Non manuals

This paper tackles a problem of analyzing the well-formedness of syllables in Japanese Sign Language (JSL). We formulate the problem as a classification problem that classifies syllables into wellformed or ill-formed. We build a data set that contains hand-coded syllables and their well-formedness. We define a finegrained feature set based on the handcoded syllables and train a logistic regression classifier on labeled syllables, expecting to find the discriminative features from the trained classifier. We also perform pseudo active learning to investigate the applicability of active learning in analyzing syllables. In the experiments, the best classifier with our combinatorial features achieved the accuracy of 87.0%. The pseudo active learning is also shown to be effective showing that it could reduce about 84% of training instances to achieve the accuracy of 82.0% when compared to the model without active learning.

Bimodal bilinguals master languages in two modalities, spoken and signed, and can use them simultaneously due to the independence of the articulators. This behavior, named code-blending, is one of the hallmarks of bimodal bilingualism. Lexical experiments on production and comprehension in American Sign Language/English showed that blending is not cognitively costly and facilitates lexical access. In this work, we replicated the blending advantage in lexical comprehension for hearing bimodal bilinguals with two other language pairs, French Sign Language (LSF)-French and Italian Sign Language (LIS)-Italian, and we explored whether the facilitation is also found at the sentential level. Results show that blended utterances for languages with incongruent word order like LIS-Italian were processed slower than monolingual utterances, while no difference was found when the word orders were congruent (LSF-French). We discuss these findings in light of linguistic theories of syntactic structure derivation in bimodal bilinguals. This article has earned badges for transparent research practices: Open Data and Open Materials. For details see the Data Availability Statement.

The goal of this paper is to compare the different anaphoric strategies that Catalan
and Catalan Sign Language (LSC) use by means of a parallel corpus. In particular, our
comparison is focused in an examination of the uses of overt subject pronouns in Catalan and
how these uses are rendered in a language that exploits the visual-manual modality, such as
LSC. As far as we know, this is one of the first studies to compare reference-tracking devices
in a spoken and a signed language by means of a parallel corpus and incorporating both a
descriptive and a theoretical perspective. All instances of overt pronouns in Catalan were
analyzed and most of the data can be accounted with three factors: topic change, focus and
contrast. As for LSC, the use of pronouns is rare and only few instances were found. Instead,
other anaphoric strategies are used: while topic change and focus are primarily encoded with
bare nouns, the expression of contrast relies on modality-specific features.

Background Deafness has an adverse impact on children's ability to acquire spoken languages. Signed languages offer a more accessible input for deaf children, but because the vast majority are born to hearing parents who do not sign, their early exposure to sign language is limited. Deaf children as a whole are therefore at high risk of language delays. Aims We compared deaf and hearing children's performance on a semantic fluency task. Optimal performance on this task requires a systematic search of the mental lexicon, the retrieval of words within a subcategory and, when that subcategory is exhausted, switching to a new subcategory. We compared retrieval patterns between groups, and also compared the responses of deaf children who used British Sign Language (BSL) with those who used spoken English. We investigated how semantic fluency performance related to children's expressive vocabulary and executive function skills, and also retested semantic fluency in the majorit...

This paper reports on work in synthesizing the finger alphabet of Swiss German Sign Language (Deutschschweizerische Gebärdensprache, DSGS) as a first step towards a fingerspelling learning tool for this language. Sign language synthesis is an instance of automatic sign language processing, which in turn forms part of natural language processing (NLP). The contribution of this paper is twofold: Firstly, the process of creating a set of hand postures and transitions for the DSGS finger alphabet is explained, and secondly, the results of a study assessing the comprehensibility of the resulting animations are reported. The comprehension rate of the signing avatar was highly satisfactory at 90.06%.

2012CS/MIS class) to give our best. I thank Dr. G. Ayorkor Korsah, for giving me the DeSIGN research paper which actually served as my first full text resource and launched me on the path to other research papers' findings and personal communications that helped me complete this project. I also thank Dr. Astrid Twenebowa Larssen, my gorgeous, encouraging and attention-todetail supervisor and mentor, for coaching me throughout the whole process of writing this thesis. Her feedback and comments made a BIG difference. I would like to acknowledge the support and encouragement of the Osei family, Bless

When processing spoken language sentences, listeners continuously make and revise predictions about the upcoming linguistic signal. In contrast, during comprehension of American Sign Language (ASL), signers must simultaneously attend to the unfolding linguistic signal and the surrounding scene via the visual modality. This may affect how signers activate potential lexical candidates and allocate visual attention as a sentence unfolds. To determine how signers resolve referential ambiguity during real-time comprehension of ASL adjectives and nouns, we presented deaf adults (n = 18, 19-61 years) and deaf children (n = 20, 4-8 years) with videos of ASL sentences in a visual world paradigm. Sentences had either an adjective-noun ("SEE YELLOW WHAT? FLOWER") or a noun-adjective ("SEE FLOWER WHICH? YELLOW") structure. The degree of ambiguity in the visual scene was manipulated at the adjective and noun levels (i.e., including one or more yellow items and one or more flowers in the visual array). We investigated effects of ambiguity and word order on target looking at early and late points in the sentence. Analysis revealed that adults and children made anticipatory looks to a target when it could be identified early in the sentence. Further, signers looked more to potential lexical candidates than to unrelated competitors in the early window, and more to matched than unrelated competitors in the late window. Children's gaze patterns largely aligned with those of adults with some divergence. Together, these findings suggest that signers allocate referential attention strategically based on the amount and type of ambiguity at different points in the sentence when processing adjectives and nouns in ASL.

Previous research has pointed at naturalness and communicative efficiency as possible constraints on language structure. Here, we investigated adjective position in American Sign Language (ASL), a language with relatively flexible word order, to test the incremental efficiency hypothesis, according to which both speakers and signers try to produce efficient referential expressions that are sensitive to the word order of their languages. The results of three experiments using a standard referential communication task confirmed that deaf ASL signers tend to produce absolute adjectives, such as color or material, in prenominal position, while scalar adjectives tend to be produced in prenominal position when expressed as lexical signs, but in postnominal position when expressed as classifiers. Age of ASL exposure also had an effect on referential choice, with early-exposed signers producing more classifiers than late-exposed signers. Overall, our results suggest that linguistic, pragmat...

When processing spoken language sentences, listeners continuously make and revise predictions about the upcoming linguistic signal. In contrast, during comprehension of American Sign Language (ASL), signers must simultaneously attend to the unfolding linguistic signal and the surrounding scene via the visual modality. This may affect how signers activate potential lexical candidates and allocate visual attention as a sentence unfolds. To determine how signers resolve referential ambiguity during real-time comprehension of ASL adjectives and nouns, we presented deaf adults (n = 18, 19-61 years) and deaf children (n = 20, 4-8 years) with videos of ASL sentences in a visual world paradigm. Sentences had either an adjective-noun ("SEE YELLOW WHAT? FLOWER") or a noun-adjective ("SEE FLOWER WHICH? YELLOW") structure. The degree of ambiguity in the visual scene was manipulated at the adjective and noun levels (i.e., including one or more yellow items and one or more flowers in the visual array). We investigated effects of ambiguity and word order on target looking at early and late points in the sentence. Analysis revealed that adults and children made anticipatory looks to a target when it could be identified early in the sentence. Further, signers looked more to potential lexical candidates than to unrelated competitors in the early window, and more to matched than unrelated competitors in the late window. Children's gaze patterns largely aligned with those of adults with some divergence. Together, these findings suggest that signers allocate referential attention strategically based on the amount and type of ambiguity at different points in the sentence when processing adjectives and nouns in ASL.

Our main objective is to present some preliminary results and discussions on taboo terms in Libras (Língua Brasileira de Sinais). Given the lack of studies on the topic, our immediate scope is to survey the vocabulary and main uses of the expressions found. We will draw primarily on Gene, Fisher, and Napoli (2012), who provided a morphosyntactic description of taboo expressions in American Sign Language (ASL), and Loos, Cramer, and Napoli (2020), who discuss the iconicity of taboo terms in German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache-DGS), and Sutton-Spence and Napoli (2024), who analyze expressiveness in sign languages and in general. Based on a lexical survey of dictionaries and YouTube channels, we show that in Libras we have taboo terms in the same lexical fields found in spoken languages: religion, sex, body parts, and bodily fluids. We also show that the same linguistic aspects found by previous studies in other sign languages occur in Libras: a) more iconic signs tend to be more offensive; b) use of non-manual, or non-lexical, strategies to convey expressiveness.

With the goal of expanding research on SLs as L2s, we began a collaboration in 2013 with the aim of developing three parallel learner corpora based on three different sign languages: Swedish Sign Language (SSL), Irish Sign Language (ISL) and American Sign Language (ASL). The primary aim of the project was to develop learner corpora by collecting data from adult hearing L2 signers at different stages of their learning.

Previous research on speech and gesture has found that repeated references are often linguistically reduced in terms of, for example, the number of words and the acoustic realization of these words, compared to initial references. The present study looks at the production of repeated references by 14 signers of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). Participants had to describe figures to an addressee, who had to pick the correct figure from a large group of figures. Several figures had to be described several times. The question was whether there would be reduction in the repeated references. We found systematic effects of repetition in that repeated references were shorter, contained fewer signs, and shorter signs than initial references. Moreover, in order to measure sign precision, a perception test was used where participants had to judge, in a forced choice task, which sign they considered to be the most precise, looking at 40 pairs of video clips with signs produced in eithe...

Os sinais, itens lexicais das línguas de sinas, podem ser caracterizados como sendo uni ou bimanuais Klima e Bellugi, 1979).1 , 2 Pesquisas, majoritariamente sobre a língua de sinais americana (ASL), documentam que alguns sinais dessa língua podem variar em função dessa característica articulatória (Woodward e DeSantis, 1977, entre outros). De acordo com Liddell e Johnson (1989), em alguns casos essa variação pode resultar da influência do contexto fonológico, dado que se observam na ASL sinais unimanuais sendo produzidos com duas mãos quando seguem e/ou precedem sinais bimanuais e vice-versa. O mesmo processo é observado na língua de sinais australiana por Johnston e Schembri (1999) e descrito pelos autores como coarticulação. Para testar se a variação no número de mãos de certos sinais da língua brasileira de sinais (libras) pode ser explicada como resultante de coarticulação, realizamos um experimento no qual três sinais da Libras (JÁ, PRECISAR e QUERER) são eliciados isoladamente e em contextos controlados. Eliciamos os sinais-alvo em sua forma isolada para determinar para cada sinalizante sua forma básica, uni ou bimanual. Já a eliciação em contextos controlados, por sua vez, objetivou testar se o número de mãos dos sinais em questão pode variar em função de estes serem antecedidos e/ou seguidos de sinais uni e bimanuais. Testamos também se um aumento na taxa de sinalização pode aumentar a ocorrência de coarticulação, como ocorre nas línguas orais , ao solicitar aos quatro participantes surdos (duas mulheres e dois homens entre 28 e 29 anos) que produzissem os enunciados em que os sinais-alvo foram inseridos em duas taxas de sinalização: normal e rápida. Nossos

The present study is part of Experimental Phonetics and aims to analyze and describe the use of Manual Signs (MSs) and Non-Manual Markers (NMMs) by Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) signers from the deaf community of São Carlos (São Paulo, Brazil) when expressing Focus of New Information Focus (FNI) and Contrastive Focus (CF). For this analysis, a corpus was constructed consisting of 20 control utterances and 20 questions related to these utterances, with the purpose of eliciting emphatic production of key signs selected from the categories of subject, verb, object, color adjectives, and locatives. Distractor utterances with other focus forms were also created. The duration values of MSs were transcribed in the ELAN program (version 6.1), and facial expressions data (Action Units - AUs) and head movements were automatically extracted from the FaceReader program. They were then tabulated, and quantitatively analyzed through Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tests, run in the R Core Team program. Subsequently, to enable comparison, each of the significantly different NMMs was marked in the transcription made in ELAN. In addition, a qualitative analysis of the data was also conducted. Our results indicate that, in both focused contexts, participants mainly adopted the "direct answer" strategy; both foci were marked with a raised eyebrow and a head nodd; signs were produced with longer durations, and both foci presuppose information from the previous discourse and undergo phonetic changes. In the FNI contexts, the "detailing" strategy was adopted more frequently than the in CF contexts, and its signs were often accompanied by broader lateral head tilts, signaling a sense of
conclusion or "that's it". The CF signs, on the other hand, exhibited longer durations, slightly intensified NMMs, as well as a greater prevalence of foregrounding structures than the NIF, especially cleft-like constructions. It is expected that the results of this study will contribute primarily in four areas: a) in research involving sign languages; b) in understanding the use of NMMs in Libras as a resource for expressing FNI and CF; c) emphasizing the importance of teaching NMMs to Libras learners, as they are essential linguistic features for fluency in Libras; and d) emphasizing the relevance of Experimental Phonetics methodology in Libras prosody studies.

The present study aims to introduce the possibility of coding facial expressions and head
movements in different sign languages using the FaceReader program. Considering that
Non-Manuals Markers (NMMs) (facial expressions, head and torso movements) are an important part of the signed languages grammar, the FaceReader’s automatic coding ability would be very useful for investigating a larger number of signed data, The program can calibrate participants’ faces, automatically annotate emotions (emotive facial expressions), Action Units (AUs) (grammatical NMMs), their intensities, as well as head movements. Overall, it seems highly beneficial to use the program for recognizing facial and head movements in sign languages. However, there are some disadvantages to adopting it, such as pricing, the lack of torso movements and head protraction/retraction coding, and difficulties in analyzing participants with beards and glasses. Some of these disadvantages can be addressed through the use of other softwares or methodologies strategies.

Deaf signing children commonly begin acquiring Brazilian Sign Language as their first language late. Consequently, many deaf children experience delays in language, both comprehensively and expressively, due to not having the opportunity to interact with children, adolescents, and adults who use Brazilian Sign Language from birth or in the early years of life. Additionally, there are deaf children who, in addition to delays in the language acquisition process due to lack of exposure and interaction in Brazilian Sign Language (linguistic deprivation), show deviations in the acquisition process due to intrinsic factors. The main objective of this article is to briefly present how the language acquisition process begins for deaf signing children and some tests for language assessment in Brazilian Sign Language. Moreover, it aims to promote reflections on the importance of professionals working with deaf babies and deaf children, such as speech-language pathologists/therapists and health professionals in general, to observe and/or follow the language acquisition process in this population. Considering that it is possible to prevent and treat delays and/or deviations in the language acquisition process of deaf babies and signing deaf children, it is hoped that more professionals will prevent language delays, carry out intervention in Brazilian Sign Language, and/or guide parents/caregivers on the importance of Brazilian Sign Language, so that the deaf child can achieve the best linguistic development according to their potential.

My route to studying sign language in Taiwan was roundabout. I began learning American Sign Language (ASL) in 1977. In the mid-1980s, I spent a year in Beijing, China, teaching English as a foreign language. As a graduate student in linguistics several years later, I decided to write my doctoral dissertation on the phonology and phonetics of signed language in use in Beijing. But by 1989, the People’s Republic of China was in political turmoil. The Tian An Men Square massacre made a return to China diffcult. Searching for an alternative feld site, I recalled the unique history of a school for the deaf in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.1 The Chiying School, founded by Chiang Ssu Nung, a deaf man originally from mainland China, had used the Chinese Sign Language (CSL) as a medium of instruction for many years while Taiwan’s other schools for the deaf used Taiwan Sign Language (TSL) (Yau 1977, 7; Chao, Chu and Liu 1988, 9–10; Smith 1989, 1–2). Circumstances seemed to have conspired to create a livi...

In the following, I would like to thank all the 'helping hands' for their guidance and support in identifying, describing, and documenting all these insights into the Austrian Sign Language. First of all, I want to say thanks to the members of the 'Pongauer Gehörlosenverein' ('Pongau Deaf Club') who engaged in both signing various utterances as well as annotating these signed texts with the greatest enthusiasm. Their work resulted in various natural and authentic recordings and very detailed annotation entries in ELAN. In particular, I would like to thank the Deaf club's chairman Hans Scharfetter and his wife Elisabeth. They took the initiative and organized a group of Deaf informants who were willing to perfom in front of a camera. They also arranged all the recording and annotating sessions, and they most intensively discussed each language-relevant head and body movement with me. They have always been very welcoming to me on my home visits to the Salzburg area, where I grew up. We have shared many hours of discussions with respect to sign language or Deaf culture. I am very much looking forward to continuing this close cooperation! Also sincere thanks go to my supervisors Prof. Ronnie Wilbur, Purdue University, and Prof. Bernhard Hurch, University of Graz, who both supported me in various ways. Ronnie Wilbur, thank you very much for commenting and discussing ALL the new findings on head and body movements in the Austrian Sign Language in MORE than one run-through. Also, I want to thank you for providing me with a large variety of sign language research and for motivating and supporting me in writing this thesis in English. Bernhard Hurch, thank you very much for welcoming me to do sign language research at the Department of Linguistics in Graz, for providing comments and open discussions on my thesis, and for

American Sign Language (ASL) is the natural and living language of the Deaf Community in North America. In addition to hand gestures, facial expressions are a key component of communicating in ASL. We present a method for reproducing facial expressions through computer graphic animation. Directions for further research are suggested. Keywords: Animation, American Sign Language, Facial Expressions

A debated issue in psycholinguistics is whether both languages are active in the bilingual mind that hosts them. We examined this issue in bimodal bilinguals, i.e., individuals competent in one spoken language and one sign language. Signed productions and story-telling data pertaining to declaratives, wh-questions, and negatives from Iranian bilingual speakers of Khuzestani Arabic and Sadat Tawaher Sign Language confirm that they produce two different grammars simultaneously, one via their vocal tract and the other on their hands. This finding provides support for these bilinguals' double active representation of languages, suspension of articulatory constraints, lack of inhibition, and processing costs.

This paper briefly summarizes the history of research on Taiwan Sign Language (TSL). After describing what is known about the origins of TSL itself, it notes that research on TSL began quite late, with the first known article concerning TSL not appearing until the late 1950s (Li 1959). Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, collections of "Chinese Sign Language" and Signed Mandarin signs were prepared at schools for the deaf in various parts of Taiwan. The author's own research on TSL began in the mid-1970s with sign collecting and cataloguing, and progressed on through a number of linguistics papers on TSL non-manual signals, word order, compound formation, phonetics and phonology, and eyebrow raising. The first dissertation to be written on TSL was Smith 1989. By then other researchers had begun to look seriously at TSL, and the National Association of the Deaf of the Republic of China had sponsored two TSL textbooks (Smith & Ting 1979, 1984). In the late 1990s, the author participated in the Taipei City Government's project to develop TSL training materials for sign language interpreters. More recently a number of linguists have joined forces to examine TSL in depth, resulting in projects such as the publication of this special issue of Language and Linguistics. Suggestions for future work include studies of TSL discourse, the production of a comprehensive dictionary of TSL, the preparation of instructional materials at a more advanced level, and research into Deaf history in Taiwan: if those who know this history do not pass it on to the younger generation, it will be lost forever.

Do signers of different signed languages establish and maintain reference the same way? Here we compare how signers of five Western deaf signed languages coordinate fully conventionalized forms with more richly improvised semiotics to identify and talk about referents of varying agency. The five languages (based on a convenience sample) are Auslan, Irish Sign Language, Finnish Sign Language, Norwegian Sign Language, and Swedish Sign Language. Using ten retellings of Frog, Where Are You? from each language, we analyze tokens of referring expressions with respect to: (a) activation status (new vs. maintained vs. re-introduced); (b) semiotic strategy (e.g., pointing sign, fingerspelling, enactment); and (c) animacy (human vs. animal vs. inanimate object). Statistical analysis reveals many similarities and some differences across the languages. For example, signers of each language typically used conventionalized forms to identify new referents, and less conventional strategies to maint...

Cohn (2016) posits two constraints critical to understanding sequential static images as narrativethe continuity constraint, assuring that elements in one frame are coreferential with elements in other frames, and the activity constraint, assuring that states in each frame are related with respect to passing of time, shifting of vantage point, or other factors relevant to activity. We identify seven construals used in ordinary human understanding of the physical world that help account for how viewers interpret activity in static visual narratives and that we propose form the foundation of the activity constraint. In an elicitation experiment, these construals also supported understanding of depicted activity in dynamic storytelling in Irish Sign Language, suggesting that a range of action information in sign language narratives is conveyed via reliance on visuo-spatial construals independent of language.

This paper examines the critical role of context in American Sign Language (ASL) and its importance in developing fluency and conceptual accuracy. It explores how context helps clarify the multiple meanings of ASL signs and distinguishes ASL’s unique visual and cultural features from English. The challenges beginner learners face, including confusion over similar signs and misconceptions about direct translations, are addressed. Practical strategies such as using non-manual markers, classifiers, role-shifting, and cultural references are proposed to enhance learners’ contextual competence. Emphasizing these strategies in ASL pedagogy ensures more effective communication and a deeper understanding of the language.

Before there was reading there was seeing. People navigate the world and probe life's meaning through visible language. Visible Language has been concerned with ideas that help define the unique role and properties of visual communication. A basic premise of the journal has been that visual design is a means of communication that must be defined and explored on its own terms. This journal is devoted to enhancing people's experience through the advancement of research and practice of visual communication.

This thesis investigates how the Japanese Sign Language (JSL) numeral system can be characterised with respect to aspects of the linguistic structure of JSL numerals at the phonological and morphological levels; to typological comparisons with other sign languages; and, finally, to sociolinguistic variation. Data for JSL were collected, using various elicitation games, from a total of 37 participants from the Kanto and Kansai regions of Japan. Data for other signed languages were taken from the Sign Language Typology Project, based at the University of Central Lancashire and also from various academic sources. The study examines the semantic motivation prevalent in JSL numerals due to influence from the writing system of Japan, Kanji. Three main historical developments affecting JSL numeral signs include increased reliance on Kanji-based representations, a decrease in forms motivated by visual iconicity, and increased standardisation of forms due to a reduction in school-based variants. The analysis makes reference to four groups of sign languages and aims to carry out a comparison of each group with JSL. Group 1 consists of the JSL language family and includes South Korean Sign Language (SKSL) and Taiwan Sign Language (TSL). Group 2 comprises Chinese Sign Language, which shares similarities with JSL by way of the Kanji writing system. Group 3 contains the following urban sign languages: British Sign Language, Czech Sign Language, Ugandan Sign Language, Greek Sign Language, Argentine Sign Language, Indo-Pakistani Sign Language, Indonesian Sign Language, and Turkish Sign Language. Finally, Group 4 includes village sign languages such as Alipur Sign Language, Chican Sign Language and Mardin Sign Language. A higher level of similarity is found across JSL, SKSL and TSL, and the findings suggest considerable borrowing between TSL, SKSL and JSL in the domain of numerals. iii Contents List of figures …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….vi List of tables ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..ix Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………………………………..x List of sign language abbreviations ………………………………………………………………………….xiii Notational conventions…………………………………………………………………………………………………xiii

This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of many people. First and foremost, I express my sincere gratitude to Carlo Geraci, who I have now known for over twelve years. He is not only my advisor, but also the person who first showed me that formal linguistics could be applied to LIS, who pushed me to re-enroll in the Science of Language department, and who supported and guided me throughout years and years of study (thank you for your patience). Carlo's influence can be seen throughout my linguistic work. I am happy to call Carlo not only a colleague, but also a friend. I thank Philippe Schlenker for his unwavering commitment to support Deaf people in linguistics. It is through his consistent support that it was even possible to consider undertaking a dissertation, and that apparently unsurmountable obstacles were quickly and easily resolved. Without his help, I would not be here today. Many thanks go to my committee: Christian Rathmann, who I have been lucky to have the chance to interact with, and whose feedback and ideas have had a large impact on my work. Christian has been, and continues to be, an extraordinary Deaf role model in the field of linguistics. I can only hope one day to be so accomplished. Diane Brentari, for great feedback, always accompanied by a smile. Jeremy Kuhn,who has been a great interlocutor and collaborator throughout these years. Natasha Abner, Marie-Anne Sallandre, and Roberto Casati, who have each provided insight and expertise on their field. It has been an honor and privilege to be part of the Italian and French Deaf community. I would like to thank all the Deaf people who have worked with me throughout these years. On the Italian side, a special thanks goes to Lorenzo Laudo and Ezio Bramato, as well as rest of the Italian Deaf community, without whom this work would not be possible. On the French side, thank you to Thomas Levêque, Laurène Loctin, Delphine Kholoukhoev, Ludovic Ducasse, Damien Ducasse, and Yohan Marcelino for all their help, and to the French Deaf community i ii who always gave me their time with a positive spirit. To my best friends, EROI, the heros: Fabio Poletti, Giuliano Nonnis and Giovanni Trezza, who have provided me joy, positive feelings, and support throughout the years. Twenty-one years, to be precise. To my colleagues in the IJN Sign Language Group: Jeremy Kuhn, Charlotte Hauser, Justine Mertz, and Kyle Duarte, who filled my days at work with stimulating scientific exchange and joyful camaraderie. At the ENS and the IJN, thanks to Vincent Gaudefroy, Lucie Raveaux, and Nathalie Evin. Last but not least, thank you to my amazing family. Their support has been unconditional. First of all, I would like to thank my mom, dad, and sister, who taught me to have great aspirations and to have greater perseverance in order to achieve them. Thanks to my large extended family, to the many relatives on both my father's and my mother's side. A special thanks to my Deaf uncles and aunts-Nicola and Santina, Ludovico and Giuseppina, and Angelo and Filomena-who watched me grow up. I hope to make them proud as the first Deaf person in the family to have a PhD. Many thanks go to my parents-in-law Antonina and Giuseppe, my brothers-in-law Alessandro and Tommaso, my sister-in-law Mariella, my niece Martina, and my nephew Giuseppe. Words cannot express how grateful I am to my wife Valentina Aristodemo, my traveling partner on this long journey. I have stopped counting how many times I have fallen, because every time it has happened, there is my wife to pull me up again. I could never alone have climbed as many mountains as we have together-the last of these mountains, of course, being this dissertation.

We report an experiment addressing the comprehension of LIS interrogatives in three adult populations with different times of exposure to sign language: native signers, early signers and late signers. We investigate whether delayed exposure to language affects comprehension of interrogatives and whether there is an advantage for subject dependencies over object dependencies, as systematically reported for spoken languages. The answer to the first question is positive: there is evidence that natives outperform non-native signers, confirming permanent effects of delayed exposure to sign language even decades after childhood. However, the performance in subject interrogatives was lower than in object interrogatives in all groups of participants. We discuss several possible reasons for this unexpected finding.

Plurality in signed languages may be expressed in several ways –including the insertion of a numeral or quantifier within a construction, by the reduplication of a sign, or the incorporation of a plural classifier (Fischer, 1973; Baker-Shenk & Cokely, 1980; Hoffmeister, 1984; and Pfau & Steinbach, 2006). Examining plurality, there are differences when we compare classifiers in a signed language to those classifiers that occur in spoken languages. Aside from the obvious difference in modality (spoken vs. signed), one of the most notable differences is the fact that while many spoken languages employ numeral classifiers to express plurality, signed languages express plurality through the use of “classificatory verbs of handling, motion and location” (Aikenvald, 2003; p.15). These verbs of handling, motion and location differ from numeral classifiers of spoken languages not only in their form but also in the fact that they may optionally occur with a numeral. This is in contrast to spo...

As stated in Kendon (2004: 265), the more extensive and salient the nonmanuals are, the more expressive the information conveyed by the gesture may be. In line with this view, the present paper will study the use of palm-ups and the co-occurring nonmanuals in both Belgian spoken French and French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB). To the best of our knowledge, only McKee & Wallingford (2012) propose a first table of comparison between a SL and a SpL. Our purpose is to go a step further by: (i) comparing the frequency of palm-ups per minute with regard to the number of signs in LSFB and to the number of words and gestures in spoken French, (ii) studying the alignment of the palm-ups with nonmanuals in scope and timing in both modalities, (iii) investigating the nonmanuals that are layered with palm-ups in order to see the functions that such combinations fulfill in each language, (iv) carrying out the first cross-linguistic study on the use of palm-ups between a spoken and a signed langua...

Bimodal bilinguals sometimes use code-blending, simultaneous production of (parts of) an utterance in both speech and sign. We ask what spoken language material is blended with entity and handling depicting signs (DS), representations of action that combine discrete components with iconic depictions of aspects of a referenced event in a gradient, analog manner. We test a semantic approach that DS may involve a demonstration, involving a predicate which obligatorily includes a modificational demonstrational component, and adopt a syntactic analysis which crucially distinguishes between entity and handling DS. Given the model of bilingualism we use, we expect both DS can be produced with speech that occurs in the verbal structure, along with vocal gestures, but speech that includes a subject is only expected to be blended with handling DS, not entity. The data we report from three Codas, native bimodal bilinguals, from the United States and one from Brazil conform with this prediction.

It has been suggested that there may be an age advantage for the acquisition of sign language relative to spoken language for two reasons: (1) language in the visual-motor modality may be easier to access, recall, and produce than language in the auditory-vocal modality and (2) the continuity in form between gesture and sign language may promote the transition from prelinguistic to linguistic communication. These suggestions have provided the impetus for many language intervention programs for children with intellectual impairments. This article reports on hearing identical twins with Down syndrome who have Deaf parents. The twins are bilingual, having been exposed since infancy to both English and British Sign Language. Analyses of tests and spontaneous data reveal a high degree of fluency in gesture but impairments in both languages, suggesting that the fundamental problems of children with Down syndrome are not modalityspecific and that there are discontinuities between gesture and language. British Sign Language (BSL) is one of the natural languages of Deaf people. Manual signs taken from these natural languages are used extensively with people who are not deaf, but who have difficulties with the reception or production of spoken language. These include a large proportion of die population of children and adults who have intellectual impairments (Kiernan,

Iconicity should be taken into account for the comparison of lexical similarity in sign languages, but it should be excluded for the study of their historical relatedness. Woodward (1978, 1991, 1993) modified Swadesh list by excluding body part signs and pronouns for historical comparison. In addition to body part signs and pronouns, signs with similar iconic motivation are also excluded in this study for historical comparison. The preliminary result shows that Taiwan Sign Language (TSL) and Japanese Sign Language (JSL) can be considered as languages of the same family, while TSL and Chinese Sign Language (CSL) can not. The similarity between TSL and CSL are due to language contact. TSL and American Sign Language (ASL) are least similar. Signs with iconic motivation are prevalent and universal in sign languages. Lexical comparison of sign languages can also be conducted with respect to various types of iconic devices even for historically unrelated languages such as TSL and ASL.

With strong oralist promotion by the Hong Kong government, the deaf of deaf children receive speech training from early age and later become sign bilinguals. Exposing to two languages simultaneously, HKSL-Cantonese bilingual children have to acquire the conflicting head-directionalities of TP and NegP, namely head-final TP/NegP in HKSL and head-initial TP/NegP in Cantonese. Given that adult code-blended T/Neg allows both Head-Comp and Comp-Head orders (Fung 2012, Fung & Tang 2012), HKSL-Cantonese children also have to deal with bilingual language mixing input. In this case study, CC, who has severe hearing loss, was born to deaf parents with a deaf younger sibling. Living together with his hearing grandmother, he also receives daily speech input via the use of hearing aids. In addition, the visits of deaf bilingual researchers exposed him to natural HKSL and mixed HKSL-Cantonese with both code-switching and code-blending. Given the dual input of HKSL and Cantonese as well as mixing

Unlike many grammatical nonmanual markings, nonmanual adverbials do not have communicative counterparts (Anderson & Reilly, 1998). This grammatical category therefore allows us to examine how children develop their linguistic facial behaviors. Unfortunately, only few studies on the acquisition of nonmanual adverbials, largely on ASL, have been conducted (cf. Anderson & Reilly, 1998; Reilly & Anderson, 2002; Reilly 2006). These studies show that deaf children of deaf parents acquiring ASL as their native language master manual adverbs earlier than nonmanual adverbials which share the same meaning with the manual one. Nonmanual adverbials emerge at around age 2;0. By age 3;6, nonmanual adverbials become more productive. 33 deaf children in the Jockey Club Sign Bilingualism and Co-enrolment in Deaf Education Programme (JC-SLCO), aged from 5 to 13, participated in the current study. They were divided into 6 cohorts in accordance with their years of enrollment in the JC-SLCO program. All of them were exposed to both Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) and Cantonese at school. Most of them were late learners of HKSL. The production and comprehension data were collected by means of a video/animation description and a video-signing matching task, respectively. Generally speaking, these deaf children performed better in comprehension than in production. They are not sensitive

Purpose: Deaf people in Taiwan use Mandarin Chinese and Taiwan Sign Language (TSL) to communicate. This study explored the nature of the representations that deaf signers use during Chinese reading by using the invisible boundary and display change technique, in which a preview word is replaced by a target word when the reader's eyes cross an invisible boundary to the left of the target word. A target word processed faster when the preview is related to the target word than when it is unrelated to the target word is considered a preview benefit effect. This study investigated the preview benefits of phonological information for Taiwan Sign Language (TSLph). Methods: This study invited 35 deaf signers and 30 hearing readers. We manipulated preview words with either phonologically related or unrelated words in TSL. Different TSL lexicons can be corresponded to either Chinese one-character or two-character words. To clarify the influence of inconsistency in translation of TSL to Chinese words on Chinese reading among deaf signers, one-character and two-character words frequently signed in TSL were used in Experiment 1 and 2, respectively. Experiment 1 had 45 reasonable sentences (30 with preview words and 15 with identical words) and 30 nonsensical sentences, and Experiment 2 had 36 reasonable sentences (24 with preview words and 12 with identical words) and 24 unreasonable sentences. The subjects were asked to decide whether a given sentence was reasonable according to their comprehension of the whole sentence. Findings: When considering the previous fixation location, the results demonstrated TSLph preview benefits among deaf signers for one-character words in the first-fixation duration (FFD) and first-run fixation count and for two-character Chinese words in FFD and gaze duration during a sentence comprehension task. The inconsistency in the

Purpose: Deaf people in Taiwan use Mandarin Chinese and Taiwan Sign Language (TSL) to communicate. This study explored the nature of the representations that deaf signers use during Chinese reading by using the invisible boundary and display change technique, in which a preview word is replaced by a target word when the reader’s eyes cross an invisible boundary to the left of the target word. A target word processed faster when the preview is related to the target word than when it is unrelated to the target word is considered a preview benefit effect. This study investigated the preview benefits of phonological information for Taiwan Sign Language (TSLph). Methods: This study invited 35 deaf signers and 30 hearing readers. We manipulated preview words with either phonologically related or unrelated words in TSL. Different TSL lexicons can be corresponded to either Chinese one-character or two-character words. To clarify the influence of inconsistency in translation of TSL to Chines...

This study investigated the language use of deaf adult bilinguals in conversation with each other in workplace settings, and with their deaf and hearing children in home settings. The aim was to gain insight into the Auslan-English language contact outcomes that might be found in these settings, and what factors influenced these outcomes. The results indicated that the most unique use of language by deaf bilinguals was that of simultaneous use of both spoken English and Auslan, and it was this simultaneous use which facilitated the two examples of code-switching (defined as a complete change of language from Auslan to spoken English) that was found in the data. The other two contact outcomes of significance were frequent transference of English into Auslan, and the equally frequent use of fingerspelling, which has a pivotal role in filling the gap in Auslan, a language with no orthographic form. The study also revealed that Auslan (a signed language) was the language in which many issues of identity were expressed by deaf bilinguals, regardless of whether the individual was a first or second language learner of Auslan. The results confirmed that these language and identity factors did influence the language contact outcomes. This is to certify that (1) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD, (2) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, (3) the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. Meredith Bartlett The Australian Deaf Community refers to the community of deaf people in Australia who share the language, Auslan, and identify as being culturally deaf and members of this community. Auslan is the acronym for Australian Sign Language, the language of the Australian deaf community. ASL is the acronym for American Sign Language, the language used by the American deaf community. BSL is the acronym for British Sign Language, the language of the deaf community in Britain. ISL is the acronym for Irish Sign Language, the language of the Irish deaf community. All of the above sign languages are distinct and separate languages, although Auslan is derived from BSL and ISL brought to Australia by deaf convicts and settlers. ASL developed from the French Sign Language taken to the U.S.A. by deaf teachers and priests from France. Chapter 3 contains a brief summary of the history of Australian Sign Language and the stages of development as it grew to become the language Auslan, as it is used today. Native Sign Language is a term used in the literature to refer to a sign language acquired naturally by a deaf or hearing child as their first language. (The implication is that the parents or caregivers of the children are themselves deaf). The natural acquisition of a sign language as a first language can be compared to the way the spoken language of the dominant hearing community is learned with difficulty, as a second language, by a deaf child. It can also be compared to the way a deaf child in a hearing family learns the sign language of the deaf community from peers or with hearing parents who learn Auslan in a community course, and hence provide language modelling in Auslan with great difficulty. Cued Speech is a contrived system of handshapes produced near the mouth to represent speech phonemes, and to assist in the recognition and teaching of spoken English. (See Chapter 3). Signed English is the term used in Australia for the artificial, contrived system of signs that conveys spoken English in English syntax, word for word in a visual form. Simultaneous use or simultaneous communication occurs when an individual signs and speaks simultaneously. It may occur with a single word, where the sign and an equivalent spoken word are produced together, or for a longer utterance, where several words and signs, in a phrase, may be produced simultaneously (Caccamise et al, 1978). The term is often used interchangably with the term ‗total communication' which refers to signing and speaking at the same time but also includes the use of gesture, writing, and any other form of communication which the deaf child may need to draw upon to access full communication with his/her interlocutor (Denton, 1976). Throughout this thesis I have used the term simultaneous use to refer to both the process of signing and speaking simultaneously, and for the result of that process. Segregated schools for the deaf are schools providing education for deaf children only, either government or private (religious) schools. Sometimes referred to as special schools for the deaf, they followed, in the past, a curriculum that focused on the perceived ‗special educational needs' of the deaf students, rather than the curriculum used in regular, mainstream schools. Mainstream schools and colleges refer to schools that educate hearing students and do not usually cater for deaf students in any way. Nowadays, certain mainstream schools and colleges (even those that are private, or have a specialist vocational philosophy) have small deaf facilities, enabling deaf students to participate in the regular classes, while being able to withdraw for specialist intervention within the facility for the deaf. Mouth pattern refers to the movements of the mouth during the signed and/or spoken communication (Boyes-Braem & Sutton-Spence, 2001). If the comment in the data was produced simultaneously in both languages, the transcription in this study shows the words and signs as they were produced. However, if the utterance was only signed and not vocalised, but the signs were accompanied by a mouth movement, whether that was the English lip pattern (mouthing), or whether it was a conventional Auslan mouth movement (sometimes referred to as mouth gesture, I decided to continue to use the term mouth pattern. In the main, the mouth patterns were those of English word forms, even though occasionally not fully articulated. Only one instance of a non-standard mouth pattern with an Auslan sign was observed in this study, so the transcription records both kinds of mouth patterns in the same way, using English orthography. Chapter 5 discusses mouth patterns in more detail. 1.3.3 Transcription conventions Chapter 5 provides a table of the transcription conventions used in this study. As stated by Zeshan (2004: 9)-Given the fact that signed languages involve dynamic movements in threedimensional space and transmit linguistic information simultaneously via several channels (hand movements, facial expressions, head positions, body postures), adequately representing signed languages on paper has always been a major problem in signed language research‖. There are many different ways of transcribing the visual nature of a sign language in a text form, and some conventions have developed, and I have sourced many texts for my method.