Suggests considering the following before creating abbreviations of sign languages: the recognition of signed languages as official languages; the standardization of signed languages; the existence of different signed languages using the same spoken language as a substitute language; whether attention should be given to countries whose names share…

Focuses on phrasal prominence in American Sign Language (ASL). Reviews the marking of stress and phrase boundaries in ASL, and discusses prominence assignment at the phrasal level, with brief mention of lexical stress. (Author/VWL)

Describes how a laboratory phonologist might investigate three issues in the analysis of the prosody of signed languages: the internal structure, if any, of the signed syllable, the realization of lexical and phrasal prominence, and the marking of edges. Proposes to investigate the internal structure of the syllable by adapting psycholinguistic…

Reviews research from the fields of cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics, comparing spoken and signed language by looking at data concerning either cortical representations or early acquisition. (Author/VWL)

This study documented prevalent signs used during the interpreting process, specifically related to negation in tactile American Sign Language (TASL). Focused on ASL to TASL only.(Author/VWL)

Explores and describes from a crosslinguistic perspective, some of the major structural irregularities that characterize poetry in Italian Sign Language and distinguish poetic from nonpoetic texts. Reviews findings of previous studies of signed language poetry, and points out issues that need to be clarified to provide a more accurate description…

Focuses on the turn-taking patterns of Deaf signers and compares them with turn-taking patterns found in spoken interaction. Reports on research involving conversational data obtained from two Deaf friendship groups that aimed to establish whether Deaf interactants orient to a one-at-a-time model of turn-taking or whether there was any evidence to…

Linguistic descriptions of sign languages are important to the recognition of their linguistic status. These languages are an essential part of the cultural heritage of the communities that create and use them and vital in the education of deaf children. They are also the reference point in language acquisition studies. Ours is exploratory…

Grounded blends may be literal or metaphorical, the latter allowing for an even richer variety of blend characteristics. This contribution of metaphor is achieved largely through the utilization of body partitioning. Body partitioning may result in: (1) the appearance of a single, coherent source-domain scene iconically represented; (2) a single…

The entire deaf prison population in the state of Texas formed the basis for this research. The linguistic skills of prison inmates were assessed using the following measures: (1) Kannapell's categories of bilingualism, (2) adaptation of the diagnostic criteria for Primitive Personality Disorder, (3) reading scores on the Test of Adult Basic…

This article presents the findings of the first linguistic analysis of sign language interpreting carried out in Australia. A study was conducted on 10 Australian Sign Language/English interpreters to determine the rate and occurrence of interpreting omissions and the interpreters' level of metalinguistic awareness in relation to their production…

This article explores some of the complexities of the question as to whether or not American Sign Language (ASL) is a foreign language. It reviews the historical oppression of the deaf, the development of ASL and its defining value to proponents of deaf culture, mentions other language systems (including foreign sign systems) used by the…

This article traces the sources of the estimates of the number of American Sign Language users in the United States. A variety of claims can be found in the literature and on the Internet, some of which have been shown to be unfounded but continue to be cited. In our search for the sources of the various (mis)understandings, we have found that all…

Background: Previous studies in the literature report that deaf individuals who experience late access to language perform poorly on false belief tests of Theory of Mind (ToM) compared with age-matched deaf and hearing controls exposed to language early. Methods: A group of 22 deaf Nicaraguans (aged 7 to 39 years) who learned Nicaraguan Sign…

In recent years, research has progressed steadily in regard to the use of computers to recognize and render sign language. This paper reviews significant projects in the field beginning with finger-spelling hands such as "Ralph" (robotics), CyberGloves (virtual reality sensors to capture isolated and continuous signs), camera-based…