a specific focus on the phonological features of signs. This paper describes the two phases of developing this test. In the first phase, content was developed in the form of 50 items with…

This study investigated through an online survey how sign language practitioners changed their sign language assessment practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey consisted of five sections and 29 questions overall. It was provided in written English and German as well as in International Sign and was administered online between October…

This qualitative study focused on the synergistic experience of a group of Deaf and hearing participants during a 2-week international study-abroad program to investigate the impact of immersing hearing American Sign Language (ASL) undergraduate majors with culturally Deaf faculty and doctoral students. 20 participants included undergraduate…

Background: Key Word Signing (KWS) is one system that can be used to support the communication needs of children with Down syndrome (DS) who attend mainstream school. The success of KWS in schools is mediated by staff experiences and perceptions of KWS. The current study is one of the first to explore KWS use in mainstream schools. Aims: To…

This longitudinal pilot study examined the pointing behavior of two Israeli Deaf mothers and one hearing mother over the course of their infant's signed/spoken language acquisition. Three aspects were analyzed: (a) frequency of use; (b) function; and (c) pointing form. The findings indicated that the Deaf mothers used pointing more frequently than…

Many of today's teachers have successfully incorporated technology into their classrooms through digitally based approaches to student learning. However, the flipped classroom pedagogy can provide for rich experiences in the classroom as the students learn lessons at their own pace, leaving the teachers free to create fun, hands-on lessons in the…