Describes American Sign Language (ASL) as "locative," because its grammatical/semantic structures derive from spatial notions; and "semantically perspicuous," because its phonetic and semantic structures are isomorphically related. Presents an ASL morphology showing how verbs are built from six basic locative/directional stems. Discusses…

This historical account of the development of the manual alphabet in American Sign Language traces fingerspelling back to the monks of the seventh century, who devised a system for representing speech without needing to speak. (Author/VWL)

Reports on the the Multimedia Dictionary of American Sign language, which was was conceived in he late 1980s as a melding of the pioneering work in American Sign language lexicography that had been carried out decades earlier and the newly emerging computer technologies that were integrating use of graphical user-interface designs, rapidly…

Reports results of a preliminary study of sign frequency in American Sign language(ASL). Identifies some surprising trends in the organization of the ASL lexicon that merit further investigation. (Author/VWL)

Examination of the production and perception of emotional expression in American Sign Language found that sentences conveying such negative emotional conditions as sadness or anger exhibit distinctive profiles and that signers are capable of recognizing differing emotional states from manual signs alone. (31 references) (Author/CB)

Observation of deaf persons' responses to a sign decision task, where they made decisions about the number of hands required to form a particular sign in American Sign Language (ASL), supported an earlier study showing that deaf signers organized their ASL lexicons according to the morphological relationships expressed in ASL. (18 references)…

Describes the creation of "Sign Language Structure" and the "Dictionary of American Sign Language," including revisions of these publications and advances in the technology of recording signers conversing in American Sign Language. (five references) (JP)

Proposes the term semantic phonology, which invites one to look at a sign--a word of a primary sign language--as a marriage of a noun and a verb. In semantic terminology, the sign is an agent-verb construction. (Author/VWL)

Positron emission tomography was used to investigate whether the motor-iconic basis of certain forms in American Sign Language (ASL) partially alters the neural systems engaged during lexical retrieval. Most ASL nouns denoting tools and ASL verbs referring to tool-based actions are produced with a handshape representing the human hand holding a…

We tested the hypothesis that syntactic and narrative comprehension of a natural sign language can serve as the linguistic basis for skilled reading. Thirty-one adults who were deaf from birth and used American Sign Language (ASL) were classified as skilled or less skilled readers using an eighth-grade criterion. Proficiency with ASL syntax, and…

The purpose of this paper is to describe a variety of teaching and learning strategies that were used within a classroom of Deaf adults participating in a high school English course as part of an upgrading program. The class was conducted in a bilingual manner; that is, being Deaf and communicating with American Sign Language (ASL) was not…

Explores the systematic arrangement of elements in American Sign Language and compares it with English syntax. (KM)

A new deaf poetics has emerged, characterized by the focus on the centrality of the image in both American Sign Language (ASL) poems and in the international poetry community. A series of performances by ASL poets and other activities linking poets have provided new data to support the universal, i.e., poetic, phase through which language…

American Sign Language verbs have several ways to indicate time: 1)reference to a specific time; 2) extension at wrist, elbow, or shoulder to indicate future time; 3) flexion at wrist, elbow, or shoulder to indicate past tense. (Author/LMO)

Thirty-two interpreters for the deaf were measured on accuracy and quality of voice interpreting of the same story in two different sign language types: Pidgin Signed English and American Sign Language. Results indicated that previous experience interpreting was significantly related to the effectiveness of voice interpreting both languages.…