Sign Language and Language Acquisition in Man and Ape. New Dimensions in Comparative Pedolinguistics.

Science.gov (United States)

Peng, Fred C. C., Ed.

A collection of research materials on sign language and primatology is presented here. The essays attempt to show that: sign language is a legitimate language that can be learned not only by humans but by nonhuman primates as well, and nonhuman primates have the capability to acquire a human language using a different mode. The following…

The role of affordances in Libras acquisition as second language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jéssica Puhl

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Libras is a visual-spatial language used by the Brazilian deaf community. Following the principles of spatiality and vision, the user of the sign language resorts more easily to stimuli from the environment than the user of the oral language. Thus, the hypothesis of this research is that the affordances (environmental properties that enable psychologically possible actions would be a facilitator element in the process of Libras acquisition. In this paper we use the narrative and interpretive-qualitative research to discuss the role of affordances in the listener perception, interpretation and action cycle in Libras acquisition as second language. Results show that the Libras’ iconic signs can be considered important affordances in the early stages of the acquisition. It is also observed the importance of the permanence in the niche where Libras is used for the sign language development.

Methodological and Theoretical Issues in the Adaptation of Sign Language Tests: An Example from the Adaptation of a Test to German Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Haug, Tobias

2012-01-01

Despite the current need for reliable and valid test instruments in different countries in order to monitor the sign language acquisition of deaf children, very few tests are commercially available that offer strong evidence for their psychometric properties. This mirrors the current state of affairs for many sign languages, where very little…

The role of syllables in sign language production.

Science.gov (United States)

Baus, Cristina; Gutiérrez, Eva; Carreiras, Manuel

2014-01-01

The aim of the present study was to investigate the functional role of syllables in sign language and how the different phonological combinations influence sign production. Moreover, the influence of age of acquisition was evaluated. Deaf signers (native and non-native) of Catalan Signed Language (LSC) were asked in a picture-sign interference task to sign picture names while ignoring distractor-signs with which they shared two phonological parameters (out of three of the main sign parameters: Location, Movement, and Handshape). The results revealed a different impact of the three phonological combinations. While no effect was observed for the phonological combination Handshape-Location, the combination Handshape-Movement slowed down signing latencies, but only in the non-native group. A facilitatory effect was observed for both groups when pictures and distractors shared Location-Movement. Importantly, linguistic models have considered this phonological combination to be a privileged unit in the composition of signs, as syllables are in spoken languages. Thus, our results support the functional role of syllable units during phonological articulation in sign language production.

Sign language comprehension: the case of Spanish sign language.

Science.gov (United States)

Rodríguez Ortiz, I R

2008-01-01

This study aims to answer the question, how much of Spanish Sign Language interpreting deaf individuals really understand. Study sampling included 36 deaf people (deafness ranging from severe to profound; variety depending on the age at which they learned sign language) and 36 hearing people who had good knowledge of sign language (most were interpreters). Sign language comprehension was assessed using passages of secondary level. After being exposed to the passages, the participants had to tell what they had understood about them, answer a set of related questions, and offer a title for the passage. Sign language comprehension by deaf participants was quite acceptable but not as good as that by hearing signers who, unlike deaf participants, were not only late learners of sign language as a second language but had also learned it through formal training.

Impacts of Visual Sonority and Handshape Markedness on Second Language Learning of American Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Williams, Joshua T.; Newman, Sharlene D.

2016-01-01

The roles of visual sonority and handshape markedness in sign language acquisition and production were investigated. In Experiment 1, learners were taught sign-nonobject correspondences that varied in sign movement sonority and handshape markedness. Results from a sign-picture matching task revealed that high sonority signs were more accurately…

Comic Books: A Learning Tool for Meaningful Acquisition of Written Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Guimarães, Cayley; Oliveira Machado, Milton César; Fernandes, Sueli F.

2018-01-01

Deaf people use Sign Language (SL) for intellectual development, communications and other human activities that are mediated by language--such as the expression of complex and abstract thoughts and feelings; and for literature, culture and knowledge. The Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) is a complete linguistic system of visual-spatial manner,…

THE BENEFIT OF EARLY EXPOSURE TO SIGN LANGUAGE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ljubica PRIBANIKJ

2009-11-01

Full Text Available Early diagnosis and intervention are now recognized as undeniable rights of deaf and hard-of-hearing children and their families. The deaf child’s family must have the opportunity to socialize with deaf children and deaf adults. The deaf child’s family must also have access to all the information on the general development of their child, and to special information on hearing impairment, communication options and linguistic development of the deaf child.The critical period hypothesis for language acquisition proposes that the outcome of language acquisition is not uniform over the lifespan but rather is best during early childhood. Individuals who learned sign language from birth performed better on linguistic and memory tasks than individuals who did not start learning sign language until after puberty. The old prejudice that the deaf child must learn the spoken language at a very young age, and that sign language can wait because it can be easily learned by any person at any age, cannot be maintained anymore.The cultural approach to deafness emphasizes three necessary components in the development of a deaf child: 1. stimulating early communication using natural sign language within the family and interacting with the Deaf community; 2. bilingual / bicultural education and 3. ensuring deaf persons’ rights to enjoy the services of high quality interpreters throughout their education from kindergarten to university. This new view of the phenomenology of deafness means that the environment needs to be changed in order to meet the deaf person’s needs, not the contrary.

Sign language typology: The contribution of rural sign languages

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Vos, C.; Pfau, R.

2015-01-01

Since the 1990s, the field of sign language typology has shown that sign languages exhibit typological variation at all relevant levels of linguistic description. These initial typological comparisons were heavily skewed toward the urban sign languages of developed countries, mostly in the Western

From gesture to sign language: conventionalization of classifier constructions by adult hearing learners of British Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Marshall, Chloë R; Morgan, Gary

2015-01-01

There has long been interest in why languages are shaped the way they are, and in the relationship between sign language and gesture. In sign languages, entity classifiers are handshapes that encode how objects move, how they are located relative to one another, and how multiple objects of the same type are distributed in space. Previous studies have shown that hearing adults who are asked to use only manual gestures to describe how objects move in space will use gestures that bear some similarities to classifiers. We investigated how accurately hearing adults, who had been learning British Sign Language (BSL) for 1-3 years, produce and comprehend classifiers in (static) locative and distributive constructions. In a production task, learners of BSL knew that they could use their hands to represent objects, but they had difficulty choosing the same, conventionalized, handshapes as native signers. They were, however, highly accurate at encoding location and orientation information. Learners therefore show the same pattern found in sign-naïve gesturers. In contrast, handshape, orientation, and location were comprehended with equal (high) accuracy, and testing a group of sign-naïve adults showed that they too were able to understand classifiers with higher than chance accuracy. We conclude that adult learners of BSL bring their visuo-spatial knowledge and gestural abilities to the tasks of understanding and producing constructions that contain entity classifiers. We speculate that investigating the time course of adult sign language acquisition might shed light on how gesture became (and, indeed, becomes) conventionalized during the genesis of sign languages. Copyright © 2014 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Malaysian sign language dataset for automatic sign language ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences. Journal Home · ABOUT ... SL recognition system based on the Malaysian Sign Language (MSL). Implementation results are described. Keywords: sign language; pattern classification; database.

Visual Sonority Modulates Infants' Attraction to Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Stone, Adam; Petitto, Laura-Ann; Bosworth, Rain

2018-01-01

The infant brain may be predisposed to identify perceptually salient cues that are common to both signed and spoken languages. Recent theory based on spoken languages has advanced sonority as one of these potential language acquisition cues. Using a preferential looking paradigm with an infrared eye tracker, we explored visual attention of hearing…

Name signs in Danish Sign Language

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bakken Jepsen, Julie

2018-01-01

in spoken languages, where a person working as a blacksmith by his friends might be referred to as ‘The Blacksmith’ (‘Here comes the Blacksmith!’) instead of using the person’s first name. Name signs are found not only in Danish Sign Language (DSL) but in most, if not all, sign languages studied to date....... This article provides examples of the creativity of the users of Danish Sign Language, including some of the processes in the use of metaphors, visual motivation and influence from Danish when name signs are created.......A name sign is a personal sign assigned to deaf, hearing impaired and hearing persons who enter the deaf community. The mouth action accompanying the sign reproduces all or part of the formal first name that the person has received by baptism or naming. Name signs can be compared to nicknames...

Inuit Sign Language: a contribution to sign language typology

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schuit, J.; Baker, A.; Pfau, R.

2011-01-01

Sign language typology is a fairly new research field and typological classifications have yet to be established. For spoken languages, these classifications are generally based on typological parameters; it would thus be desirable to establish these for sign languages. In this paper, different

Iconicity as a general property of language: evidence from spoken and signed languages

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pamela Perniss

2010-12-01

Full Text Available Current views about language are dominated by the idea of arbitrary connections between linguistic form and meaning. However, if we look beyond the more familiar Indo-European languages and also include both spoken and signed language modalities, we find that motivated, iconic form-meaning mappings are, in fact, pervasive in language. In this paper, we review the different types of iconic mappings that characterize languages in both modalities, including the predominantly visually iconic mappings in signed languages. Having shown that iconic mapping are present across languages, we then proceed to review evidence showing that language users (signers and speakers exploit iconicity in language processing and language acquisition. While not discounting the presence and importance of arbitrariness in language, we put forward the idea that iconicity need also be recognized as a general property of language, which may serve the function of reducing the gap between linguistic form and conceptual representation to allow the language system to hook up to motor and perceptual experience.

Information structure in Russian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kimmelman, V.

2014-01-01

This dissertation explores Information Structure in two sign languages: Sign Language of the Netherlands and Russian Sign Language. Based on corpus data and elicitation tasks we show how topic and focus are expressed in these languages. In particular, we show that topics can be marked syntactically

Sign language perception research for improving automatic sign language recognition

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ten Holt, G.A.; Arendsen, J.; De Ridder, H.; Van Doorn, A.J.; Reinders, M.J.T.; Hendriks, E.A.

2009-01-01

Current automatic sign language recognition (ASLR) seldom uses perceptual knowledge about the recognition of sign language. Using such knowledge can improve ASLR because it can give an indication which elements or phases of a sign are important for its meaning. Also, the current generation of

Brain correlates of constituent structure in sign language comprehension.

Science.gov (United States)

Moreno, Antonio; Limousin, Fanny; Dehaene, Stanislas; Pallier, Christophe

2018-02-15

During sentence processing, areas of the left superior temporal sulcus, inferior frontal gyrus and left basal ganglia exhibit a systematic increase in brain activity as a function of constituent size, suggesting their involvement in the computation of syntactic and semantic structures. Here, we asked whether these areas play a universal role in language and therefore contribute to the processing of non-spoken sign language. Congenitally deaf adults who acquired French sign language as a first language and written French as a second language were scanned while watching sequences of signs in which the size of syntactic constituents was manipulated. An effect of constituent size was found in the basal ganglia, including the head of the caudate and the putamen. A smaller effect was also detected in temporal and frontal regions previously shown to be sensitive to constituent size in written language in hearing French subjects (Pallier et al., 2011). When the deaf participants read sentences versus word lists, the same network of language areas was observed. While reading and sign language processing yielded identical effects of linguistic structure in the basal ganglia, the effect of structure was stronger in all cortical language areas for written language relative to sign language. Furthermore, cortical activity was partially modulated by age of acquisition and reading proficiency. Our results stress the important role of the basal ganglia, within the language network, in the representation of the constituent structure of language, regardless of the input modality. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Sign Language Test Development: Results of an International Survey

Science.gov (United States)

Haug, Tobias

2015-01-01

Sign language test development is a relatively new field within sign linguistics, motivated by the practical need for assessment instruments to evaluate language development in different groups of learners (L1, L2). Due to the lack of research on the structure and acquisition of many sign languages, developing an assessment instrument poses…

Age of acquisition effects on the functional organization of language in the adult brain.

Science.gov (United States)

Mayberry, Rachel I; Chen, Jen-Kai; Witcher, Pamela; Klein, Denise

2011-10-01

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we neuroimaged deaf adults as they performed two linguistic tasks with sentences in American Sign Language, grammatical judgment and phonemic-hand judgment. Participants' age-onset of sign language acquisition ranged from birth to 14 years; length of sign language experience was substantial and did not vary in relation to age of acquisition. For both tasks, a more left lateralized pattern of activation was observed, with activity for grammatical judgment being more anterior than that observed for phonemic-hand judgment, which was more posterior by comparison. Age of acquisition was linearly and negatively related to activation levels in anterior language regions and positively related to activation levels in posterior visual regions for both tasks. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Planning Sign Languages: Promoting Hearing Hegemony? Conceptualizing Sign Language Standardization

Science.gov (United States)

Eichmann, Hanna

2009-01-01

In light of the absence of a codified standard variety in British Sign Language and German Sign Language ("Deutsche Gebardensprache") there have been repeated calls for the standardization of both languages primarily from outside the Deaf community. The paper is based on a recent grounded theory study which explored perspectives on sign…

Discourses of prejudice in the professions: the case of sign languages.

Science.gov (United States)

Humphries, Tom; Kushalnagar, Poorna; Mathur, Gaurav; Napoli, Donna Jo; Padden, Carol; Rathmann, Christian; Smith, Scott

2017-09-01

There is no evidence that learning a natural human language is cognitively harmful to children. To the contrary, multilingualism has been argued to be beneficial to all. Nevertheless, many professionals advise the parents of deaf children that their children should not learn a sign language during their early years, despite strong evidence across many research disciplines that sign languages are natural human languages. Their recommendations are based on a combination of misperceptions about (1) the difficulty of learning a sign language, (2) the effects of bilingualism, and particularly bimodalism, (3) the bona fide status of languages that lack a written form, (4) the effects of a sign language on acquiring literacy, (5) the ability of technologies to address the needs of deaf children and (6) the effects that use of a sign language will have on family cohesion. We expose these misperceptions as based in prejudice and urge institutions involved in educating professionals concerned with the healthcare, raising and educating of deaf children to include appropriate information about first language acquisition and the importance of a sign language for deaf children. We further urge such professionals to advise the parents of deaf children properly, which means to strongly advise the introduction of a sign language as soon as hearing loss is detected. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

Social Interaction Affects Neural Outcomes of Sign Language Learning As a Foreign Language in Adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Yusa, Noriaki; Kim, Jungho; Koizumi, Masatoshi; Sugiura, Motoaki; Kawashima, Ryuta

2017-01-01

Children naturally acquire a language in social contexts where they interact with their caregivers. Indeed, research shows that social interaction facilitates lexical and phonological development at the early stages of child language acquisition. It is not clear, however, whether the relationship between social interaction and learning applies to adult second language acquisition of syntactic rules. Does learning second language syntactic rules through social interactions with a native speaker or without such interactions impact behavior and the brain? The current study aims to answer this question. Adult Japanese participants learned a new foreign language, Japanese sign language (JSL), either through a native deaf signer or via DVDs. Neural correlates of acquiring new linguistic knowledge were investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The participants in each group were indistinguishable in terms of their behavioral data after the instruction. The fMRI data, however, revealed significant differences in the neural activities between two groups. Significant activations in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) were found for the participants who learned JSL through interactions with the native signer. In contrast, no cortical activation change in the left IFG was found for the group who experienced the same visual input for the same duration via the DVD presentation. Given that the left IFG is involved in the syntactic processing of language, spoken or signed, learning through social interactions resulted in an fMRI signature typical of native speakers: activation of the left IFG. Thus, broadly speaking, availability of communicative interaction is necessary for second language acquisition and this results in observed changes in the brain.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE (ASL AND BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE (BSL

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zora JACHOVA

2008-06-01

Full Text Available In the communication of deaf people between them­selves and hearing people there are three ba­sic as­pects of interaction: gesture, finger signs and writing. The gesture is a conditionally agreed manner of communication with the help of the hands followed by face and body mimic. The ges­ture and the move­ments pre-exist the speech and they had the purpose to mark something, and later to emphasize the speech expression.Stokoe was the first linguist that realised that the signs are not a whole that can not be analysed. He analysed signs in insignificant parts that he called “chemeres”, and many linguists today call them pho­nemes. He created three main phoneme catego­ries: hand position, location and movement.Sign languages as spoken languages have back­ground from the distant past. They developed par­allel with the development of spoken language and undertook many historical changes. Therefore, to­day they do not represent a replacement of the spoken language, but are languages themselves in the real sense of the word.Although the structures of the English language used in USA and in Great Britain is the same, still their sign languages-ASL and BSL are different.

[Prosody, speech input and language acquisition].

Science.gov (United States)

Jungheim, M; Miller, S; Kühn, D; Ptok, M

2014-04-01

In order to acquire language, children require speech input. The prosody of the speech input plays an important role. In most cultures adults modify their code when communicating with children. Compared to normal speech this code differs especially with regard to prosody. For this review a selective literature search in PubMed and Scopus was performed. Prosodic characteristics are a key feature of spoken language. By analysing prosodic features, children gain knowledge about underlying grammatical structures. Child-directed speech (CDS) is modified in a way that meaningful sequences are highlighted acoustically so that important information can be extracted from the continuous speech flow more easily. CDS is said to enhance the representation of linguistic signs. Taking into consideration what has previously been described in the literature regarding the perception of suprasegmentals, CDS seems to be able to support language acquisition due to the correspondence of prosodic and syntactic units. However, no findings have been reported, stating that the linguistically reduced CDS could hinder first language acquisition.

Sign language: an international handbook

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pfau, R.; Steinbach, M.; Woll, B.

2012-01-01

Sign language linguists show here that all the questions relevant to the linguistic investigation of spoken languages can be asked about sign languages. Conversely, questions that sign language linguists consider - even if spoken language researchers have not asked them yet - should also be asked of

Signed languages and globalization

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hiddinga, A.; Crasborn, O.

2011-01-01

Deaf people who form part of a Deaf community communicate using a shared sign language. When meeting people from another language community, they can fall back on a flexible and highly context-dependent form of communication called international sign, in which shared elements from their own sign

What You Don't Know Can Hurt You: The Risk of Language Deprivation by Impairing Sign Language Development in Deaf Children.

Science.gov (United States)

Hall, Wyatte C

2017-05-01

A long-standing belief is that sign language interferes with spoken language development in deaf children, despite a chronic lack of evidence supporting this belief. This deserves discussion as poor life outcomes continue to be seen in the deaf population. This commentary synthesizes research outcomes with signing and non-signing children and highlights fully accessible language as a protective factor for healthy development. Brain changes associated with language deprivation may be misrepresented as sign language interfering with spoken language outcomes of cochlear implants. This may lead to professionals and organizations advocating for preventing sign language exposure before implantation and spreading misinformation. The existence of one-time-sensitive-language acquisition window means a strong possibility of permanent brain changes when spoken language is not fully accessible to the deaf child and sign language exposure is delayed, as is often standard practice. There is no empirical evidence for the harm of sign language exposure but there is some evidence for its benefits, and there is growing evidence that lack of language access has negative implications. This includes cognitive delays, mental health difficulties, lower quality of life, higher trauma, and limited health literacy. Claims of cochlear implant- and spoken language-only approaches being more effective than sign language-inclusive approaches are not empirically supported. Cochlear implants are an unreliable standalone first-language intervention for deaf children. Priorities of deaf child development should focus on healthy growth of all developmental domains through a fully-accessible first language foundation such as sign language, rather than auditory deprivation and speech skills.

Bimodal bilingualism as multisensory training?: Evidence for improved audiovisual speech perception after sign language exposure.

Science.gov (United States)

Williams, Joshua T; Darcy, Isabelle; Newman, Sharlene D

2016-02-15

The aim of the present study was to characterize effects of learning a sign language on the processing of a spoken language. Specifically, audiovisual phoneme comprehension was assessed before and after 13 weeks of sign language exposure. L2 ASL learners performed this task in the fMRI scanner. Results indicated that L2 American Sign Language (ASL) learners' behavioral classification of the speech sounds improved with time compared to hearing nonsigners. Results indicated increased activation in the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) after sign language exposure, which suggests concomitant increased phonological processing of speech. A multiple regression analysis indicated that learner's rating on co-sign speech use and lipreading ability was correlated with SMG activation. This pattern of results indicates that the increased use of mouthing and possibly lipreading during sign language acquisition may concurrently improve audiovisual speech processing in budding hearing bimodal bilinguals. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Social construction of American sign language--English interpreters.

Science.gov (United States)

McDermid, Campbell

2009-01-01

Instructors in 5 American Sign Language--English Interpreter Programs and 4 Deaf Studies Programs in Canada were interviewed and asked to discuss their experiences as educators. Within a qualitative research paradigm, their comments were grouped into a number of categories tied to the social construction of American Sign Language--English interpreters, such as learners' age and education and the characteristics of good citizens within the Deaf community. According to the participants, younger students were adept at language acquisition, whereas older learners more readily understood the purpose of lessons. Children of deaf adults were seen as more culturally aware. The participants' beliefs echoed the theories of P. Freire (1970/1970) that educators consider the reality of each student and their praxis and were responsible for facilitating student self-awareness. Important characteristics in the social construction of students included independence, an appropriate attitude, an understanding of Deaf culture, ethical behavior, community involvement, and a willingness to pursue lifelong learning.

[First language acquisition research and theories of language acquisition].

Science.gov (United States)

Miller, S; Jungheim, M; Ptok, M

2014-04-01

In principle, a child can seemingly easily acquire any given language. First language acquisition follows a certain pattern which to some extent is found to be language independent. Since time immemorial, it has been of interest why children are able to acquire language so easily. Different disciplinary and methodological orientations addressing this question can be identified. A selective literature search in PubMed and Scopus was carried out and relevant monographies were considered. Different, partially overlapping phases can be distinguished in language acquisition research: whereas in ancient times, deprivation experiments were carried out to discover the "original human language", the era of diary studies began in the mid-19th century. From the mid-1920s onwards, behaviouristic paradigms dominated this field of research; interests were focussed on the determination of normal, average language acquisition. The subsequent linguistic period was strongly influenced by the nativist view of Chomsky and the constructivist concepts of Piaget. Speech comprehension, the role of speech input and the relevance of genetic disposition became the centre of attention. The interactionist concept led to a revival of the convergence theory according to Stern. Each of these four major theories--behaviourism, cognitivism, interactionism and nativism--have given valuable and unique impulses, but no single theory is universally accepted to provide an explanation of all aspects of language acquisition. Moreover, it can be critically questioned whether clinicians consciously refer to one of these theories in daily routine work and whether therapies are then based on this concept. It remains to be seen whether or not new theories of grammar, such as the so-called construction grammar (CxG), will eventually change the general concept of language acquisition.

Standardization of Sign Languages

Science.gov (United States)

Adam, Robert

2015-01-01

Over the years attempts have been made to standardize sign languages. This form of language planning has been tackled by a variety of agents, most notably teachers of Deaf students, social workers, government agencies, and occasionally groups of Deaf people themselves. Their efforts have most often involved the development of sign language books…

Gesture, sign, and language: The coming of age of sign language and gesture studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Goldin-Meadow, Susan; Brentari, Diane

2017-01-01

How does sign language compare with gesture, on the one hand, and spoken language on the other? Sign was once viewed as nothing more than a system of pictorial gestures without linguistic structure. More recently, researchers have argued that sign is no different from spoken language, with all of the same linguistic structures. The pendulum is currently swinging back toward the view that sign is gestural, or at least has gestural components. The goal of this review is to elucidate the relationships among sign language, gesture, and spoken language. We do so by taking a close look not only at how sign has been studied over the past 50 years, but also at how the spontaneous gestures that accompany speech have been studied. We conclude that signers gesture just as speakers do. Both produce imagistic gestures along with more categorical signs or words. Because at present it is difficult to tell where sign stops and gesture begins, we suggest that sign should not be compared with speech alone but should be compared with speech-plus-gesture. Although it might be easier (and, in some cases, preferable) to blur the distinction between sign and gesture, we argue that distinguishing between sign (or speech) and gesture is essential to predict certain types of learning and allows us to understand the conditions under which gesture takes on properties of sign, and speech takes on properties of gesture. We end by calling for new technology that may help us better calibrate the borders between sign and gesture.

Sociolinguistic Typology and Sign Languages

OpenAIRE

Adam Schembri; Jordan Fenlon; Kearsy Cormier; Trevor Johnston

2018-01-01

This paper examines the possible relationship between proposed social determinants of morphological ‘complexity’ and how this contributes to linguistic diversity, specifically via the typological nature of the sign languages of deaf communities. We sketch how the notion of morphological complexity, as defined by Trudgill (2011), applies to sign languages. Using these criteria, sign languages appear to be languages with low to moderate levels of morphological complexity. This may partly reflec...

Adapting tests of sign language assessment for other sign languages--a review of linguistic, cultural, and psychometric problems.

Science.gov (United States)

Haug, Tobias; Mann, Wolfgang

2008-01-01

Given the current lack of appropriate assessment tools for measuring deaf children's sign language skills, many test developers have used existing tests of other sign languages as templates to measure the sign language used by deaf people in their country. This article discusses factors that may influence the adaptation of assessment tests from one natural sign language to another. Two tests which have been adapted for several other sign languages are focused upon: the Test for American Sign Language and the British Sign Language Receptive Skills Test. A brief description is given of each test as well as insights from ongoing adaptations of these tests for other sign languages. The problems reported in these adaptations were found to be grounded in linguistic and cultural differences, which need to be considered for future test adaptations. Other reported shortcomings of test adaptation are related to the question of how well psychometric measures transfer from one instrument to another.

Numeral Incorporation in Japanese Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Ktejik, Mish

2013-01-01

This article explores the morphological process of numeral incorporation in Japanese Sign Language. Numeral incorporation is defined and the available research on numeral incorporation in signed language is discussed. The numeral signs in Japanese Sign Language are then introduced and followed by an explanation of the numeral morphemes which are…

The Legal Recognition of Sign Languages

Science.gov (United States)

De Meulder, Maartje

2015-01-01

This article provides an analytical overview of the different types of explicit legal recognition of sign languages. Five categories are distinguished: constitutional recognition, recognition by means of general language legislation, recognition by means of a sign language law or act, recognition by means of a sign language law or act including…

Using the Hands to Represent Objects in Space: Gesture as a Substrate for Signed Language Acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Janke, Vikki; Marshall, Chloë R

2017-01-01

An ongoing issue of interest in second language research concerns what transfers from a speaker's first language to their second. For learners of a sign language, gesture is a potential substrate for transfer. Our study provides a novel test of gestural production by eliciting silent gesture from novices in a controlled environment. We focus on spatial relationships, which in sign languages are represented in a very iconic way using the hands, and which one might therefore predict to be easy for adult learners to acquire. However, a previous study by Marshall and Morgan (2015) revealed that this was only partly the case: in a task that required them to express the relative locations of objects, hearing adult learners of British Sign Language (BSL) could represent objects' locations and orientations correctly, but had difficulty selecting the correct handshapes to represent the objects themselves. If hearing adults are indeed drawing upon their gestural resources when learning sign languages, then their difficulties may have stemmed from their having in manual gesture only a limited repertoire of handshapes to draw upon, or, alternatively, from having too broad a repertoire. If the first hypothesis is correct, the challenge for learners is to extend their handshape repertoire, but if the second is correct, the challenge is instead to narrow down to the handshapes appropriate for that particular sign language. 30 sign-naïve hearing adults were tested on Marshall and Morgan's task. All used some handshapes that were different from those used by native BSL signers and learners, and the set of handshapes used by the group as a whole was larger than that employed by native signers and learners. Our findings suggest that a key challenge when learning to express locative relations might be reducing from a very large set of gestural resources, rather than supplementing a restricted one, in order to converge on the conventionalized classifier system that forms part of the

Visual cortex entrains to sign language.

Science.gov (United States)

Brookshire, Geoffrey; Lu, Jenny; Nusbaum, Howard C; Goldin-Meadow, Susan; Casasanto, Daniel

2017-06-13

Despite immense variability across languages, people can learn to understand any human language, spoken or signed. What neural mechanisms allow people to comprehend language across sensory modalities? When people listen to speech, electrophysiological oscillations in auditory cortex entrain to slow ([Formula: see text]8 Hz) fluctuations in the acoustic envelope. Entrainment to the speech envelope may reflect mechanisms specialized for auditory perception. Alternatively, flexible entrainment may be a general-purpose cortical mechanism that optimizes sensitivity to rhythmic information regardless of modality. Here, we test these proposals by examining cortical coherence to visual information in sign language. First, we develop a metric to quantify visual change over time. We find quasiperiodic fluctuations in sign language, characterized by lower frequencies than fluctuations in speech. Next, we test for entrainment of neural oscillations to visual change in sign language, using electroencephalography (EEG) in fluent speakers of American Sign Language (ASL) as they watch videos in ASL. We find significant cortical entrainment to visual oscillations in sign language sign is strongest over occipital and parietal cortex, in contrast to speech, where coherence is strongest over the auditory cortex. Nonsigners also show coherence to sign language, but entrainment at frontal sites is reduced relative to fluent signers. These results demonstrate that flexible cortical entrainment to language does not depend on neural processes that are specific to auditory speech perception. Low-frequency oscillatory entrainment may reflect a general cortical mechanism that maximizes sensitivity to informational peaks in time-varying signals.

Sign Lowering and Phonetic Reduction in American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Tyrone, Martha E; Mauk, Claude E

2010-04-01

This study examines sign lowering as a form of phonetic reduction in American Sign Language. Phonetic reduction occurs in the course of normal language production, when instead of producing a carefully articulated form of a word, the language user produces a less clearly articulated form. When signs are produced in context by native signers, they often differ from the citation forms of signs. In some cases, phonetic reduction is manifested as a sign being produced at a lower location than in the citation form. Sign lowering has been documented previously, but this is the first study to examine it in phonetic detail. The data presented here are tokens of the sign WONDER, as produced by six native signers, in two phonetic contexts and at three signing rates, which were captured by optoelectronic motion capture. The results indicate that sign lowering occurred for all signers, according to the factors we manipulated. Sign production was affected by several phonetic factors that also influence speech production, namely, production rate, phonetic context, and position within an utterance. In addition, we have discovered interesting variations in sign production, which could underlie distinctions in signing style, analogous to accent or voice quality in speech.

The Subsystem of Numerals in Catalan Sign Language: Description and Examples from a Psycholinguistic Study

Science.gov (United States)

Fuentes, Mariana; Tolchinsky, Liliana

2004-01-01

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…

Comparing the Picture Exchange Communication System and Sign Language Training for Children with Autism

Science.gov (United States)

Tincani, Matt

2004-01-01

This study compared the effects of Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) and sign language training on the acquisition of mands (requests for preferred items) of students with autism. The study also examined the differential effects of each modality on students' acquisition of vocal behavior. Participants were two elementary school students…

Language Policy and Planning: The Case of Italian Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Geraci, Carlo

2012-01-01

Italian Sign Language (LIS) is the name of the language used by the Italian Deaf community. The acronym LIS derives from Lingua italiana dei segni ("Italian language of signs"), although nowadays Italians refers to LIS as Lingua dei segni italiana, reflecting the more appropriate phrasing "Italian sign language." Historically,…

First Language Acquisition and Teaching

Science.gov (United States)

Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena

2011-01-01

"First language acquisition" commonly means the acquisition of a single language in childhood, regardless of the number of languages in a child's natural environment. Language acquisition is variously viewed as predetermined, wondrous, a source of concern, and as developing through formal processes. "First language teaching" concerns schooling in…

Awareness of Deaf Sign Language and Gang Signs.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, Cynthia; Morgan, Robert L.

There have been increasing incidents of innocent people who use American Sign Language (ASL) or another form of sign language being victimized by gang violence due to misinterpretation of ASL hand formations. ASL is familiar to learners with a variety of disabilities, particularly those in the deaf community. The problem is that gang members have…

Adaptation of a Vocabulary Test from British Sign Language to American Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Mann, Wolfgang; Roy, Penny; Morgan, Gary

2016-01-01

This study describes the adaptation process of a vocabulary knowledge test for British Sign Language (BSL) into American Sign Language (ASL) and presents results from the first round of pilot testing with 20 deaf native ASL signers. The web-based test assesses the strength of deaf children's vocabulary knowledge by means of different mappings of…

Kinship in Mongolian Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Geer, Leah

2011-01-01

Information and research on Mongolian Sign Language is scant. To date, only one dictionary is available in the United States (Badnaa and Boll 1995), and even that dictionary presents only a subset of the signs employed in Mongolia. The present study describes the kinship system used in Mongolian Sign Language (MSL) based on data elicited from…

Automatic sign language recognition inspired by human sign perception

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ten Holt, G.A.

2010-01-01

Automatic sign language recognition is a relatively new field of research (since ca. 1990). Its objectives are to automatically analyze sign language utterances. There are several issues within the research area that merit investigation: how to capture the utterances (cameras, magnetic sensors,

Structural brain changes linked to delayed first language acquisition in congenitally deaf individuals.

Science.gov (United States)

Pénicaud, Sidonie; Klein, Denise; Zatorre, Robert J; Chen, Jen-Kai; Witcher, Pamela; Hyde, Krista; Mayberry, Rachel I

2013-02-01

Early language experience is essential for the development of a high level of linguistic proficiency in adulthood and in a recent functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) experiment, we showed that a delayed acquisition of a first language results in changes in the functional organization of the adult brain (Mayberry et al., 2011). The present study extends the question to explore if delayed acquisition of a first language also modulates the structural development of the brain. To this end, we carried out anatomical MRI in the same group of congenitally deaf individuals who varied in the age of acquisition of a first language, American Sign Language -ASL (Mayberry et al., 2011) and used a neuroanatomical technique, Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM), to explore changes in gray and white matter concentrations across the brain related to the age of first language acquisition. The results show that delayed acquisition of a first language is associated with changes in tissue concentration in the occipital cortex close to the area that has been found to show functional recruitment during language processing in these deaf individuals with a late age of acquisition. These findings suggest that a lack of early language experience affects not only the functional but also the anatomical organization of the brain. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Vocabulary Instruction through Books Read in American Sign Language for English-Language Learners with Hearing Loss

Science.gov (United States)

Cannon, Joanna E.; Fredrick, Laura D.; Easterbrooks, Susan R.

2010-01-01

Reading to children improves vocabulary acquisition through incidental exposure, and it is a best practice for parents and teachers of children who can hear. Children who are deaf or hard of hearing are at risk for not learning vocabulary as such. This article describes a procedure for using books read on DVD in American Sign Language with…

Sign Language and Spoken Language for Children With Hearing Loss: A Systematic Review.

Science.gov (United States)

Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth M; Hamel, Candyce; Stevens, Adrienne; Pratt, Misty; Moher, David; Doucet, Suzanne P; Neuss, Deirdre; Bernstein, Anita; Na, Eunjung

2016-01-01

Permanent hearing loss affects 1 to 3 per 1000 children and interferes with typical communication development. Early detection through newborn hearing screening and hearing technology provide most children with the option of spoken language acquisition. However, no consensus exists on optimal interventions for spoken language development. To conduct a systematic review of the effectiveness of early sign and oral language intervention compared with oral language intervention only for children with permanent hearing loss. An a priori protocol was developed. Electronic databases (eg, Medline, Embase, CINAHL) from 1995 to June 2013 and gray literature sources were searched. Studies in English and French were included. Two reviewers screened potentially relevant articles. Outcomes of interest were measures of auditory, vocabulary, language, and speech production skills. All data collection and risk of bias assessments were completed and then verified by a second person. Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) was used to judge the strength of evidence. Eleven cohort studies met inclusion criteria, of which 8 included only children with severe to profound hearing loss with cochlear implants. Language development was the most frequently reported outcome. Other reported outcomes included speech and speech perception. Several measures and metrics were reported across studies, and descriptions of interventions were sometimes unclear. Very limited, and hence insufficient, high-quality evidence exists to determine whether sign language in combination with oral language is more effective than oral language therapy alone. More research is needed to supplement the evidence base. Copyright © 2016 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Language Acquisition without an Acquisition Device

Science.gov (United States)

O'Grady, William

2012-01-01

Most explanatory work on first and second language learning assumes the primacy of the acquisition phenomenon itself, and a good deal of work has been devoted to the search for an "acquisition device" that is specific to humans, and perhaps even to language. I will consider the possibility that this strategy is misguided and that language…

Real-time lexical comprehension in young children learning American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

MacDonald, Kyle; LaMarr, Todd; Corina, David; Marchman, Virginia A; Fernald, Anne

2018-04-16

When children interpret spoken language in real time, linguistic information drives rapid shifts in visual attention to objects in the visual world. This language-vision interaction can provide insights into children's developing efficiency in language comprehension. But how does language influence visual attention when the linguistic signal and the visual world are both processed via the visual channel? Here, we measured eye movements during real-time comprehension of a visual-manual language, American Sign Language (ASL), by 29 native ASL-learning children (16-53 mos, 16 deaf, 13 hearing) and 16 fluent deaf adult signers. All signers showed evidence of rapid, incremental language comprehension, tending to initiate an eye movement before sign offset. Deaf and hearing ASL-learners showed similar gaze patterns, suggesting that the in-the-moment dynamics of eye movements during ASL processing are shaped by the constraints of processing a visual language in real time and not by differential access to auditory information in day-to-day life. Finally, variation in children's ASL processing was positively correlated with age and vocabulary size. Thus, despite competition for attention within a single modality, the timing and accuracy of visual fixations during ASL comprehension reflect information processing skills that are important for language acquisition regardless of language modality. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Schizophrenia and second language acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Bersudsky, Yuly; Fine, Jonathan; Gorjaltsan, Igor; Chen, Osnat; Walters, Joel

2005-05-01

Language acquisition involves brain processes that can be affected by lesions or dysfunctions in several brain systems and second language acquisition may depend on different brain substrates than first language acquisition in childhood. A total of 16 Russian immigrants to Israel, 8 diagnosed schizophrenics and 8 healthy immigrants, were compared. The primary data for this study were collected via sociolinguistic interviews. The two groups use language and learn language in very much the same way. Only exophoric reference and blocking revealed meaningful differences between the schizophrenics and healthy counterparts. This does not mean of course that schizophrenia does not induce language abnormalities. Our study focuses on those aspects of language that are typically difficult to acquire in second language acquisition. Despite the cognitive compromises in schizophrenia and the manifest atypicalities in language of speakers with schizophrenia, the process of acquiring a second language seems relatively unaffected by schizophrenia.

Eye Gaze in Creative Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Kaneko, Michiko; Mesch, Johanna

2013-01-01

This article discusses the role of eye gaze in creative sign language. Because eye gaze conveys various types of linguistic and poetic information, it is an intrinsic part of sign language linguistics in general and of creative signing in particular. We discuss various functions of eye gaze in poetic signing and propose a classification of gaze…

The Danish Sign Language Dictionary

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kristoffersen, Jette Hedegaard; Troelsgård, Thomas

2010-01-01

The entries of the The Danish Sign Language Dictionary have four sections:  Entry header: In this section the sign headword is shown as a photo and a gloss. The first occurring location and handshape of the sign are shown as icons.  Video window: By default the base form of the sign headword...... forms of the sign (only for classifier entries). In addition to this, frequent co-occurrences with the sign are shown in this section. The signs in the The Danish Sign Language Dictionary can be looked up through:  Handshape: Particular handshapes for the active and the passive hand can be specified...... to find signs that are not themselves lemmas in the dictionary, but appear in example sentences.  Topic: Topics can be chosen as search criteria from a list of 70 topics....

Issues in Sign Language Lexicography

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zwitserlood, Inge; Kristoffersen, Jette Hedegaard; Troelsgård, Thomas

2013-01-01

ge lexicography has thus far been a relatively obscure area in the world of lexicography. Therefore, this article will contain background information on signed languages and the communities in which they are used, on the lexicography of sign languages, the situation in the Netherlands as well...

Early Sign Language Exposure and Cochlear Implantation Benefits.

Science.gov (United States)

Geers, Ann E; Mitchell, Christine M; Warner-Czyz, Andrea; Wang, Nae-Yuh; Eisenberg, Laurie S

2017-07-01

Most children with hearing loss who receive cochlear implants (CI) learn spoken language, and parents must choose early on whether to use sign language to accompany speech at home. We address whether parents' use of sign language before and after CI positively influences auditory-only speech recognition, speech intelligibility, spoken language, and reading outcomes. Three groups of children with CIs from a nationwide database who differed in the duration of early sign language exposure provided in their homes were compared in their progress through elementary grades. The groups did not differ in demographic, auditory, or linguistic characteristics before implantation. Children without early sign language exposure achieved better speech recognition skills over the first 3 years postimplant and exhibited a statistically significant advantage in spoken language and reading near the end of elementary grades over children exposed to sign language. Over 70% of children without sign language exposure achieved age-appropriate spoken language compared with only 39% of those exposed for 3 or more years. Early speech perception predicted speech intelligibility in middle elementary grades. Children without sign language exposure produced speech that was more intelligible (mean = 70%) than those exposed to sign language (mean = 51%). This study provides the most compelling support yet available in CI literature for the benefits of spoken language input for promoting verbal development in children implanted by 3 years of age. Contrary to earlier published assertions, there was no advantage to parents' use of sign language either before or after CI. Copyright © 2017 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Language Acquisition and Language Revitalization

Science.gov (United States)

O'Grady, William; Hattori, Ryoko

2016-01-01

Intergenerational transmission, the ultimate goal of language revitalization efforts, can only be achieved by (re)establishing the conditions under which an imperiled language can be acquired by the community's children. This paper presents a tutorial survey of several key points relating to language acquisition and maintenance in children,…

On the System of Person-Denoting Signs in Estonian Sign Language: Estonian Name Signs

Science.gov (United States)

Paales, Liina

2010-01-01

This article discusses Estonian personal name signs. According to study there are four personal name sign categories in Estonian Sign Language: (1) arbitrary name signs; (2) descriptive name signs; (3) initialized-descriptive name signs; (4) loan/borrowed name signs. Mostly there are represented descriptive and borrowed personal name signs among…

Dictionaries of African Sign Languages: An Overview

Science.gov (United States)

Schmaling, Constanze H.

2012-01-01

This article gives an overview of dictionaries of African sign languages that have been published to date most of which have not been widely distributed. After an introduction into the field of sign language lexicography and a discussion of some of the obstacles that authors of sign language dictionaries face in general, I will show problems…

Impacts of Visual Sonority and Handshape Markedness on Second Language Learning of American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Williams, Joshua T; Newman, Sharlene D

2016-04-01

The roles of visual sonority and handshape markedness in sign language acquisition and production were investigated. In Experiment 1, learners were taught sign-nonobject correspondences that varied in sign movement sonority and handshape markedness. Results from a sign-picture matching task revealed that high sonority signs were more accurately matched, especially when the sign contained a marked handshape. In Experiment 2, learners produced these familiar signs in addition to novel signs, which differed based on sonority and markedness. Results from a key-release reaction time reproduction task showed that learners tended to produce high sonority signs much more quickly than low sonority signs, especially when the sign contained an unmarked handshape. This effect was only present in familiar signs. Sign production accuracy rates revealed that high sonority signs were more accurate than low sonority signs. Similarly, signs with unmarked handshapes were produced more accurately than those with marked handshapes. Together, results from Experiments 1 and 2 suggested that signs that contain high sonority movements are more easily processed, both perceptually and productively, and handshape markedness plays a differential role in perception and production. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Repetitions in French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB) and Flemish Sign Language (VGT) narratives and conversations

OpenAIRE

Notarrigo, Ingrid; Meurant, Laurence; Van Herreweghe, Mieke; Vermeerbergen, Myriam

2016-01-01

Repetition was described in the nineties by a limited number of sign linguists: Vermeerbergen & De Vriendt (1994) looked at a small corpus of VGT data, Fisher & Janis (1990) analysed “verb sandwiches” in ASL and Pinsonneault (1994) “verb echos” in Quebec Sign Language. More recently the same phenomenon has been the focus of research in a growing number of signed languages, including American (Nunes and de Quadros 2008), Hong Kong (Sze 2008), Russian (Shamaro 2008), Polish (Flilipczak and Most...

Signs of the arctic: Typological aspects of Inuit Sign Language

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schuit, J.M.

2014-01-01

In this thesis, the native sign language used by deaf Inuit people is described. Inuit Sign Language (IUR) is used by less than 40 people as their sole means of communication, and is therefore highly endangered. Apart from the description of IUR as such, an additional goal is to contribute to the

The sign language skills classroom observation: a process for describing sign language proficiency in classroom settings.

Science.gov (United States)

Reeves, J B; Newell, W; Holcomb, B R; Stinson, M

2000-10-01

In collaboration with teachers and students at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), the Sign Language Skills Classroom Observation (SLSCO) was designed to provide feedback to teachers on their sign language communication skills in the classroom. In the present article, the impetus and rationale for development of the SLSCO is discussed. Previous studies related to classroom signing and observation methodology are reviewed. The procedure for developing the SLSCO is then described. This procedure included (a) interviews with faculty and students at NTID, (b) identification of linguistic features of sign language important for conveying content to deaf students, (c) development of forms for recording observations of classroom signing, (d) analysis of use of the forms, (e) development of a protocol for conducting the SLSCO, and (f) piloting of the SLSCO in classrooms. The results of use of the SLSCO with NTID faculty during a trial year are summarized.

Syntactic priming in American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Hall, Matthew L; Ferreira, Victor S; Mayberry, Rachel I

2015-01-01

Psycholinguistic studies of sign language processing provide valuable opportunities to assess whether language phenomena, which are primarily studied in spoken language, are fundamentally shaped by peripheral biology. For example, we know that when given a choice between two syntactically permissible ways to express the same proposition, speakers tend to choose structures that were recently used, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming. Here, we report two experiments testing syntactic priming of a noun phrase construction in American Sign Language (ASL). Experiment 1 shows that second language (L2) signers with normal hearing exhibit syntactic priming in ASL and that priming is stronger when the head noun is repeated between prime and target (the lexical boost effect). Experiment 2 shows that syntactic priming is equally strong among deaf native L1 signers, deaf late L1 learners, and hearing L2 signers. Experiment 2 also tested for, but did not find evidence of, phonological or semantic boosts to syntactic priming in ASL. These results show that despite the profound differences between spoken and signed languages in terms of how they are produced and perceived, the psychological representation of sentence structure (as assessed by syntactic priming) operates similarly in sign and speech.

Studies in Filipino Second Language Acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Ramos, Teresita V.

Very little research has been done on first or second language acquisition in the Philippines. Most second language learning studies cited in the literature concern acquisition of English in English-speaking communities, and most American studies of Filipino language acquisition are superficial, consisting primarily of morpheme analysis. The…

"Hearing" the signs:influence of sign language in an inclusive classroom

OpenAIRE

Monney, M. (Mariette)

2017-01-01

Abstract Finding new methods to achieve the goals of Education For All is a constant worry for primary school teachers. Multisensory methods have been proved to be efficient in the past decades. Sign Language, being a visual and kinesthetic language, could become a future educational tool to fulfill the needs of a growing diversity of learners. This ethnographic study describes how Sign Language exposure in inclusive classr...

Early Sign Language Experience Goes along with an Increased Cross-Modal Gain for Affective Prosodic Recognition in Congenitally Deaf CI Users

Science.gov (United States)

Fengler, Ineke; Delfau, Pia-Céline; Röder, Brigitte

2018-01-01

It is yet unclear whether congenitally deaf cochlear implant (CD CI) users' visual and multisensory emotion perception is influenced by their history in sign language acquisition. We hypothesized that early-signing CD CI users, relative to late-signing CD CI users and hearing, non-signing controls, show better facial expression recognition and…

Sentence Repetition in Deaf Children with Specific Language Impairment in British Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Marshall, Chloë; Mason, Kathryn; Rowley, Katherine; Herman, Rosalind; Atkinson, Joanna; Woll, Bencie; Morgan, Gary

2015-01-01

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) perform poorly on sentence repetition tasks across different spoken languages, but until now, this methodology has not been investigated in children who have SLI in a signed language. Users of a natural sign language encode different sentence meanings through their choice of signs and by altering…

Sign language for the information society: an ICT roadmap for South African Sign Language

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Olivrin, G

2008-11-01

Full Text Available of work made in SASL. There is currently no collection of the cultural and linguistic heritage of SASL. Public signage and localisation: Provision for SASL-specifi c sign names of places, people, companies and brands, as well as the localisation... upgrading the aging data and voice infrastructures for visual grade technologies, new usages of technologies will emerge in public signage and communications, in advertising and for visual languages such as SASL. Research and development in Sign Language...

Syntactic priming in American Sign Language.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Matthew L Hall

Full Text Available Psycholinguistic studies of sign language processing provide valuable opportunities to assess whether language phenomena, which are primarily studied in spoken language, are fundamentally shaped by peripheral biology. For example, we know that when given a choice between two syntactically permissible ways to express the same proposition, speakers tend to choose structures that were recently used, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming. Here, we report two experiments testing syntactic priming of a noun phrase construction in American Sign Language (ASL. Experiment 1 shows that second language (L2 signers with normal hearing exhibit syntactic priming in ASL and that priming is stronger when the head noun is repeated between prime and target (the lexical boost effect. Experiment 2 shows that syntactic priming is equally strong among deaf native L1 signers, deaf late L1 learners, and hearing L2 signers. Experiment 2 also tested for, but did not find evidence of, phonological or semantic boosts to syntactic priming in ASL. These results show that despite the profound differences between spoken and signed languages in terms of how they are produced and perceived, the psychological representation of sentence structure (as assessed by syntactic priming operates similarly in sign and speech.

Imitation, Sign Language Skill and the Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) Model.

Science.gov (United States)

Holmer, Emil; Heimann, Mikael; Rudner, Mary

2016-01-01

Imitation and language processing are closely connected. According to the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model (Rönnberg et al., 2013) pre-existing mental representation of lexical items facilitates language understanding. Thus, imitation of manual gestures is likely to be enhanced by experience of sign language. We tested this by eliciting imitation of manual gestures from deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) signing and hearing non-signing children at a similar level of language and cognitive development. We predicted that the DHH signing children would be better at imitating gestures lexicalized in their own sign language (Swedish Sign Language, SSL) than unfamiliar British Sign Language (BSL) signs, and that both groups would be better at imitating lexical signs (SSL and BSL) than non-signs. We also predicted that the hearing non-signing children would perform worse than DHH signing children with all types of gestures the first time (T1) we elicited imitation, but that the performance gap between groups would be reduced when imitation was elicited a second time (T2). Finally, we predicted that imitation performance on both occasions would be associated with linguistic skills, especially in the manual modality. A split-plot repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated that DHH signers imitated manual gestures with greater precision than non-signing children when imitation was elicited the second but not the first time. Manual gestures were easier to imitate for both groups when they were lexicalized than when they were not; but there was no difference in performance between familiar and unfamiliar gestures. For both groups, language skills at T1 predicted imitation at T2. Specifically, for DHH children, word reading skills, comprehension and phonological awareness of sign language predicted imitation at T2. For the hearing participants, language comprehension predicted imitation at T2, even after the effects of working memory capacity and motor skills were taken into

Imitation, sign language skill and the Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Emil eHolmer

2016-02-01

Full Text Available Imitation and language processing are closely connected. According to the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU model (Rönnberg et al., 2013 pre-existing mental representation of lexical items facilitates language understanding. Thus, imitation of manual gestures is likely to be enhanced by experience of sign language. We tested this by eliciting imitation of manual gestures from deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH signing and hearing non-signing children at a similar level of language and cognitive development. We predicted that the DHH signing children would be better at imitating gestures lexicalized in their own sign language (Swedish Sign Language, SSL than unfamiliar British Sign Language (BSL signs, and that both groups would be better at imitating lexical signs (SSL and BSL than non-signs. We also predicted that the hearing non-signing children would perform worse than DHH signing children with all types of gestures the first time (T1 we elicited imitation, but that the performance gap between groups would be reduced when imitation was elicited a second time (T2. Finally, we predicted that imitation performance on both occasions would be associated with linguistic skills, especially in the manual modality. A split-plot repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated that DHH signers imitated manual gestures with greater precision than non-signing children when imitation was elicited the second but not the first time. Manual gestures were easier to imitate for both groups when they were lexicalized than when they were not; but there was no difference in performance between familiar and unfamiliar gestures. For both groups, language skills at the T1 predicted imitation at T2. Specifically, for DHH children, word reading skills, comprehension and phonological awareness of sign language predicted imitation at T2. For the hearing participants, language comprehension predicted imitation at T2, even after the effects of working memory capacity and motor skills

Language policies and sign language translation and interpreting: connections between Brazil and Mozambique

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Silvana Aguiar dos Santos

2015-12-01

Full Text Available http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1984-8420.2015v16n2p101 This paper is the result of an initial attempt to establish a connection between Brazil and Mozambique regarding sign language translation and interpreting. It reviews some important landmarks in language policies aimed at sign languages in these countries and discusses how certain actions directly impact political decisions related to sign lan­guage translation and interpreting. In this context, two lines of argument are developed. The first one addresses the role of sign language translation and interpreting in the Por­tuguese-speaking context, since Portuguese is the official language in both countries; the other offers some reflections about the Deaf movements and the movements of sign lan­guage translators and interpreters, the legal recognition of sign languages, the develop­ment of undergraduate courses and the contemporary challenges in the work of transla­tion professionals. Finally, it is suggested that sign language translators and interpreters in both Brazil and Mozambique undertake efforts to press government bodies to invest in: (i area-specific training for translators and interpreters, (ii qualification of the ser­vices provided by such professionals, and (iii development of human resources at mas­ter’s and doctoral levels in order to strengthen research on sign language translation and interpreting in the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries.

Research Ethics in Sign Language Communities

Science.gov (United States)

Harris, Raychelle; Holmes, Heidi M.; Mertens, Donna M.

2009-01-01

Codes of ethics exist for most professional associations whose members do research on, for, or with sign language communities. However, these ethical codes are silent regarding the need to frame research ethics from a cultural standpoint, an issue of particular salience for sign language communities. Scholars who write from the perspective of…

An electronic dictionary of Danish Sign Language

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kristoffersen, Jette Hedegaard; Troelsgård, Thomas

2008-01-01

Compiling sign language dictionaries has in the last 15 years changed from most often being simply collecting and presenting signs for a given gloss in the surrounding vocal language to being a complicated lexicographic task including all parts of linguistic analysis, i.e. phonology, phonetics......, morphology, syntax and semantics. In this presentation we will give a short overview of the Danish Sign Language dictionary project. We will further focus on lemma selection and some of the problems connected with lemmatisation....

Opposite cerebral dominance for reading and sign language

OpenAIRE

Komakula, Sirisha. T.; Burr, Robert. B.; Lee, James N.; Anderson, Jeffrey

2010-01-01

We present a case of right hemispheric dominance for sign language but left hemispheric dominance for reading, in a left-handed deaf patient with epilepsy and left mesial temporal sclerosis. Atypical language laterality for ASL was determined by preoperative fMRI, and congruent with ASL modified WADA testing. We conclude that reading and sign language can have crossed dominance and preoperative fMRI evaluation of deaf patients should include both reading and sign language evaluations.

Spoken Language Activation Alters Subsequent Sign Language Activation in L2 Learners of American Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Williams, Joshua T.; Newman, Sharlene D.

2017-01-01

A large body of literature has characterized unimodal monolingual and bilingual lexicons and how neighborhood density affects lexical access; however there have been relatively fewer studies that generalize these findings to bimodal (M2) second language (L2) learners of sign languages. The goal of the current study was to investigate parallel…

Constraints on Negative Prefixation in Polish Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Tomaszewski, Piotr

2015-01-01

The aim of this article is to describe a negative prefix, NEG-, in Polish Sign Language (PJM) which appears to be indigenous to the language. This is of interest given the relative rarity of prefixes in sign languages. Prefixed PJM signs were analyzed on the basis of both a corpus of texts signed by 15 deaf PJM users who are either native or near-native signers, and material including a specified range of prefixed signs as demonstrated by native signers in dictionary form (i.e. signs produced in isolation, not as part of phrases or sentences). In order to define the morphological rules behind prefixation on both the phonological and morphological levels, native PJM users were consulted for their expertise. The research results can enrich models for describing processes of grammaticalization in the context of the visual-gestural modality that forms the basis for sign language structure.

Phonological Awareness for American Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Corina, David P.; Hafer, Sarah; Welch, Kearnan

2014-01-01

This paper examines the concept of phonological awareness (PA) as it relates to the processing of American Sign Language (ASL). We present data from a recently developed test of PA for ASL and examine whether sign language experience impacts the use of metalinguistic routines necessary for completion of our task. Our data show that deaf signers…

Lexical access in sign language: a computational model.

Science.gov (United States)

Caselli, Naomi K; Cohen-Goldberg, Ariel M

2014-01-01

PSYCHOLINGUISTIC THEORIES HAVE PREDOMINANTLY BEEN BUILT UPON DATA FROM SPOKEN LANGUAGE, WHICH LEAVES OPEN THE QUESTION: How many of the conclusions truly reflect language-general principles as opposed to modality-specific ones? We take a step toward answering this question in the domain of lexical access in recognition by asking whether a single cognitive architecture might explain diverse behavioral patterns in signed and spoken language. Chen and Mirman (2012) presented a computational model of word processing that unified opposite effects of neighborhood density in speech production, perception, and written word recognition. Neighborhood density effects in sign language also vary depending on whether the neighbors share the same handshape or location. We present a spreading activation architecture that borrows the principles proposed by Chen and Mirman (2012), and show that if this architecture is elaborated to incorporate relatively minor facts about either (1) the time course of sign perception or (2) the frequency of sub-lexical units in sign languages, it produces data that match the experimental findings from sign languages. This work serves as a proof of concept that a single cognitive architecture could underlie both sign and word recognition.

Lexical access in sign language: A computational model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Naomi Kenney Caselli

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Psycholinguistic theories have predominantly been built upon data from spoken language, which leaves open the question: How many of the conclusions truly reflect language-general principles as opposed to modality-specific ones? We take a step toward answering this question in the domain of lexical access in recognition by asking whether a single cognitive architecture might explain diverse behavioral patterns in signed and spoken language. Chen and Mirman (2012 presented a computational model of word processing that unified opposite effects of neighborhood density in speech production, perception, and written word recognition. Neighborhood density effects in sign language also vary depending on whether the neighbors share the same handshape or location. We present a spreading activation architecture that borrows the principles proposed by Chen and Mirman (2012, and show that if this architecture is elaborated to incorporate relatively minor facts about either 1 the time course of sign perception or 2 the frequency of sub-lexical units in sign languages, it produces data that match the experimental findings from sign languages. This work serves as a proof of concept that a single cognitive architecture could underlie both sign and word recognition.

Indonesian Sign Language Number Recognition using SIFT Algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Mahfudi, Isa; Sarosa, Moechammad; Andrie Asmara, Rosa; Azrino Gustalika, M.

2018-04-01

Indonesian sign language (ISL) is generally used for deaf individuals and poor people communication in communicating. They use sign language as their primary language which consists of 2 types of action: sign and finger spelling. However, not all people understand their sign language so that this becomes a problem for them to communicate with normal people. this problem also becomes a factor they are isolated feel from the social life. It needs a solution that can help them to be able to interacting with normal people. Many research that offers a variety of methods in solving the problem of sign language recognition based on image processing. SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transform) algorithm is one of the methods that can be used to identify an object. SIFT is claimed very resistant to scaling, rotation, illumination and noise. Using SIFT algorithm for Indonesian sign language recognition number result rate recognition to 82% with the use of a total of 100 samples image dataset consisting 50 sample for training data and 50 sample images for testing data. Change threshold value get affect the result of the recognition. The best value threshold is 0.45 with rate recognition of 94%.

The Influence of Deaf People's Dual Category Status on Sign Language Planning: The British Sign Language (Scotland) Act (2015)

Science.gov (United States)

De Meulder, Maartje

2017-01-01

Through the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act, British Sign Language (BSL) was given legal status in Scotland. The main motives for the Act were a desire to put BSL on a similar footing with Gaelic and the fact that in Scotland, BSL signers are the only group whose first language is not English who must rely on disability discrimination…

The Effects of Foreign Language Motivation in Second Language Acquisition

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

WU Miao-ru

2013-01-01

Foreign language motivation is regarded as one source of individual differences in second language acquisition. Learn-ing motivation is a dynamic mechanism which gives rise to learning activities. Learners ’motivation is a decisive factor for the suc-cess of second language acquisition.

Sociolinguistic Variation and Change in British Sign Language Number Signs: Evidence of Leveling?

Science.gov (United States)

Stamp, Rose; Schembri, Adam; Fenlon, Jordan; Rentelis, Ramas

2015-01-01

This article presents findings from the first major study to investigate lexical variation and change in British Sign Language (BSL) number signs. As part of the BSL Corpus Project, number sign variants were elicited from 249 deaf signers from eight sites throughout the UK. Age, school location, and language background were found to be significant…

Complexity in language acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Clark, Alexander; Lappin, Shalom

2013-01-01

Learning theory has frequently been applied to language acquisition, but discussion has largely focused on information theoretic problems-in particular on the absence of direct negative evidence. Such arguments typically neglect the probabilistic nature of cognition and learning in general. We argue first that these arguments, and analyses based on them, suffer from a major flaw: they systematically conflate the hypothesis class and the learnable concept class. As a result, they do not allow one to draw significant conclusions about the learner. Second, we claim that the real problem for language learning is the computational complexity of constructing a hypothesis from input data. Studying this problem allows for a more direct approach to the object of study--the language acquisition device-rather than the learnable class of languages, which is epiphenomenal and possibly hard to characterize. The learnability results informed by complexity studies are much more insightful. They strongly suggest that target grammars need to be objective, in the sense that the primitive elements of these grammars are based on objectively definable properties of the language itself. These considerations support the view that language acquisition proceeds primarily through data-driven learning of some form. Copyright © 2013 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

76 FR 14954 - National Professional Development Program; Office of English Language Acquisition, Language...

Science.gov (United States)

2011-03-18

... Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students; Overview... to provide instruction that accelerates ELs' acquisition of language, literacy, and content knowledge.... Rosalinda Barrera, Assistant Deputy Secretary and Director for English Language Acquisition, Language...

Neural Language Processing in Adolescent First-Language Learners: Longitudinal Case Studies in American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Ferjan Ramirez, Naja; Leonard, Matthew K; Davenport, Tristan S; Torres, Christina; Halgren, Eric; Mayberry, Rachel I

2016-03-01

One key question in neurolinguistics is the extent to which the neural processing system for language requires linguistic experience during early life to develop fully. We conducted a longitudinal anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography (aMEG) analysis of lexico-semantic processing in 2 deaf adolescents who had no sustained language input until 14 years of age, when they became fully immersed in American Sign Language. After 2 to 3 years of language, the adolescents' neural responses to signed words were highly atypical, localizing mainly to right dorsal frontoparietal regions and often responding more strongly to semantically primed words (Ferjan Ramirez N, Leonard MK, Torres C, Hatrak M, Halgren E, Mayberry RI. 2014. Neural language processing in adolescent first-language learners. Cereb Cortex. 24 (10): 2772-2783). Here, we show that after an additional 15 months of language experience, the adolescents' neural responses remained atypical in terms of polarity. While their responses to less familiar signed words still showed atypical localization patterns, the localization of responses to highly familiar signed words became more concentrated in the left perisylvian language network. Our findings suggest that the timing of language experience affects the organization of neural language processing; however, even in adolescence, language representation in the human brain continues to evolve with experience. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Monitoring Different Phonological Parameters of Sign Language Engages the Same Cortical Language Network but Distinctive Perceptual Ones.

Science.gov (United States)

Cardin, Velia; Orfanidou, Eleni; Kästner, Lena; Rönnberg, Jerker; Woll, Bencie; Capek, Cheryl M; Rudner, Mary

2016-01-01

The study of signed languages allows the dissociation of sensorimotor and cognitive neural components of the language signal. Here we investigated the neurocognitive processes underlying the monitoring of two phonological parameters of sign languages: handshape and location. Our goal was to determine if brain regions processing sensorimotor characteristics of different phonological parameters of sign languages were also involved in phonological processing, with their activity being modulated by the linguistic content of manual actions. We conducted an fMRI experiment using manual actions varying in phonological structure and semantics: (1) signs of a familiar sign language (British Sign Language), (2) signs of an unfamiliar sign language (Swedish Sign Language), and (3) invented nonsigns that violate the phonological rules of British Sign Language and Swedish Sign Language or consist of nonoccurring combinations of phonological parameters. Three groups of participants were tested: deaf native signers, deaf nonsigners, and hearing nonsigners. Results show that the linguistic processing of different phonological parameters of sign language is independent of the sensorimotor characteristics of the language signal. Handshape and location were processed by different perceptual and task-related brain networks but recruited the same language areas. The semantic content of the stimuli did not influence this process, but phonological structure did, with nonsigns being associated with longer RTs and stronger activations in an action observation network in all participants and in the supramarginal gyrus exclusively in deaf signers. These results suggest higher processing demands for stimuli that contravene the phonological rules of a signed language, independently of previous knowledge of signed languages. We suggest that the phonological characteristics of a language may arise as a consequence of more efficient neural processing for its perception and production.

Topics and topic prominence in two sign languages

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kimmelman, V.

2015-01-01

In this paper we describe topic marking in Russian Sign Language (RSL) and Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) and discuss whether these languages should be considered topic prominent. The formal markers of topics in RSL are sentence-initial position, a prosodic break following the topic, and

Phonological Similarity in American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Hildebrandt, Ursula; Corina, David

2002-01-01

Investigates deaf and hearing subjects' ratings of American Sign Language (ASL) signs to assess whether linguistic experience shapes judgments of sign similarity. Findings are consistent with linguistic theories that posit movement and location as core structural elements of syllable structure in ASL. (Author/VWL)

Examination of Sign Language Education According to the Opinions of Members from a Basic Sign Language Certification Program

Science.gov (United States)

Akmese, Pelin Pistav

2016-01-01

Being hearing impaired limits one's ability to communicate in that it affects all areas of development, particularly speech. One of the methods the hearing impaired use to communicate is sign language. This study, a descriptive study, intends to examine the opinions of individuals who had enrolled in a sign language certification program by using…

Segmentation of British Sign Language (BSL): Mind the gap!

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Orfanidou, E.; McQueen, J.M.; Adam, R.; Morgan, G.

2015-01-01

This study asks how users of British Sign Language (BSL) recognize individual signs in connected sign sequences. We examined whether this is achieved through modality-specific or modality-general segmentation procedures. A modality-specific feature of signed languages is that, during continuous

The Phonetics of Head and Body Movement in the Realization of American Sign Language Signs.

Science.gov (United States)

Tyrone, Martha E; Mauk, Claude E

2016-01-01

Because the primary articulators for sign languages are the hands, sign phonology and phonetics have focused mainly on them and treated other articulators as passive targets. However, there is abundant research on the role of nonmanual articulators in sign language grammar and prosody. The current study examines how hand and head/body movements are coordinated to realize phonetic targets. Kinematic data were collected from 5 deaf American Sign Language (ASL) signers to allow the analysis of movements of the hands, head and body during signing. In particular, we examine how the chin, forehead and torso move during the production of ASL signs at those three phonological locations. Our findings suggest that for signs with a lexical movement toward the head, the forehead and chin move to facilitate convergence with the hand. By comparison, the torso does not move to facilitate convergence with the hand for signs located at the torso. These results imply that the nonmanual articulators serve a phonetic as well as a grammatical or prosodic role in sign languages. Future models of sign phonetics and phonology should take into consideration the movements of the nonmanual articulators in the realization of signs. © 2016 S. Karger AG, Basel.

On the Conventionalization of Mouth Actions in Australian Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Johnston, Trevor; van Roekel, Jane; Schembri, Adam

2016-03-01

This study investigates the conventionalization of mouth actions in Australian Sign Language. Signed languages were once thought of as simply manual languages because the hands produce the signs which individually and in groups are the symbolic units most easily equated with the words, phrases and clauses of spoken languages. However, it has long been acknowledged that non-manual activity, such as movements of the body, head and the face play a very important role. In this context, mouth actions that occur while communicating in signed languages have posed a number of questions for linguists: are the silent mouthings of spoken language words simply borrowings from the respective majority community spoken language(s)? Are those mouth actions that are not silent mouthings of spoken words conventionalized linguistic units proper to each signed language, culturally linked semi-conventional gestural units shared by signers with members of the majority speaking community, or even gestures and expressions common to all humans? We use a corpus-based approach to gather evidence of the extent of the use of mouth actions in naturalistic Australian Sign Language-making comparisons with other signed languages where data is available--and the form/meaning pairings that these mouth actions instantiate.

Unsupervised Language Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

de Marcken, Carl

1996-11-01

This thesis presents a computational theory of unsupervised language acquisition, precisely defining procedures for learning language from ordinary spoken or written utterances, with no explicit help from a teacher. The theory is based heavily on concepts borrowed from machine learning and statistical estimation. In particular, learning takes place by fitting a stochastic, generative model of language to the evidence. Much of the thesis is devoted to explaining conditions that must hold for this general learning strategy to arrive at linguistically desirable grammars. The thesis introduces a variety of technical innovations, among them a common representation for evidence and grammars, and a learning strategy that separates the ``content'' of linguistic parameters from their representation. Algorithms based on it suffer from few of the search problems that have plagued other computational approaches to language acquisition. The theory has been tested on problems of learning vocabularies and grammars from unsegmented text and continuous speech, and mappings between sound and representations of meaning. It performs extremely well on various objective criteria, acquiring knowledge that causes it to assign almost exactly the same structure to utterances as humans do. This work has application to data compression, language modeling, speech recognition, machine translation, information retrieval, and other tasks that rely on either structural or stochastic descriptions of language.

Papers in Language Learning and Language Acquisition. AFinLA Yearbook 1980. No. 28.

Science.gov (United States)

Sajavaara, Kari, Ed.; And Others

Papers include: (1) "Language Acquisitional Universals: L1, L2, Pidgins, and FLT" (Henning Wode); (2) "Language Acquisition, Language Learning and the School Curriculum" (Norman F. Davies); (3) "Language Teaching and Acquisition of Communication" (Kari Sajavaara, Jaakko Lehtonen); (4) "On the Distinction between…

75 FR 13751 - Office of English Language Acquisition; Overview Information; Language Enhancement, and Academic...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-03-23

... DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of English Language Acquisition; Overview Information; Language... Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students (OELA) may... Secretary and Director, Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic...

On the System of Place Name Signs in Estonian Sign Language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Liina Paales

2011-05-01

Full Text Available A place name sign is a linguistic-cultural marker that includes both memory and landscape. The author regards toponymic signs in Estonian Sign Language as representations of images held by the Estonian Deaf community: they reflect the geographical place, the period, the relationships of the Deaf community with hearing community, and the common and distinguishing features of the two cultures perceived by community's members. Name signs represent an element of signlore, which includes various types of creative linguistic play. There are stories hidden behind the place name signs that reveal the etymological origin of place name signs and reflect the community's memory. The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, it aims to introduce Estonian place name signs as Deaf signlore forms, analyse their structure and specify the main formation methods. Secondly, it interprets place-denoting signs in the light of understanding the foundations of Estonian Sign Language, Estonian Deaf education and education history, the traditions of local Deaf communities, and also of the cultural and local traditions of the dominant hearing communities. Both perspectives - linguistic and folkloristic - are represented in the current article.

Validity of the American Sign Language Discrimination Test

Science.gov (United States)

Bochner, Joseph H.; Samar, Vincent J.; Hauser, Peter C.; Garrison, Wayne M.; Searls, J. Matt; Sanders, Cynthia A.

2016-01-01

American Sign Language (ASL) is one of the most commonly taught languages in North America. Yet, few assessment instruments for ASL proficiency have been developed, none of which have adequately demonstrated validity. We propose that the American Sign Language Discrimination Test (ASL-DT), a recently developed measure of learners' ability to…

The Mechanics of Fingerspelling: Analyzing Ethiopian Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Duarte, Kyle

2010-01-01

Ethiopian Sign Language utilizes a fingerspelling system that represents Amharic orthography. Just as each character of the Amharic abugida encodes a consonant-vowel sound pair, each sign in the Ethiopian Sign Language fingerspelling system uses handshape to encode a base consonant, as well as a combination of timing, placement, and orientation to…

Music and Early Language Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

Brandt, Anthony; Gebrian, Molly; Slevc, L. Robert

2012-01-01

Language is typically viewed as fundamental to human intelligence. Music, while recognized as a human universal, is often treated as an ancillary ability – one dependent on or derivative of language. In contrast, we argue that it is more productive from a developmental perspective to describe spoken language as a special type of music. A review of existing studies presents a compelling case that musical hearing and ability is essential to language acquisition. In addition, we challenge the prevailing view that music cognition matures more slowly than language and is more difficult; instead, we argue that music learning matches the speed and effort of language acquisition. We conclude that music merits a central place in our understanding of human development. PMID:22973254

Sign Languages of the World

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

This handbook provides information on some 38 sign languages, including basic facts about each of the languages, structural aspects, history and culture of the Deaf communities, and history of research. The papers are all original, and each has been specifically written for the volume by an expert...

Segmentation of British Sign Language (BSL): Mind the gap!

OpenAIRE

Orfanidou, E.; McQueen, J.; Adam, R.; Morgan, G.

2015-01-01

This study asks how users of British Sign Language (BSL) recognize individual signs in connected sign sequences. We examined whether this is achieved through modality-specific or modality-general segmentation procedures. A modality-specific feature of signed languages is that, during continuous signing, there are salient transitions between sign locations. We used the sign-spotting task to ask if and how BSL signers use these transitions in segmentation. A total of 96 real BSL signs were prec...

Equity in Education: Signed Language and the Courts

Science.gov (United States)

Snoddon, Kristin

2009-01-01

This article examines several legal cases in Canada, the USA, and Australia involving signed language in education for Deaf students. In all three contexts, signed language rights for Deaf students have been viewed from within a disability legislation framework that either does not extend to recognizing language rights in education or that…

First and second language acquisition: Towards a reconcillation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nau Nicole

2015-07-01

Full Text Available For the past two decades, research on first language acquisition on the one side, and on second language acquisition and learning on the other have largely developed separately, probably as a reaction to the failure of earlier attempts to use the same methods or simply transfer insights gained in one of the fields to the other. T his article argues that a reconciliation may be fruitful, provided that different aspects which have often got blurred in the discussion are considered separately. These aspects include the assessment of multilingualism and monolingualism, the age factor and the definition of “first” and “second” language, the understanding of linguistic competence and of completeness of acquisition, different forms of acquisition and learning, and uniformity vs. individual differences in the process of language acquisition. By challenging some widely held views on characteristics of first language acquisition and its differences to second language learning, more fine-grained research questions are revealed, some of which have been addressed in recent studies on language acquisition and multilingualism

A human mirror neuron system for language: Perspectives from signed languages of the deaf.

Science.gov (United States)

Knapp, Heather Patterson; Corina, David P

2010-01-01

Language is proposed to have developed atop the human analog of the macaque mirror neuron system for action perception and production [Arbib M.A. 2005. From monkey-like action recognition to human language: An evolutionary framework for neurolinguistics (with commentaries and author's response). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 105-167; Arbib M.A. (2008). From grasp to language: Embodied concepts and the challenge of abstraction. Journal de Physiologie Paris 102, 4-20]. Signed languages of the deaf are fully-expressive, natural human languages that are perceived visually and produced manually. We suggest that if a unitary mirror neuron system mediates the observation and production of both language and non-linguistic action, three prediction can be made: (1) damage to the human mirror neuron system should non-selectively disrupt both sign language and non-linguistic action processing; (2) within the domain of sign language, a given mirror neuron locus should mediate both perception and production; and (3) the action-based tuning curves of individual mirror neurons should support the highly circumscribed set of motions that form the "vocabulary of action" for signed languages. In this review we evaluate data from the sign language and mirror neuron literatures and find that these predictions are only partially upheld. 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

[Information technology in learning sign language].

Science.gov (United States)

Hernández, Cesar; Pulido, Jose L; Arias, Jorge E

2015-01-01

To develop a technological tool that improves the initial learning of sign language in hearing impaired children. The development of this research was conducted in three phases: the lifting of requirements, design and development of the proposed device, and validation and evaluation device. Through the use of information technology and with the advice of special education professionals, we were able to develop an electronic device that facilitates the learning of sign language in deaf children. This is formed mainly by a graphic touch screen, a voice synthesizer, and a voice recognition system. Validation was performed with the deaf children in the Filadelfia School of the city of Bogotá. A learning methodology was established that improves learning times through a small, portable, lightweight, and educational technological prototype. Tests showed the effectiveness of this prototype, achieving a 32 % reduction in the initial learning time for sign language in deaf children.

Historical Development of Hong Kong Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Sze, Felix; Lo, Connie; Lo, Lisa; Chu, Kenny

2013-01-01

This article traces the origins of Hong Kong Sign Language (hereafter HKSL) and its subsequent development in relation to the establishment of Deaf education in Hong Kong after World War II. We begin with a detailed description of the history of Deaf education with a particular focus on the role of sign language in such development. We then…

A Kinect-Based Sign Language Hand Gesture Recognition System for Hearing- and Speech-Impaired: A Pilot Study of Pakistani Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Halim, Zahid; Abbas, Ghulam

2015-01-01

Sign language provides hearing and speech impaired individuals with an interface to communicate with other members of the society. Unfortunately, sign language is not understood by most of the common people. For this, a gadget based on image processing and pattern recognition can provide with a vital aid for detecting and translating sign language into a vocal language. This work presents a system for detecting and understanding the sign language gestures by a custom built software tool and later translating the gesture into a vocal language. For the purpose of recognizing a particular gesture, the system employs a Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm and an off-the-shelf software tool is employed for vocal language generation. Microsoft(®) Kinect is the primary tool used to capture video stream of a user. The proposed method is capable of successfully detecting gestures stored in the dictionary with an accuracy of 91%. The proposed system has the ability to define and add custom made gestures. Based on an experiment in which 10 individuals with impairments used the system to communicate with 5 people with no disability, 87% agreed that the system was useful.

Sign Language with Babies: What Difference Does It Make?

Science.gov (United States)

Barnes, Susan Kubic

2010-01-01

Teaching sign language--to deaf or other children with special needs or to hearing children with hard-of-hearing family members--is not new. Teaching sign language to typically developing children has become increasingly popular since the publication of "Baby Signs"[R] (Goodwyn & Acredolo, 1996), now in its third edition. Attention to signing with…

Compiling a Sign Language Dictionary

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kristoffersen, Jette Hedegaard; Troelsgård, Thomas

2010-01-01

As we began working on the Danish Sign Language (DTS) Dictionary, we soon realised the truth in the statement that a lexicographer has to deal with problems within almost any linguistic discipline. Most of these problems come down to establishing simple rules, rules that can easily be applied every...... – or are they homonyms?" and so on. Very often such questions demand further research and can't be answered sufficiently through a simple standard formula. Therefore lexicographic work often seems like an endless series of compromises. Another source of compromise arises when you set out to decide which information...... this dilemma, as we see DTS learners and teachers as well as native DTS signers as our target users. In the following we will focus on four problem areas with particular relevance for the sign language lexicographer: Sign representation Spoken languague equivalents and mouth movements Example sentences Partial...

LSE-Sign: A lexical database for Spanish Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Gutierrez-Sigut, Eva; Costello, Brendan; Baus, Cristina; Carreiras, Manuel

2016-03-01

The LSE-Sign database is a free online tool for selecting Spanish Sign Language stimulus materials to be used in experiments. It contains 2,400 individual signs taken from a recent standardized LSE dictionary, and a further 2,700 related nonsigns. Each entry is coded for a wide range of grammatical, phonological, and articulatory information, including handshape, location, movement, and non-manual elements. The database is accessible via a graphically based search facility which is highly flexible both in terms of the search options available and the way the results are displayed. LSE-Sign is available at the following website: http://www.bcbl.eu/databases/lse/.

Child Language Acquisition: Contrasting Theoretical Approaches

Science.gov (United States)

Ambridge, Ben; Lieven, Elena V. M.

2011-01-01

Is children's language acquisition based on innate linguistic structures or built from cognitive and communicative skills? This book summarises the major theoretical debates in all of the core domains of child language acquisition research (phonology, word-learning, inflectional morphology, syntax and binding) and includes a complete introduction…

The Beneficial Role of L1 Spoken Language Skills on Initial L2 Sign Language Learning: Cognitive and Linguistic Predictors of M2L2 Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

Williams, Joshua T.; Darcy, Isabelle; Newman, Sharlene D.

2017-01-01

Understanding how language modality (i.e., signed vs. spoken) affects second language outcomes in hearing adults is important both theoretically and pedagogically, as it can determine the specificity of second language (L2) theory and inform how best to teach a language that uses a new modality. The present study investigated which…

Book Review : A DICTIONARY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: A COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW OF KEY TERMS IN FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kaswan Kaswan

2014-10-01

on their own to ensure that language develops. Nor is simple exposure to language enough. What is important is the interaction, both linguistic and non-linguistic, which derives from the child’s need to communicate (Tavakoli, 2012: 323.   Next factor is cognitive development which refers to “developmental changes in cognitive abilities, processes, and structures” (Tavakoli, 2012: 62. The best known theory of childhood cognitive development is that of Jean Piaget. For Piaget language was both a social and a cognitive phenomenon. It was not an independent modular faculty but part of general cognitive and perceptual processing. Language acquisition was thus dependent upon cognitive development. The child’s level of language was determined by whether it had acquired certain fundamental concepts and by the complexity of the processing operations of which it was capable. Piaget suggested that cognitive development fell into four phases. They constitute a gradual progression in which previous stages are revisited cyclically. The age at which a particular child goes through each stage varies considerably. Each stage has implications for linguistic development.   1 Sensorimotor (birth to 2 years. The child achieves recognition of object permanence (the fact that an object still exists even when it is not in view. This is a prerequisite to the formation of concepts (including lexical concepts.   2 Preoperational (2 to 6 or 7 years. The child’s behavior reflects egocentric thought: it is unable to identify with the views of others. The child’s language progresses through echolalia (repeating others’ utterances to monologues (speaking aloud what would normally be private thoughts. It may engage in collective monologues with other children, in which participants appear to be taking turns, but express their own ideas without responding to those of others.   3 Concrete operational (6/7 to 11/12. The child’s vocabulary shows signs of organization into

Recognition of sign language gestures using neural networks

OpenAIRE

Simon Vamplew

2007-01-01

This paper describes the structure and performance of the SLARTI sign language recognition system developed at the University of Tasmania. SLARTI uses a modular architecture consisting of multiple feature-recognition neural networks and a nearest-neighbour classifier to recognise Australian sign language (Auslan) hand gestures.

Introduction: Sign Language, Sustainable Development, and Equal Opportunities

Science.gov (United States)

De Clerck, Goedele A. M.

2017-01-01

This article has been excerpted from "Introduction: Sign Language, Sustainable Development, and Equal Opportunities" (De Clerck) in "Sign Language, Sustainable Development, and Equal Opportunities: Envisioning the Future for Deaf Students" (G. A. M. De Clerck & P. V. Paul (Eds.) 2016). The idea of exploring various…

Legal and Ethical Imperatives for Using Certified Sign Language Interpreters in Health Care Settings: How to "Do No Harm" When "It's (All) Greek" (Sign Language) to You.

Science.gov (United States)

Nonaka, Angela M

2016-09-01

Communication obstacles in health care settings adversely impact patient-practitioner interactions by impeding service efficiency, reducing mutual trust and satisfaction, or even endangering health outcomes. When interlocutors are separated by language, interpreters are required. The efficacy of interpreting, however, is constrained not just by interpreters' competence but also by health care providers' facility working with interpreters. Deaf individuals whose preferred form of communication is a signed language often encounter communicative barriers in health care settings. In those environments, signing Deaf people are entitled to equal communicative access via sign language interpreting services according to the Americans with Disabilities Act and Executive Order 13166, the Limited English Proficiency Initiative. Yet, litigation in states across the United States suggests that individual and institutional providers remain uncertain about their legal obligations to provide equal communicative access. This article discusses the legal and ethical imperatives for using professionally certified (vs. ad hoc) sign language interpreters in health care settings. First outlining the legal terrain governing provision of sign language interpreting services, the article then describes different types of "sign language" (e.g., American Sign Language vs. manually coded English) and different forms of "sign language interpreting" (e.g., interpretation vs. transliteration vs. translation; simultaneous vs. consecutive interpreting; individual vs. team interpreting). This is followed by reviews of the formal credentialing process and of specialized forms of sign language interpreting-that is, certified deaf interpreting, trilingual interpreting, and court interpreting. After discussing practical steps for contracting professional sign language interpreters and addressing ethical issues of confidentiality, this article concludes by offering suggestions for working more effectively

Input and Intake in Language Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

Gagliardi, Ann C.

2012-01-01

This dissertation presents an approach for a productive way forward in the study of language acquisition, sealing the rift between claims of an innate linguistic hypothesis space and powerful domain general statistical inference. This approach breaks language acquisition into its component parts, distinguishing the input in the environment from…

Children creating language: how Nicaraguan sign language acquired a spatial grammar.

Science.gov (United States)

Senghas, A; Coppola, M

2001-07-01

It has long been postulated that language is not purely learned, but arises from an interaction between environmental exposure and innate abilities. The innate component becomes more evident in rare situations in which the environment is markedly impoverished. The present study investigated the language production of a generation of deaf Nicaraguans who had not been exposed to a developed language. We examined the changing use of early linguistic structures (specifically, spatial modulations) in a sign language that has emerged since the Nicaraguan group first came together: In tinder two decades, sequential cohorts of learners systematized the grammar of this new sign language. We examined whether the systematicity being added to the language stems from children or adults: our results indicate that such changes originate in children aged 10 and younger Thus, sequential cohorts of interacting young children collectively: possess the capacity not only to learn, but also to create, language.

Structural borrowing: The case of Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) and ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) is a visual gestural language used by members of the deaf community in Kenya. Kiswahili on the other hand is a Bantu language that is used as the national language of Kenya. The two are world's apart, one being a spoken language and the other a signed language and thus their “… basic ...

Pointing and Reference in Sign Language and Spoken Language: Anchoring vs. Identifying

Science.gov (United States)

Barberà, Gemma; Zwets, Martine

2013-01-01

In both signed and spoken languages, pointing serves to direct an addressee's attention to a particular entity. This entity may be either present or absent in the physical context of the conversation. In this article we focus on pointing directed to nonspeaker/nonaddressee referents in Sign Language of the Netherlands (Nederlandse Gebarentaal,…

Neural correlates of British sign language comprehension: spatial processing demands of topographic language.

Science.gov (United States)

MacSweeney, Mairéad; Woll, Bencie; Campbell, Ruth; Calvert, Gemma A; McGuire, Philip K; David, Anthony S; Simmons, Andrew; Brammer, Michael J

2002-10-01

In all signed languages used by deaf people, signs are executed in "sign space" in front of the body. Some signed sentences use this space to map detailed "real-world" spatial relationships directly. Such sentences can be considered to exploit sign space "topographically." Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we explored the extent to which increasing the topographic processing demands of signed sentences was reflected in the differential recruitment of brain regions in deaf and hearing native signers of the British Sign Language. When BSL signers performed a sentence anomaly judgement task, the occipito-temporal junction was activated bilaterally to a greater extent for topographic than nontopographic processing. The differential role of movement in the processing of the two sentence types may account for this finding. In addition, enhanced activation was observed in the left inferior and superior parietal lobules during processing of topographic BSL sentences. We argue that the left parietal lobe is specifically involved in processing the precise configuration and location of hands in space to represent objects, agents, and actions. Importantly, no differences in these regions were observed when hearing people heard and saw English translations of these sentences. Despite the high degree of similarity in the neural systems underlying signed and spoken languages, exploring the linguistic features which are unique to each of these broadens our understanding of the systems involved in language comprehension.

Recognition of sign language gestures using neural networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Simon Vamplew

2007-04-01

Full Text Available This paper describes the structure and performance of the SLARTI sign language recognition system developed at the University of Tasmania. SLARTI uses a modular architecture consisting of multiple feature-recognition neural networks and a nearest-neighbour classifier to recognise Australian sign language (Auslan hand gestures.

Teaching and Learning Sign Language as a “Foreign” Language ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

In recent years, there has been a growing debate in the United States, Europe, and Australia about the nature of the Deaf community as a cultural community,1 and the recognition of signed languages as “real” or “legitimate” languages comparable in all meaningful ways to spoken languages. An important element of this ...

About using serious games to teach (Portuguese) sign language

OpenAIRE

Gameiro, João Manuel Ferreira

2014-01-01

Sign language is the form of communication used by Deaf people, which, in most cases have been learned since childhood. The problem arises when a non-Deaf tries to contact with a Deaf. For example, when non-Deaf parents try to communicate with their Deaf child. In most cases, this situation tends to happen when the parents did not have time to properly learn sign language. This dissertation proposes the teaching of sign language through the usage of serious games. Currently, similar soluti...

New Perspectives on the History of American Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Shaw, Emily; Delaporte, Yves

2011-01-01

Examinations of the etymology of American Sign Language have typically involved superficial analyses of signs as they exist over a short period of time. While it is widely known that ASL is related to French Sign Language, there has yet to be a comprehensive study of this historic relationship between their lexicons. This article presents…

Deficits in narrative abilities in child British Sign Language users with specific language impairment.

Science.gov (United States)

Herman, Ros; Rowley, Katherine; Mason, Kathryn; Morgan, Gary

2014-01-01

This study details the first ever investigation of narrative skills in a group of 17 deaf signing children who have been diagnosed with disorders in their British Sign Language development compared with a control group of 17 deaf child signers matched for age, gender, education, quantity, and quality of language exposure and non-verbal intelligence. Children were asked to generate a narrative based on events in a language free video. Narratives were analysed for global structure, information content and local level grammatical devices, especially verb morphology. The language-impaired group produced shorter, less structured and grammatically simpler narratives than controls, with verb morphology particularly impaired. Despite major differences in how sign and spoken languages are articulated, narrative is shown to be a reliable marker of language impairment across the modality boundaries. © 2014 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

ERP correlates of German Sign Language processing in deaf native signers.

Science.gov (United States)

Hänel-Faulhaber, Barbara; Skotara, Nils; Kügow, Monique; Salden, Uta; Bottari, Davide; Röder, Brigitte

2014-05-10

The present study investigated the neural correlates of sign language processing of Deaf people who had learned German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS) from their Deaf parents as their first language. Correct and incorrect signed sentences were presented sign by sign on a computer screen. At the end of each sentence the participants had to judge whether or not the sentence was an appropriate DGS sentence. Two types of violations were introduced: (1) semantically incorrect sentences containing a selectional restriction violation (implausible object); (2) morphosyntactically incorrect sentences containing a verb that was incorrectly inflected (i.e., incorrect direction of movement). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 74 scalp electrodes. Semantic violations (implausible signs) elicited an N400 effect followed by a positivity. Sentences with a morphosyntactic violation (verb agreement violation) elicited a negativity followed by a broad centro-parietal positivity. ERP correlates of semantic and morphosyntactic aspects of DGS clearly differed from each other and showed a number of similarities with those observed in other signed and oral languages. These data suggest a similar functional organization of signed and oral languages despite the visual-spacial modality of sign language.

The emergence of temporal language in Nicaraguan Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Kocab, Annemarie; Senghas, Ann; Snedeker, Jesse

2016-11-01

Understanding what uniquely human properties account for the creation and transmission of language has been a central goal of cognitive science. Recently, the study of emerging sign languages, such as Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), has offered the opportunity to better understand how languages are created and the roles of the individual learner and the community of users. Here, we examined the emergence of two types of temporal language in NSL, comparing the linguistic devices for conveying temporal information among three sequential age cohorts of signers. Experiment 1 showed that while all three cohorts of signers could communicate about linearly ordered discrete events, only the second and third generations of signers successfully communicated information about events with more complex temporal structure. Experiment 2 showed that signers could discriminate between the types of temporal events in a nonverbal task. Finally, Experiment 3 investigated the ordinal use of numbers (e.g., first, second) in NSL signers, indicating that one strategy younger signers might have for accurately describing events in time might be to use ordinal numbers to mark each event. While the capacity for representing temporal concepts appears to be present in the human mind from the onset of language creation, the linguistic devices to convey temporality do not appear immediately. Evidently, temporal language emerges over generations of language transmission, as a product of individual minds interacting within a community of users. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Book Review : A DICTIONARY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: A COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW OF KEY TERMS IN FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

OpenAIRE

Kaswan Kaswan

2014-01-01

As  with language, language acquisition (LA), particularly second language acquisition (SLA)  is not simple. SLA  is complex  and paradoxical.  SLA is complex because it cannot be scrutinized using a single approach.  SLA  is complex;  nevertheless  it is  a curious fact that the study of  (SLA has historically been dominated by a single broad approach—that which goes by the name of “cognitive (Atkinson (ed), 2011). Among views on acquisition which can be characterized as cognitive are: 1...

Language Policies in Uruguay and Uruguayan Sign Language (LSU)

Science.gov (United States)

Behares, Luis Ernesto; Brovetto, Claudia; Crespi, Leonardo Peluso

2012-01-01

In the first part of this article the authors consider the policies that apply to Uruguayan Sign Language (Lengua de Senas Uruguaya; hereafter LSU) and the Uruguayan Deaf community within the general framework of language policies in Uruguay. By analyzing them succinctly and as a whole, the authors then explain twenty-first-century innovations.…

The "SignOn"-Model for Teaching Written Language to Deaf People

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marlene Hilzensauer

2012-08-01

Full Text Available This paper shows a method of teaching written language to deaf people using sign language as the language of instruction. Written texts in the target language are combined with sign language videos which provide the users with various modes of translation (words/phrases/sentences. As examples, two EU projects for English for the Deaf are presented which feature English texts and translations into the national sign languages of all the partner countries plus signed grammar explanations and interactive exercises. Both courses are web-based; the programs may be accessed free of charge via the respective homepages (without any download or log-in.

QAL: a language for nuclear physics data acquisition

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Perry, D.G.

1979-01-01

QAL is a data-acquisition language designed to facilitate the experimental interface to the LAMPF-designed Q data-acquisition system. The language constructs available are reviewed. The language is designed around the CAMAC standard and provides experimenters a language interface to the hardware which is easy to understand. Software written in the QAL language is modular and simple to modify

Legal Pathways to the Recognition of Sign Languages: A Comparison of the Catalan and Spanish Sign Language Acts

Science.gov (United States)

Quer, Josep

2012-01-01

Despite being minority languages like many others, sign languages have traditionally remained absent from the agendas of policy makers and language planning and policies. In the past two decades, though, this situation has started to change at different paces and to different degrees in several countries. In this article, the author describes the…

A Kinect based sign language recognition system using spatio-temporal features

Science.gov (United States)

Memiş, Abbas; Albayrak, Songül

2013-12-01

This paper presents a sign language recognition system that uses spatio-temporal features on RGB video images and depth maps for dynamic gestures of Turkish Sign Language. Proposed system uses motion differences and accumulation approach for temporal gesture analysis. Motion accumulation method, which is an effective method for temporal domain analysis of gestures, produces an accumulated motion image by combining differences of successive video frames. Then, 2D Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is applied to accumulated motion images and temporal domain features transformed into spatial domain. These processes are performed on both RGB images and depth maps separately. DCT coefficients that represent sign gestures are picked up via zigzag scanning and feature vectors are generated. In order to recognize sign gestures, K-Nearest Neighbor classifier with Manhattan distance is performed. Performance of the proposed sign language recognition system is evaluated on a sign database that contains 1002 isolated dynamic signs belongs to 111 words of Turkish Sign Language (TSL) in three different categories. Proposed sign language recognition system has promising success rates.

A Research on Second Language Acquisition and College English Teaching

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Changyu

2009-01-01

It was in the 1970s that American linguist S.D. Krashen created the theory of "language acquisition". The theories on second language acquisition were proposed based on the study on the second language acquisition process and its rules. Here, the second language acquisition process refers to the process in which a learner with the…

Dictionary of the Slovenian Sign Language on the WWW

OpenAIRE

Cempre, Luka; Bešir, Aleksander; Solina, Franc

2013-01-01

The article describes technical and user-interface issues of transferring the contents and functionality of the CD-ROM version of the Slovenian sing language dictionary to the web. The dictionary of Slovenian sign language consist of video clips showing the demonstra- tion of signs that deaf people use for communication, text description of the words corresponding to the signs and pictures illustrating the same word/sign. A new technical solution—a video sprite—for concatenating subsections o...

The Birth and Rebirth of "Sign Language Studies"

Science.gov (United States)

Armstrong, David F.

2012-01-01

As most readers of this journal are aware, "Sign Language Studies" ("SLS") served for many years as effectively the only serious scholarly outlet for work in the nascent field of sign language linguistics. Now reaching its 40th anniversary, the journal was founded by William C. Stokoe and then edited by him for the first quarter century of its…

Signs of Resistance: Peer Learning of Sign Languages within "Oral" Schools for the Deaf

Science.gov (United States)

Anglin-Jaffe, Hannah

2013-01-01

This article explores the role of the Deaf child as peer educator. In schools where sign languages were banned, Deaf children became the educators of their Deaf peers in a number of contexts worldwide. This paper analyses how this peer education of sign language worked in context by drawing on two examples from boarding schools for the deaf in…

How sensory-motor systems impact the neural organization for language: direct contrasts between spoken and signed language

Science.gov (United States)

Emmorey, Karen; McCullough, Stephen; Mehta, Sonya; Grabowski, Thomas J.

2014-01-01

To investigate the impact of sensory-motor systems on the neural organization for language, we conducted an H215O-PET study of sign and spoken word production (picture-naming) and an fMRI study of sign and audio-visual spoken language comprehension (detection of a semantically anomalous sentence) with hearing bilinguals who are native users of American Sign Language (ASL) and English. Directly contrasting speech and sign production revealed greater activation in bilateral parietal cortex for signing, while speaking resulted in greater activation in bilateral superior temporal cortex (STC) and right frontal cortex, likely reflecting auditory feedback control. Surprisingly, the language production contrast revealed a relative increase in activation in bilateral occipital cortex for speaking. We speculate that greater activation in visual cortex for speaking may actually reflect cortical attenuation when signing, which functions to distinguish self-produced from externally generated visual input. Directly contrasting speech and sign comprehension revealed greater activation in bilateral STC for speech and greater activation in bilateral occipital-temporal cortex for sign. Sign comprehension, like sign production, engaged bilateral parietal cortex to a greater extent than spoken language. We hypothesize that posterior parietal activation in part reflects processing related to spatial classifier constructions in ASL and that anterior parietal activation may reflect covert imitation that functions as a predictive model during sign comprehension. The conjunction analysis for comprehension revealed that both speech and sign bilaterally engaged the inferior frontal gyrus (with more extensive activation on the left) and the superior temporal sulcus, suggesting an invariant bilateral perisylvian language system. We conclude that surface level differences between sign and spoken languages should not be dismissed and are critical for understanding the neurobiology of language

How to describe mouth patterns in the Danish Sign Language Dictionary

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kristoffersen, Jette Hedegaard; Boye Niemela, Janne

2008-01-01

The Danish Sign Language dictionary project aims at creating an electronic dictionary of the basic vocabulary of Danish Sign Language. One of many issues in compiling the dictionary has been to analyse the status of mouth patterns in Danish Sign Language and, consequently, to decide at which level...

Language Acquisition and Language Learning: Developing the System of External and Internal Perspectives

Science.gov (United States)

Zascerinska, Jelena

2010-01-01

Introduction. The use of three-five languages is of the greatest importance in order to form varied cooperative networks for the creation of new knowledge. Aim of the paper is to analyze the synergy between language acquisition and language learning. Materials and Methods. The search for the synergy between language acquisition and language…

Sign language in dental education-A new nexus.

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, T; Cumberbatch, K

2017-08-14

The introduction of the landmark mandatory teaching of sign language to undergraduate dental students at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica, to bridge the communication gap between dentists and their patients is reviewed. A review of over 90 Doctor of Dental Surgery and Doctor of Dental Medicine curricula in North America, the United Kingdom, parts of Europe and Australia showed no inclusion of sign language in those curricula as a mandatory component. In Jamaica, the government's training school for dental auxiliaries served as the forerunner to the UWI's introduction of formal training of sign language in 2012. Outside of the UWI, a couple of dental schools have sign language courses, but none have a mandatory programme as the one at the UWI. Dentists the world over have had to rely on interpreters to sign with their deaf patients. The deaf in Jamaica have not appreciated the fact that dentists cannot sign and they have felt insulted and only go to the dentist in emergency situations. The mandatory inclusion of sign language in the Undergraduate Dental Programme curriculum at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, sought to establish a direct communication channel to formally bridge this gap. The programme of two sign language courses and a direct clinical competency requirement was developed during the second year of the first cohort of the newly introduced undergraduate dental programme through a collaborating partnership between two faculties on the Mona Campus. The programme was introduced in 2012 in the third year of the 5-year undergraduate dental programme. To date, two cohorts have completed the programme, and the preliminary findings from an ongoing clinical study have shown a positive impact on dental care access and dental treatment for deaf patients at the UWI Mona Dental Polyclinic. The development of a direct communication channel between dental students and the deaf that has led to increased dental

Quantifiers in Russian Sign Language

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kimmelman, V.; Paperno, D.; Keenan, E.L.

2017-01-01

After presenting some basic genetic, historical and typological information about Russian Sign Language, this chapter outlines the quantification patterns it expresses. It illustrates various semantic types of quantifiers, such as generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional,

Sign language processing and the mirror neuron system.

Science.gov (United States)

Corina, David P; Knapp, Heather

2006-05-01

In this paper we review evidence for frontal and parietal lobe involvement in sign language comprehension and production, and evaluate the extent to which these data can be interpreted within the context of a mirror neuron system for human action observation and execution. We present data from three literatures--aphasia, cortical stimulation, and functional neuroimaging. Generally, we find support for the idea that sign language comprehension and production can be viewed in the context of a broadly-construed frontal-parietal human action observation/execution system. However, sign language data cannot be fully accounted for under a strict interpretation of the mirror neuron system. Additionally, we raise a number of issues concerning the lack of specificity in current accounts of the human action observation/execution system.

Language acquisition from a biolinguistic perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Crain, Stephen; Koring, Loes; Thornton, Rosalind

2017-10-01

This paper describes the biolinguistic approach to language acquisition. We contrast the biolinguistic approach with a usage-based approach. We argue that the biolinguistic approach is superior because it provides more accurate and more extensive generalizations about the properties of human languages, as well as a better account of how children acquire human languages. To distinguish between these accounts, we focus on how child and adult language differ both in sentence production and in sentence understanding. We argue that the observed differences resist explanation using the cognitive mechanisms that are invoked by the usage-based approach. In contrast, the biolinguistic approach explains the qualitative parametric differences between child and adult language. Explaining how child and adult language differ and demonstrating that children perceive unity despite apparent diversity are two of the hallmarks of the biolinguistic approach to language acquisition. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sign language indexation within the MPEG-7 framework

Science.gov (United States)

Zaharia, Titus; Preda, Marius; Preteux, Francoise J.

1999-06-01

In this paper, we address the issue of sign language indexation/recognition. The existing tools, like on-like Web dictionaries or other educational-oriented applications, are making exclusive use of textural annotations. However, keyword indexing schemes have strong limitations due to the ambiguity of the natural language and to the huge effort needed to manually annotate a large amount of data. In order to overcome these drawbacks, we tackle sign language indexation issue within the MPEG-7 framework and propose an approach based on linguistic properties and characteristics of sing language. The method developed introduces the concept of over time stable hand configuration instanciated on natural or synthetic prototypes. The prototypes are indexed by means of a shape descriptor which is defined as a translation, rotation and scale invariant Hough transform. A very compact representation is available by considering the Fourier transform of the Hough coefficients. Such an approach has been applied to two data sets consisting of 'Letters' and 'Words' respectively. The accuracy and robustness of the result are discussed and a compete sign language description schema is proposed.

A review of theoretical perspectives on language learning and acquisition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Norbahira Mohamad Nor

2018-01-01

Full Text Available This paper reviews three main theoretical perspectives on language learning and acquisition in an attempt to elucidate how people acquire their first language (L1 and learn their second language (L2. Behaviorist, Innatist and Interactionist offer different perspectives on language learning and acquisition which influence the acceptance of how an L2 should be taught and learned. This paper also explicates the relationship between L1 and L2, and elaborates on the similarities and differences between the two. This paper concludes that there is no one solid linguistic theory which can provide the ultimate explanation of L1 acquisition and L2 learning as there are many interrelated factors that influence the success of language acquisition or language learning. The implication is that teachers should base their classroom management practices and pedagogical techniques on several theories rather than a single theory as learners learn and acquire language differently. It is hoped that this paper provides useful insights into the complex process involved in language acquisition and learning, and contributes to the increased awareness of the process among the stakeholders in the field of language education. Keywords: behaviorist, innatist, interactionist, language acquisition, second language learning

South African Sign Language and language-in-education policy in ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

KATEVG

As this passage suggests, there is extensive and growing literature, both in .... For instance, sign language mediates experience in a unique way, as of ..... entail Deaf students studying together, in a setting not unlike that provided by residential .... of ASL as a foreign language option in secondary schools and universities.

Language acquisition is model-based rather than model-free.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Felix Hao; Mintz, Toben H

2016-01-01

Christiansen & Chater (C&C) propose that learning language is learning to process language. However, we believe that the general-purpose prediction mechanism they propose is insufficient to account for many phenomena in language acquisition. We argue from theoretical considerations and empirical evidence that many acquisition tasks are model-based, and that different acquisition tasks require different, specialized models.

MODEL NATIVIS LANGUAGE ACQUISITION DEVICE (SEBUAH TEORI PEMEROLEHAN BAHASA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mamluatul Hasanah

2011-10-01

Full Text Available The ability of using mother tongue has been possessed by every child. They can master the language without getting specific education. In a short time a child has mastered the language to communicate with others. There are many theories of language acquisition. One of them that still exists is The Native Model of Language Acquisition (LAD. This theory was pioneered by Noam Chomsky. In this language naturally. This ability develops automatically when the language is used is Language Acquisition Device (LAD. LAD constitutes a hypothesis of feature of grammatical rules used progressively by a child in accordance with his psychological development.

Acquisition of speech rhythm in first language.

Science.gov (United States)

Polyanskaya, Leona; Ordin, Mikhail

2015-09-01

Analysis of English rhythm in speech produced by children and adults revealed that speech rhythm becomes increasingly more stress-timed as language acquisition progresses. Children reach the adult-like target by 11 to 12 years. The employed speech elicitation paradigm ensured that the sentences produced by adults and children at different ages were comparable in terms of lexical content, segmental composition, and phonotactic complexity. Detected differences between child and adult rhythm and between rhythm in child speech at various ages cannot be attributed to acquisition of phonotactic language features or vocabulary, and indicate the development of language-specific phonetic timing in the course of acquisition.

On Cultivating Students' Motivation in Second Language Acquisition

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

沈小平

2009-01-01

This paper attempts to explore the cultivation of motivation in second language acquisition based on shedding new light on the definition, the importance, and the classification of learners' motivation in second language acquisition.

Sign Language Web Pages

Science.gov (United States)

Fels, Deborah I.; Richards, Jan; Hardman, Jim; Lee, Daniel G.

2006-01-01

The World Wide Web has changed the way people interact. It has also become an important equalizer of information access for many social sectors. However, for many people, including some sign language users, Web accessing can be difficult. For some, it not only presents another barrier to overcome but has left them without cultural equality. The…

Flemish Sign Language Standardisation

Science.gov (United States)

Van Herreweghe, Mieke; Vermeerbergen, Myriam

2009-01-01

In 1997, the Flemish Deaf community officially rejected standardisation of Flemish Sign Language. It was a bold choice, which at the time was not in line with some of the decisions taken in the neighbouring countries. In this article, we shall discuss the choices the Flemish Deaf community has made in this respect and explore why the Flemish Deaf…

Early vocabulary development in deaf native signers: a British Sign Language adaptation of the communicative development inventories.

Science.gov (United States)

Woolfe, Tyron; Herman, Rosalind; Roy, Penny; Woll, Bencie

2010-03-01

There is a dearth of assessments of sign language development in young deaf children. This study gathered age-related scores from a sample of deaf native signing children using an adapted version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI (Fenson et al., 1994). Parental reports on children's receptive and expressive signing were collected longitudinally on 29 deaf native British Sign Language (BSL) users, aged 8-36 months, yielding 146 datasets. A smooth upward growth curve was obtained for early vocabulary development and percentile scores were derived. In the main, receptive scores were in advance of expressive scores. No gender bias was observed. Correlational analysis identified factors associated with vocabulary development, including parental education and mothers' training in BSL. Individual children's profiles showed a range of development and some evidence of a growth spurt. Clinical and research issues relating to the measure are discussed. The study has developed a valid, reliable measure of vocabulary development in BSL. Further research is needed to investigate the relationship between vocabulary acquisition in native and non-native signers.

Question-Answer Pairs in Sign Language of the Netherlands

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kimmelman, V.; Vink, L.

2017-01-01

Several sign languages of the world utilize a construction that consists of a question followed by an answer, both of which are produced by the same signer. For American Sign Language, this construction has been analyzed as a discourse-level rhetorical question construction (Hoza et al. 1997), as a

Second Language Acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

McLaughlin, Barry; Harrington, Michael

1989-01-01

A distinction is drawn between representational and processing models of second-language acquisition. The first approach is derived primarily from linguistics, the second from psychology. Both fields, it is argued, need to collaborate more fully, overcoming disciplinary narrowness in order to achieve more fruitful research. (GLR)

Second Language Acquisition and Its Pscycho-cultural Implications

OpenAIRE

Waskita, Dana

2009-01-01

Bilingualism or multilingualism may imply socioeconomic advantages. But a further literature study indicates that this may also affect psychological and cultural viewpoints. The acquisition of second language would significantly influence the mentality or perceptual framework of the language users. Consequently, this finding may inspire to the appropriate pedagogical methods in language acquisition.

Towards a Transcription System of Sign Language for 3D Virtual Agents

Science.gov (United States)

Do Amaral, Wanessa Machado; de Martino, José Mario

Accessibility is a growing concern in computer science. Since virtual information is mostly presented visually, it may seem that access for deaf people is not an issue. However, for prelingually deaf individuals, those who were deaf since before acquiring and formally learn a language, written information is often of limited accessibility than if presented in signing. Further, for this community, signing is their language of choice, and reading text in a spoken language is akin to using a foreign language. Sign language uses gestures and facial expressions and is widely used by deaf communities. To enabling efficient production of signed content on virtual environment, it is necessary to make written records of signs. Transcription systems have been developed to describe sign languages in written form, but these systems have limitations. Since they were not originally designed with computer animation in mind, in general, the recognition and reproduction of signs in these systems is an easy task only to those who deeply know the system. The aim of this work is to develop a transcription system to provide signed content in virtual environment. To animate a virtual avatar, a transcription system requires explicit enough information, such as movement speed, signs concatenation, sequence of each hold-and-movement and facial expressions, trying to articulate close to reality. Although many important studies in sign languages have been published, the transcription problem remains a challenge. Thus, a notation to describe, store and play signed content in virtual environments offers a multidisciplinary study and research tool, which may help linguistic studies to understand the sign languages structure and grammar.

Functional changes in people with different hearing status and experiences of using Chinese sign language: an fMRI study.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Qiang; Xia, Shuang; Zhao, Fei; Qi, Ji

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to assess functional changes in the cerebral cortex in people with different sign language experience and hearing status whilst observing and imitating Chinese Sign Language (CSL) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). 50 participants took part in the study, and were divided into four groups according to their hearing status and experience of using sign language: prelingual deafness signer group (PDS), normal hearing non-signer group (HnS), native signer group with normal hearing (HNS), and acquired signer group with normal hearing (HLS). fMRI images were scanned from all subjects when they performed block-designed tasks that involved observing and imitating sign language stimuli. Nine activation areas were found in response to undertaking either observation or imitation CSL tasks and three activated areas were found only when undertaking the imitation task. Of those, the PDS group had significantly greater activation areas in terms of the cluster size of the activated voxels in the bilateral superior parietal lobule, cuneate lobe and lingual gyrus in response to undertaking either the observation or the imitation CSL task than the HnS, HNS and HLS groups. The PDS group also showed significantly greater activation in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus which was also found in the HNS or the HLS groups but not in the HnS group. This indicates that deaf signers have better sign language proficiency, because they engage more actively with the phonetic and semantic elements. In addition, the activations of the bilateral superior temporal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule were only found in the PDS group and HNS group, and not in the other two groups, which indicates that the area for sign language processing appears to be sensitive to the age of language acquisition. After reading this article, readers will be able to: discuss the relationship between sign language and its neural mechanisms. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc

Expressive Vocabulary Acquisition in Children with Intellectual Disability: Speech or Manual Signs?

Science.gov (United States)

Vandereet, Joke; Maes, Bea; Lembrechts, Dirk; Zink, Inge

2011-01-01

Background: The aim of this study was to examine the degree to which children with intellectual disability (ID) depend on manual signs during their expressive vocabulary acquisition, in relation to child and social-environmental characteristics. Method: Expressive vocabulary acquisition in speech and manual signs was monitored over a 2-year period…

Event representations constrain the structure of language: Sign language as a window into universally accessible linguistic biases.

Science.gov (United States)

Strickland, Brent; Geraci, Carlo; Chemla, Emmanuel; Schlenker, Philippe; Kelepir, Meltem; Pfau, Roland

2015-05-12

According to a theoretical tradition dating back to Aristotle, verbs can be classified into two broad categories. Telic verbs (e.g., "decide," "sell," "die") encode a logical endpoint, whereas atelic verbs (e.g., "think," "negotiate," "run") do not, and the denoted event could therefore logically continue indefinitely. Here we show that sign languages encode telicity in a seemingly universal way and moreover that even nonsigners lacking any prior experience with sign language understand these encodings. In experiments 1-5, nonsigning English speakers accurately distinguished between telic (e.g., "decide") and atelic (e.g., "think") signs from (the historically unrelated) Italian Sign Language, Sign Language of the Netherlands, and Turkish Sign Language. These results were not due to participants' inferring that the sign merely imitated the action in question. In experiment 6, we used pseudosigns to show that the presence of a salient visual boundary at the end of a gesture was sufficient to elicit telic interpretations, whereas repeated movement without salient boundaries elicited atelic interpretations. Experiments 7-10 confirmed that these visual cues were used by all of the sign languages studied here. Together, these results suggest that signers and nonsigners share universally accessible notions of telicity as well as universally accessible "mapping biases" between telicity and visual form.

Regional Sign Language Varieties in Contact: Investigating Patterns of Accommodation

Science.gov (United States)

Stamp, Rose; Schembri, Adam; Evans, Bronwen G.; Cormier, Kearsy

2016-01-01

Short-term linguistic accommodation has been observed in a number of spoken language studies. The first of its kind in sign language research, this study aims to investigate the effects of regional varieties in contact and lexical accommodation in British Sign Language (BSL). Twenty-five participants were recruited from Belfast, Glasgow,…

Standardizing Chinese Sign Language for Use in Post-Secondary Education

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Christina Mien-Chun; Gerner de Garcia, Barbara; Chen-Pichler, Deborah

2009-01-01

There are over 100 languages in China, including Chinese Sign Language. Given the large population and geographical dispersion of the country's deaf community, sign variation is to be expected. Language barriers due to lexical variation may exist for deaf college students in China, who often live outside their home regions. In presenting an…

FORMS OF HAND IN SIGN LANGUAGE IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Husnija Hasanbegović

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Sign in sign language, equivalent to the word, phrase or a sentence in the oral-language, can be divided in linguistic units of lower levels: shape of the hand, place of articulation, type of movement and orientation of the palm. The first description of these units, which today is present and applicable in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H, was given by Zimmerman in 1986, who found 27 shapes of hand, while other types were not systematically developed or described. The target of this study was to determine the possible existence of other forms of hand movements present in sign language in B&H. By the method of content analysis, the 425 analyzed signs in sign launguage in B&H, confirmed their existence, but we also discovered and presented 14 new shapes of the hand. This way, we confirmed the need of implementing a detailed research, standardization and publishing of sign language in B&H, which would provide adequate conditions for its study and application, as for the deaf, and all the others who come into direct contact with them.

Segmentation of British Sign Language (BSL): mind the gap!

Science.gov (United States)

Orfanidou, Eleni; McQueen, James M; Adam, Robert; Morgan, Gary

2015-01-01

This study asks how users of British Sign Language (BSL) recognize individual signs in connected sign sequences. We examined whether this is achieved through modality-specific or modality-general segmentation procedures. A modality-specific feature of signed languages is that, during continuous signing, there are salient transitions between sign locations. We used the sign-spotting task to ask if and how BSL signers use these transitions in segmentation. A total of 96 real BSL signs were preceded by nonsense signs which were produced in either the target location or another location (with a small or large transition). Half of the transitions were within the same major body area (e.g., head) and half were across body areas (e.g., chest to hand). Deaf adult BSL users (a group of natives and early learners, and a group of late learners) spotted target signs best when there was a minimal transition and worst when there was a large transition. When location changes were present, both groups performed better when transitions were to a different body area than when they were within the same area. These findings suggest that transitions do not provide explicit sign-boundary cues in a modality-specific fashion. Instead, we argue that smaller transitions help recognition in a modality-general way by limiting lexical search to signs within location neighbourhoods, and that transitions across body areas also aid segmentation in a modality-general way, by providing a phonotactic cue to a sign boundary. We propose that sign segmentation is based on modality-general procedures which are core language-processing mechanisms.

Sign Language Recognition using Neural Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sabaheta Djogic

2014-11-01

Full Text Available – Sign language plays a great role as communication media for people with hearing difficulties.In developed countries, systems are made for overcoming a problem in communication with deaf people. This encouraged us to develop a system for the Bosnian sign language since there is a need for such system. The work is done with the use of digital image processing methods providing a system that teaches a multilayer neural network using a back propagation algorithm. Images are processed by feature extraction methods, and by masking method the data set has been created. Training is done using cross validation method for better performance thus; an accuracy of 84% is achieved.

Linguistic Policies, Linguistic Planning, and Brazilian Sign Language in Brazil

Science.gov (United States)

de Quadros, Ronice Muller

2012-01-01

This article explains the consolidation of Brazilian Sign Language in Brazil through a linguistic plan that arose from the Brazilian Sign Language Federal Law 10.436 of April 2002 and the subsequent Federal Decree 5695 of December 2005. Two concrete facts that emerged from this existing language plan are discussed: the implementation of bilingual…

Recognition of Indian Sign Language in Live Video

Science.gov (United States)

Singha, Joyeeta; Das, Karen

2013-05-01

Sign Language Recognition has emerged as one of the important area of research in Computer Vision. The difficulty faced by the researchers is that the instances of signs vary with both motion and appearance. Thus, in this paper a novel approach for recognizing various alphabets of Indian Sign Language is proposed where continuous video sequences of the signs have been considered. The proposed system comprises of three stages: Preprocessing stage, Feature Extraction and Classification. Preprocessing stage includes skin filtering, histogram matching. Eigen values and Eigen Vectors were considered for feature extraction stage and finally Eigen value weighted Euclidean distance is used to recognize the sign. It deals with bare hands, thus allowing the user to interact with the system in natural way. We have considered 24 different alphabets in the video sequences and attained a success rate of 96.25%.

Technology to Support Sign Language for Students with Disabilities

Science.gov (United States)

Donne, Vicki

2013-01-01

This systematic review of the literature provides a synthesis of research on the use of technology to support sign language. Background research on the use of sign language with students who are deaf/hard of hearing and students with low incidence disabilities, such as autism, intellectual disability, or communication disorders is provided. The…

The Influence of Language Distance and Language Status on the Acquisition of L3 Phonology

Science.gov (United States)

Llama, Raquel; Cardoso, Walcir; Collins, Laura

2010-01-01

Research in the field of third language acquisition has consistently identified two key factors which have an effect on the ways in which the two known languages may influence the acquisition of a third. These factors are language distance (typology) and language status (more specifically, second language, L2, or non-native language status). To…

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURE OF THE AMERICAN AND MACEDONIAN SIGN LANGUAGE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aleksandra KAROVSKA RISTOVSKA

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Aleksandra Karovska Ristovska, M.A. in special education and rehabilitation sciences, defended her doctoral thesis on 9 of March 2014 at the Institute of Special Education and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Philosophy, University “Ss. Cyril and Methodius”- Skopje in front of the commission composed of: Prof. Zora Jachova, PhD; Prof. Jasmina Kovachevikj, PhD; Prof. Ljudmil Spasov, PhD; Prof. Goran Ajdinski, PhD; Prof. Daniela Dimitrova Radojicikj, PhD. The Macedonian Sign Language is a natural language, used by the community of Deaf in the Republic of Macedonia. This doctoral paper aimed towards the analyses of the characteristics of the Macedonian Sign Language: its phonology, morphology and syntax as well as towards the comparison of the Macedonian and the American Sign Language. William Stokoe was the first one who in the 1960’s started the research of the American Sign Language. He set the base of the linguistic research in sign languages. The analysis of the signs in the Macedonian Sign Language was made according Stokoe’s parameters: location, hand shape and movement. Lexicostatistics showed that MSL and ASL belong to a different language family. Beside this fact, they share some iconic signs, whose presence can be attributed to the phenomena of lexical borrowings. Phonologically, in ASL and MSL, if we make a change of one of Stokoe’s categories, the meaning of the word changes as well. Non-manual signs which are grammatical markers in sign languages are identical in ASL and MSL. The production of compounds and the production of plural forms are identical in both sign languages. The inflection of verbs is also identical. The research showed that the most common order of words in ASL and MSL is the SVO order (subject-verb-object, while the SOV and OVS order can seldom be met. Questions and negative sentences are produced identically in ASL and MSL.

The Use of Sign Language Pronouns by Native-Signing Children with Autism

Science.gov (United States)

Shield, Aaron; Meier, Richard P.; Tager-Flusberg, Helen

2015-01-01

We report the first study on pronoun use by an under-studied research population, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exposed to American Sign Language from birth by their deaf parents. Personal pronouns cause difficulties for hearing children with ASD, who sometimes reverse or avoid them. Unlike speech pronouns, sign pronouns are…

The Effect of New Technologies on Sign Language Research

Science.gov (United States)

Lucas, Ceil; Mirus, Gene; Palmer, Jeffrey Levi; Roessler, Nicholas James; Frost, Adam

2013-01-01

This paper first reviews the fairly established ways of collecting sign language data. It then discusses the new technologies available and their impact on sign language research, both in terms of how data is collected and what new kinds of data are emerging as a result of technology. New data collection methods and new kinds of data are…

Some Implications of Research in Second Language Acquisition for Foreign Language Teaching.

Science.gov (United States)

Lombardo, Linda

On the continuum along which theories of first and second language acquisition are located, the two extremes represent the classic controversy of nature (nativist) vs. nurture (environmentalist), while those in the middle view language acquisition as a result of a more or less balanced interaction between innate capacities and linguistic…

Australian Aboriginal Deaf People and Aboriginal Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Power, Des

2013-01-01

Many Australian Aboriginal people use a sign language ("hand talk") that mirrors their local spoken language and is used both in culturally appropriate settings when speech is taboo or counterindicated and for community communication. The characteristics of these languages are described, and early European settlers' reports of deaf…

Identifying Overlapping Language Communities: The Case of Chiriquí and Panamanian Signed Languages

Science.gov (United States)

Parks, Elizabeth S.

2016-01-01

In this paper, I use a holographic metaphor to explain the identification of overlapping sign language communities in Panama. By visualizing Panama's complex signing communities as emitting community "hotspots" through social drama on multiple stages, I employ ethnographic methods to explore overlapping contours of Panama's sign language…

Computerized Sign Language-Based Literacy Training for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children

Science.gov (United States)

Holmer, Emil; Heimann, Mikael; Rudner, Mary

2017-01-01

Strengthening the connections between sign language and written language may improve reading skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) signing children. The main aim of the present study was to investigate whether computerized sign language-based literacy training improves reading skills in DHH signing children who are learning to read. Further,…

Linearization of weak hand holds in Russian Sign Language

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kimmelman, V.

2017-01-01

Russian Sign Language (RSL) makes use of constructions involving manual simultaneity, in particular, weak hand holds, where one hand is being held in the location and configuration of a sign, while the other simultaneously produces one sign or a sequence of several signs. In this paper, I argue that

Minimalism and Beyond: Second Language Acquisition for the Twenty-First Century.

Science.gov (United States)

Balcom, Patricia A.

2001-01-01

Provides a general overview of two books--"The Second Time Around: Minimalism and Second Language Acquisition" and "Second Language Syntax: A Generative Introduction--and shows how the respond to key issues in second language acquisition, including the process of second language acquisition, access to universal grammar, the role of…

Poetry in South African Sign Language: What is different? | Baker ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Log in or Register to get access to full text downloads. ... Poetry in a sign language can make use of literary devices just as poetry in a ... This poem illustrates well the multi-layered meaning that can be created in sign language poetry through ...

Sign Language Recognition with the Kinect Sensor Based on Conditional Random Fields

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hee-Deok Yang

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Sign language is a visual language used by deaf people. One difficulty of sign language recognition is that sign instances of vary in both motion and shape in three-dimensional (3D space. In this research, we use 3D depth information from hand motions, generated from Microsoft’s Kinect sensor and apply a hierarchical conditional random field (CRF that recognizes hand signs from the hand motions. The proposed method uses a hierarchical CRF to detect candidate segments of signs using hand motions, and then a BoostMap embedding method to verify the hand shapes of the segmented signs. Experiments demonstrated that the proposed method could recognize signs from signed sentence data at a rate of 90.4%.

Phonological reduplication in sign language: rules rule

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Iris eBerent

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Productivity—the hallmark of linguistic competence—is typically attributed to algebraic rules that support broad generalizations. Past research on spoken language has documented such generalizations in both adults and infants. But whether algebraic rules form part of the linguistic competence of signers remains unknown. To address this question, here we gauge the generalization afforded by American Sign Language (ASL. As a case study, we examine reduplication (X→XX—a rule that, inter alia, generates ASL nouns from verbs. If signers encode this rule, then they should freely extend it to novel syllables, including ones with features that are unattested in ASL. And since reduplicated disyllables are preferred in ASL, such rule should favor novel reduplicated signs. Novel reduplicated signs should thus be preferred to nonreduplicative controls (in rating, and consequently, such stimuli should also be harder to classify as nonsigns (in the lexical decision task. The results of four experiments support this prediction. These findings suggest that the phonological knowledge of signers includes powerful algebraic rules. The convergence between these conclusions and previous evidence for phonological rules in spoken language suggests that the architecture of the phonological mind is partly amodal.

Phonological memory in sign language relies on the visuomotor neural system outside the left hemisphere language network.

Science.gov (United States)

Kanazawa, Yuji; Nakamura, Kimihiro; Ishii, Toru; Aso, Toshihiko; Yamazaki, Hiroshi; Omori, Koichi

2017-01-01

Sign language is an essential medium for everyday social interaction for deaf people and plays a critical role in verbal learning. In particular, language development in those people should heavily rely on the verbal short-term memory (STM) via sign language. Most previous studies compared neural activations during signed language processing in deaf signers and those during spoken language processing in hearing speakers. For sign language users, it thus remains unclear how visuospatial inputs are converted into the verbal STM operating in the left-hemisphere language network. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the present study investigated neural activation while bilinguals of spoken and signed language were engaged in a sequence memory span task. On each trial, participants viewed a nonsense syllable sequence presented either as written letters or as fingerspelling (4-7 syllables in length) and then held the syllable sequence for 12 s. Behavioral analysis revealed that participants relied on phonological memory while holding verbal information regardless of the type of input modality. At the neural level, this maintenance stage broadly activated the left-hemisphere language network, including the inferior frontal gyrus, supplementary motor area, superior temporal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule, for both letter and fingerspelling conditions. Interestingly, while most participants reported that they relied on phonological memory during maintenance, direct comparisons between letters and fingers revealed strikingly different patterns of neural activation during the same period. Namely, the effortful maintenance of fingerspelling inputs relative to letter inputs activated the left superior parietal lobule and dorsal premotor area, i.e., brain regions known to play a role in visuomotor analysis of hand/arm movements. These findings suggest that the dorsal visuomotor neural system subserves verbal learning via sign language by relaying gestural inputs to

Balance Toward Language Mastery

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Virginia R. Heslinga

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Problems in attaining language mastery with students from diverse language backgrounds and levels of ability confront educators around the world. Experiments, research, and experience see positive effects of adding sign language in communication methods to pre-school and K-12 education. Augmentative, alternative, interactive, accommodating, and enriching strategies using sign language aid learners in balancing the skills needed to mastery of one language or multiple languages. Theories of learning that embrace play, drama, motion, repetition, socializing, and self-efficacy connect to the options for using sign language with learners in inclusive and mainstream classes. The methodical use of sign language by this researcher-educator over two and a half decades showed signing does build thinking skills, add enjoyment, stimulate communication, expand comprehension, increase vocabulary acquisition, encourage collaboration, and helps build appreciation for cultural diversity.

Lexical prediction via forward models: N400 evidence from German Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Hosemann, Jana; Herrmann, Annika; Steinbach, Markus; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina; Schlesewsky, Matthias

2013-09-01

Models of language processing in the human brain often emphasize the prediction of upcoming input-for example in order to explain the rapidity of language understanding. However, the precise mechanisms of prediction are still poorly understood. Forward models, which draw upon the language production system to set up expectations during comprehension, provide a promising approach in this regard. Here, we present an event-related potential (ERP) study on German Sign Language (DGS) which tested the hypotheses of a forward model perspective on prediction. Sign languages involve relatively long transition phases between one sign and the next, which should be anticipated as part of a forward model-based prediction even though they are semantically empty. Native speakers of DGS watched videos of naturally signed DGS sentences which either ended with an expected or a (semantically) unexpected sign. Unexpected signs engendered a biphasic N400-late positivity pattern. Crucially, N400 onset preceded critical sign onset and was thus clearly elicited by properties of the transition phase. The comprehension system thereby clearly anticipated modality-specific information about the realization of the predicted semantic item. These results provide strong converging support for the application of forward models in language comprehension. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Italian Sign Language (LIS) Poetry: Iconic Properties and Structural Regularities.

Science.gov (United States)

Russo, Tommaso; Giuranna, Rosaria; Pizzuto, Elena

2001-01-01

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…

Lexical Properties of Slovene Sign Language: A Corpus-Based Study

Science.gov (United States)

Vintar, Špela

2015-01-01

Slovene Sign Language (SZJ) has as yet received little attention from linguists. This article presents some basic facts about SZJ, its history, current status, and a description of the Slovene Sign Language Corpus and Pilot Grammar (SIGNOR) project, which compiled and annotated a representative corpus of SZJ. Finally, selected quantitative data…

A Shared Platform for Studying Second Language Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

MacWhinney, Brian

2017-01-01

The study of second language acquisition (SLA) can benefit from the same process of datasharing that has proven effective in areas such as first language acquisition and aphasiology. Researchers can work together to construct a shared platform that combines data from spoken and written corpora, online tutors, and Web-based experimentation. Many of…

Cross-Linguistic Differences in the Neural Representation of Human Language: Evidence from Users of Signed Languages

Science.gov (United States)

Corina, David P.; Lawyer, Laurel A.; Cates, Deborah

2013-01-01

Studies of deaf individuals who are users of signed languages have provided profound insight into the neural representation of human language. Case studies of deaf signers who have incurred left- and right-hemisphere damage have shown that left-hemisphere resources are a necessary component of sign language processing. These data suggest that, despite frank differences in the input and output modality of language, core left perisylvian regions universally serve linguistic function. Neuroimaging studies of deaf signers have generally provided support for this claim. However, more fine-tuned studies of linguistic processing in deaf signers are beginning to show evidence of important differences in the representation of signed and spoken languages. In this paper, we provide a critical review of this literature and present compelling evidence for language-specific cortical representations in deaf signers. These data lend support to the claim that the neural representation of language may show substantive cross-linguistic differences. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings with respect to an emerging understanding of the neurobiology of language. PMID:23293624

Age of language acquisition and cortical language organization in multilingual patients undergoing awake brain mapping.

Science.gov (United States)

Fernández-Coello, Alejandro; Havas, Viktória; Juncadella, Montserrat; Sierpowska, Joanna; Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni; Gabarrós, Andreu

2017-06-01

OBJECTIVE Most knowledge regarding the anatomical organization of multilingualism is based on aphasiology and functional imaging studies. However, the results have still to be validated by the gold standard approach, namely electrical stimulation mapping (ESM) during awake neurosurgical procedures. In this ESM study the authors describe language representation in a highly specific group of 13 multilingual individuals, focusing on how age of acquisition may influence the cortical organization of language. METHODS Thirteen patients who had a high degree of proficiency in multiple languages and were harboring lesions within the dominant, left hemisphere underwent ESM while being operated on under awake conditions. Demographic and language data were recorded in relation to age of language acquisition (for native languages and early- and late-acquired languages), neuropsychological pre- and postoperative language testing, the number and location of language sites, and overlapping distribution in terms of language acquisition time. Lesion growth patterns and histopathological characteristics, location, and size were also recorded. The distribution of language sites was analyzed with respect to age of acquisition and overlap. RESULTS The functional language-related sites were distributed in the frontal (55%), temporal (29%), and parietal lobes (16%). The total number of native language sites was 47. Early-acquired languages (including native languages) were represented in 97 sites (55 overlapped) and late-acquired languages in 70 sites (45 overlapped). The overlapping distribution was 20% for early-early, 71% for early-late, and 9% for late-late. The average lesion size (maximum diameter) was 3.3 cm. There were 5 fast-growing and 7 slow-growing lesions. CONCLUSIONS Cortical language distribution in multilingual patients is not homogeneous, and it is influenced by age of acquisition. Early-acquired languages have a greater cortical representation than languages acquired

Functional and anatomical correlates of word-, sentence-, and discourse-level integration in sign language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tomoo eInubushi

2013-10-01

Full Text Available In both vocal and sign languages, we can distinguish word-, sentence-, and discourse-level integration in terms of hierarchical processes, which integrate various elements into another higher level of constructs. In the present study, we used magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based morphometry to test three language tasks in Japanese Sign Language (JSL: word-level (Word, sentence-level (Sent, and discourse-level (Disc decision tasks. We analyzed cortical activity and gray matter volumes of Deaf signers, and clarified three major points. First, we found that the activated regions in the frontal language areas gradually expanded in the dorso-ventral axis, corresponding to a difference in linguistic units for the three tasks. Moreover, the activations in each region of the frontal language areas were incrementally modulated with the level of linguistic integration. These dual mechanisms of the frontal language areas may reflect a basic organization principle of hierarchically integrating linguistic information. Secondly, activations in the lateral premotor cortex and inferior frontal gyrus were left-lateralized. Direct comparisons among the language tasks exhibited more focal activation in these regions, suggesting their functional localization. Thirdly, we found significantly positive correlations between individual task performances and gray matter volumes in localized regions, even when the ages of acquisition of JSL and Japanese were factored out. More specifically, correlations with the performances of the Word and Sent tasks were found in the left precentral/postcentral gyrus and insula, respectively, while correlations with those of the Disc task were found in the left ventral inferior frontal gyrus and precuneus. The unification of functional and anatomical studies would thus be fruitful for understanding human language systems from the aspects of both universality and individuality.

Everyday activities and social contacts among older deaf sign language users

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Werngren-Elgström, Monica; Brandt, Ase; Iwarsson, Susanne

2006-01-01

The purpose of this study was to describe the everyday activities and social contacts among older deaf sign language users, and to investigate relationships between these phenomena and the health and well-being within this group. The study population comprised deaf sign language users, 65 years...... or older, in Sweden. Data collection was based on interviews in sign language, including open-ended questions covering everyday activities and social contacts as well as self-rated instruments measuring aspects of health and subjective well-being. The results demonstrated that the group of participants...... aspects of health and subjective well-being and the frequency of social contacts with family/relatives or visiting the deaf club and meeting friends. It is concluded that the variety of activities at the deaf clubs are important for the subjective well-being of older deaf sign language users. Further...

Towards a Sign Language Synthesizer: a Bridge to Communication Gap of the Hearing/Speech Impaired Community

Science.gov (United States)

Maarif, H. A.; Akmeliawati, R.; Gunawan, T. S.; Shafie, A. A.

2013-12-01

Sign language synthesizer is a method to visualize the sign language movement from the spoken language. The sign language (SL) is one of means used by HSI people to communicate to normal people. But, unfortunately the number of people, including the HSI people, who are familiar with sign language is very limited. These cause difficulties in the communication between the normal people and the HSI people. The sign language is not only hand movement but also the face expression. Those two elements have complimentary aspect each other. The hand movement will show the meaning of each signing and the face expression will show the emotion of a person. Generally, Sign language synthesizer will recognize the spoken language by using speech recognition, the grammatical process will involve context free grammar, and 3D synthesizer will take part by involving recorded avatar. This paper will analyze and compare the existing techniques of developing a sign language synthesizer, which leads to IIUM Sign Language Synthesizer.

Individual Differences in Language Acquisition and Processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Kidd, Evan; Donnelly, Seamus; Christiansen, Morten H

2018-02-01

Humans differ in innumerable ways, with considerable variation observable at every level of description, from the molecular to the social. Traditionally, linguistic and psycholinguistic theory has downplayed the possibility of meaningful differences in language across individuals. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that there is significant variation among speakers at any age as well as across the lifespan. Here, we review recent research in psycholinguistics, and argue that a focus on individual differences (IDs) provides a crucial source of evidence that bears strongly upon core issues in theories of the acquisition and processing of language; specifically, the role of experience in language acquisition, processing, and attainment, and the architecture of the language system. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sign Language Echolalia in Deaf Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Science.gov (United States)

Shield, Aaron; Cooley, Frances; Meier, Richard P.

2017-01-01

Purpose: We present the first study of echolalia in deaf, signing children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We investigate the nature and prevalence of sign echolalia in native-signing children with ASD, the relationship between sign echolalia and receptive language, and potential modality differences between sign and speech. Method: Seventeen…

Facilitating Exposure to Sign Languages of the World: The Case for Mobile Assisted Language Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Parton, Becky Sue

2014-01-01

Foreign sign language instruction is an important, but overlooked area of study. Thus the purpose of this paper was two-fold. First, the researcher sought to determine the level of knowledge and interest in foreign sign language among Deaf teenagers along with their learning preferences. Results from a survey indicated that over a third of the…

Information Transfer Capacity of Articulators in American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Malaia, Evie; Borneman, Joshua D; Wilbur, Ronnie B

2018-03-01

The ability to convey information is a fundamental property of communicative signals. For sign languages, which are overtly produced with multiple, completely visible articulators, the question arises as to how the various channels co-ordinate and interact with each other. We analyze motion capture data of American Sign Language (ASL) narratives, and show that the capacity of information throughput, mathematically defined, is highest on the dominant hand (DH). We further demonstrate that information transfer capacity is also significant for the non-dominant hand (NDH), and the head channel too, as compared to control channels (ankles). We discuss both redundancy and independence in articulator motion in sign language, and argue that the NDH and the head articulators contribute to the overall information transfer capacity, indicating that they are neither completely redundant to, nor completely independent of, the DH.

Evaluating Effects of Language Recognition on Language Rights and the Vitality of New Zealand Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

McKee, Rachel Locker; Manning, Victoria

2015-01-01

Status planning through legislation made New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) an official language in 2006. But this strong symbolic action did not create resources or mechanisms to further the aims of the act. In this article we discuss the extent to which legal recognition and ensuing language-planning activities by state and community have affected…

A Sign Language Screen Reader for Deaf

Science.gov (United States)

El Ghoul, Oussama; Jemni, Mohamed

Screen reader technology has appeared first to allow blind and people with reading difficulties to use computer and to access to the digital information. Until now, this technology is exploited mainly to help blind community. During our work with deaf people, we noticed that a screen reader can facilitate the manipulation of computers and the reading of textual information. In this paper, we propose a novel screen reader dedicated to deaf. The output of the reader is a visual translation of the text to sign language. The screen reader is composed by two essential modules: the first one is designed to capture the activities of users (mouse and keyboard events). For this purpose, we adopted Microsoft MSAA application programming interfaces. The second module, which is in classical screen readers a text to speech engine (TTS), is replaced by a novel text to sign (TTSign) engine. This module converts text into sign language animation based on avatar technology.

Proactive Interference & Language Change in Hearing Adult Students of American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Hoemann, Harry W.; Kreske, Catherine M.

1995-01-01

Describes a study that found, contrary to previous reports, that a strong, symmetrical release from proactive interference (PI) is the normal outcome for switches between American Sign Language (ASL) signs and English words and with switches between Manual and English alphabet characters. Subjects were college students enrolled in their first ASL…

Effects of Iconicity and Semantic Relatedness on Lexical Access in American Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Bosworth, Rain G.; Emmorey, Karen

2010-01-01

Iconicity is a property that pervades the lexicon of many sign languages, including American Sign Language (ASL). Iconic signs exhibit a motivated, nonarbitrary mapping between the form of the sign and its meaning. We investigated whether iconicity enhances semantic priming effects for ASL and whether iconic signs are recognized more quickly than…

The influence of the visual modality on language structure and conventionalization: insights from sign language and gesture.

Science.gov (United States)

Perniss, Pamela; Özyürek, Asli; Morgan, Gary

2015-01-01

For humans, the ability to communicate and use language is instantiated not only in the vocal modality but also in the visual modality. The main examples of this are sign languages and (co-speech) gestures. Sign languages, the natural languages of Deaf communities, use systematic and conventionalized movements of the hands, face, and body for linguistic expression. Co-speech gestures, though non-linguistic, are produced in tight semantic and temporal integration with speech and constitute an integral part of language together with speech. The articles in this issue explore and document how gestures and sign languages are similar or different and how communicative expression in the visual modality can change from being gestural to grammatical in nature through processes of conventionalization. As such, this issue contributes to our understanding of how the visual modality shapes language and the emergence of linguistic structure in newly developing systems. Studying the relationship between signs and gestures provides a new window onto the human ability to recruit multiple levels of representation (e.g., categorical, gradient, iconic, abstract) in the service of using or creating conventionalized communicative systems. Copyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Input Processing at First Exposure to a Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Ortega, Gerardo; Morgan, Gary

2015-01-01

There is growing interest in learners' cognitive capacities to process a second language (L2) at first exposure to the target language. Evidence suggests that L2 learners are capable of processing novel words by exploiting phonological information from their first language (L1). Hearing adult learners of a sign language, however, cannot fall back…

Variability and Variation in Second Language Acquisition Orders: A Dynamic Reevaluation

Science.gov (United States)

Lowie, Wander; Verspoor, Marjolijn

2015-01-01

The traditional morpheme order studies in second language acquisition have tried to demonstrate the existence of a fixed order of acquisition of English morphemes, regardless of the second language learner's background. Such orders have been taken as evidence of the preprogrammed nature of language acquisition. This article argues for a…

The morphosyntax of verbs of motion in serial constructions: a crosslinguistic study in three signed languages

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Benedicto, E.; Cvejanov, S.; Quer, J.; Quer, J.F.

2008-01-01

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the structural properties of serial verb constructions (SVC) in three sign languages: LSA (Lengua de Señas Argentina, Argentinean Sign Language), LSC (Llengua de Signes Catalana, Catalan Sign Language) and ASL (American Sign Language). The paper presents

Directionality effects in simultaneous language interpreting: the case of sign language interpreters in The Netherlands.

Science.gov (United States)

Van Dijk, Rick; Boers, Eveline; Christoffels, Ingrid; Hermans, Daan

2011-01-01

The quality of interpretations produced by sign language interpreters was investigated. Twenty-five experienced interpreters were instructed to interpret narratives from (a) spoken Dutch to Sign Language of The Netherlands (SLN), (b) spoken Dutch to Sign Supported Dutch (SSD), and (c) SLN to spoken Dutch. The quality of the interpreted narratives was assessed by 5 certified sign language interpreters who did not participate in the study. Two measures were used to assess interpreting quality: the propositional accuracy of the interpreters' interpretations and a subjective quality measure. The results showed that the interpreted narratives in the SLN-to-Dutch interpreting direction were of lower quality (on both measures) than the interpreted narratives in the Dutch-to-SLN and Dutch-to-SSD directions. Furthermore, interpreters who had begun acquiring SLN when they entered the interpreter training program performed as well in all 3 interpreting directions as interpreters who had acquired SLN from birth.

Sign language recognition and translation: a multidisciplined approach from the field of artificial intelligence.

Science.gov (United States)

Parton, Becky Sue

2006-01-01

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 projects such as the CopyCat interactive American Sign Language game (computer vision), and sign recognition software (Hidden Markov Modeling and neural network systems). Avatars such as "Tessa" (Text and Sign Support Assistant; three-dimensional imaging) and spoken language to sign language translation systems such as Poland's project entitled "THETOS" (Text into Sign Language Automatic Translator, which operates in Polish; natural language processing) are addressed. The application of this research to education is also explored. The "ICICLE" (Interactive Computer Identification and Correction of Language Errors) project, for example, uses intelligent computer-aided instruction to build a tutorial system for deaf or hard-of-hearing children that analyzes their English writing and makes tailored lessons and recommendations. Finally, the article considers synthesized sign, which is being added to educational material and has the potential to be developed by students themselves.

Second Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics.

Science.gov (United States)

Larsen-Freeman, Diane

2000-01-01

Discusses the second language acquisition (SLA) process and the differential success of second language learners. Examines the fundamental challenges that this characterization faces, and highlights the contributions SLA is capable of in the coming decade. Offers topics for a training and development of curriculum for future applied linguists from…

Tools for language: patterned iconicity in sign language nouns and verbs.

Science.gov (United States)

Padden, Carol; Hwang, So-One; Lepic, Ryan; Seegers, Sharon

2015-01-01

When naming certain hand-held, man-made tools, American Sign Language (ASL) signers exhibit either of two iconic strategies: a handling strategy, where the hands show holding or grasping an imagined object in action, or an instrument strategy, where the hands represent the shape or a dimension of the object in a typical action. The same strategies are also observed in the gestures of hearing nonsigners identifying pictures of the same set of tools. In this paper, we compare spontaneously created gestures from hearing nonsigning participants to commonly used lexical signs in ASL. Signers and gesturers were asked to respond to pictures of tools and to video vignettes of actions involving the same tools. Nonsigning gesturers overwhelmingly prefer the handling strategy for both the Picture and Video conditions. Nevertheless, they use more instrument forms when identifying tools in pictures, and more handling forms when identifying actions with tools. We found that ASL signers generally favor the instrument strategy when naming tools, but when describing tools being used by an actor, they are significantly more likely to use more handling forms. The finding that both gesturers and signers are more likely to alternate strategies when the stimuli are pictures or video suggests a common cognitive basis for differentiating objects from actions. Furthermore, the presence of a systematic handling/instrument iconic pattern in a sign language demonstrates that a conventionalized sign language exploits the distinction for grammatical purpose, to distinguish nouns and verbs related to tool use. Copyright © 2014 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Independent transmission of sign language interpreter in DVB: assessment of image compression

Science.gov (United States)

Zatloukal, Petr; Bernas, Martin; Dvořák, LukáÅ.¡

2015-02-01

Sign language on television provides information to deaf that they cannot get from the audio content. If we consider the transmission of the sign language interpreter over an independent data stream, the aim is to ensure sufficient intelligibility and subjective image quality of the interpreter with minimum bit rate. The work deals with the ROI-based video compression of Czech sign language interpreter implemented to the x264 open source library. The results of this approach are verified in subjective tests with the deaf. They examine the intelligibility of sign language expressions containing minimal pairs for different levels of compression and various resolution of image with interpreter and evaluate the subjective quality of the final image for a good viewing experience.

The Ecology of Second Language Acquisition and Socialization

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Steffensen, Sune Vork; Kramsch, Claire

2017-01-01

Various theories of second language acquisition (SLA) and socialization (SLS) have adopted ecology as a convenient metaphor to promote sociocultural (van Lier 2004) or sociocognitive (Atkinson 2011) approaches to the study of SLA, and socioethnographic approaches (Duff 2011; Duff and Talmy 2011...... such a development is to be welcomed, it also raises serious concerns about the autonomy of the language learner, the collective pressure on individuals to align with the expectations of the community, alternative theories of knowledge and of knowledge acquisition, and the socializing dominance of English around...... the world. This chapter discusses the history of the relationship between acquisition and socialization with regard to foreign/second language learning and use, and the role played by ecological theory in that relationship....

Pre-Service EFL Teachers’ Attitudes towards ‘Language Acquisition Courses’

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nalan Kızıltan

2011-04-01

Full Text Available This study discusses the attitudes of pre-service English language teachers towards „Language Acquisition Courses‟ in English Language Teacher Education Programs. The data have been collected through a developed questionnaire of 20 questions given to 324 students in the department of Pre-service English Language Teacher Education at Ondokuz Mayıs University. SPSS has been used for the evaluation of the data. The results indicate that the pre-service teachers of English believe in the importance of language acquisition courses for their career. However, they think that they need some preliminary courses on linguistics before they take “Language Acquisition Courses”. Otherwise, since they may not have any background knowledge in linguistics, they may have some problems in the comprehension competence.

Static sign language recognition using 1D descriptors and neural networks

Science.gov (United States)

Solís, José F.; Toxqui, Carina; Padilla, Alfonso; Santiago, César

2012-10-01

A frame work for static sign language recognition using descriptors which represents 2D images in 1D data and artificial neural networks is presented in this work. The 1D descriptors were computed by two methods, first one consists in a correlation rotational operator.1 and second is based on contour analysis of hand shape. One of the main problems in sign language recognition is segmentation; most of papers report a special color in gloves or background for hand shape analysis. In order to avoid the use of gloves or special clothing, a thermal imaging camera was used to capture images. Static signs were picked up from 1 to 9 digits of American Sign Language, a multilayer perceptron reached 100% recognition with cross-validation.

How Much of Language Acquisition Does Operant Conditioning Explain?

Science.gov (United States)

Sturdy, Christopher B; Nicoladis, Elena

2017-01-01

Since the 1950s, when Chomsky argued that Skinner's arguments could not explain syntactic acquisition, psychologists have generally avoided explicitly invoking operant or instrumental conditioning as a learning mechanism for language among human children. In this article, we argue that this is a mistake. We focus on research that has been done on language learning in human infants and toddlers in order to illustrate our points. Researchers have ended up inventing learning mechanisms that, in actual practice, not only resemble but also in fact are examples of operant conditioning (OC) by any other name they select. We argue that language acquisition researchers should proceed by first ruling out OC before invoking alternative learning mechanisms. While it is possible that OC cannot explain all of the language acquisition, simple learning mechanisms that work across species may have some explanatory power in children's language learning.

FACTORS INFLUENCING SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Siti Khasinah

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Motivation, attitude, age, intelligence, aptitude, cognitive style, and personality are considered as factors that greatly influence someone in the process of his or her second language acquisition. Experts state that those factors give a more dominant contribution in SLA to learners variedly, depend on who the learners are, their age, how they behave toward the language, their cognitive ability, and also the way they learn.

Languages Are More than Words: Spanish and American Sign Language in Early Childhood Settings

Science.gov (United States)

Sherman, Judy; Torres-Crespo, Marisel N.

2015-01-01

Capitalizing on preschoolers' inherent enthusiasm and capacity for learning, the authors developed and implemented a dual-language program to enable young children to experience diversity and multiculturalism by learning two new languages: Spanish and American Sign Language. Details of the curriculum, findings, and strategies are shared.

Child Modifiability as a Predictor of Language Abilities in Deaf Children Who Use American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Mann, Wolfgang; Peña, Elizabeth D; Morgan, Gary

2015-08-01

This research explored the use of dynamic assessment (DA) for language-learning abilities in signing deaf children from deaf and hearing families. Thirty-seven deaf children, aged 6 to 11 years, were identified as either stronger (n = 26) or weaker (n = 11) language learners according to teacher or speech-language pathologist report. All children received 2 scripted, mediated learning experience sessions targeting vocabulary knowledge—specifically, the use of semantic categories that were carried out in American Sign Language. Participant responses to learning were measured in terms of an index of child modifiability. This index was determined separately at the end of the 2 individual sessions. It combined ratings reflecting each child's learning abilities and responses to mediation, including social-emotional behavior, cognitive arousal, and cognitive elaboration. Group results showed that modifiability ratings were significantly better for stronger language learners than for weaker language learners. The strongest predictors of language ability were cognitive arousal and cognitive elaboration. Mediator ratings of child modifiability (i.e., combined score of social-emotional factors and cognitive factors) are highly sensitive to language-learning abilities in deaf children who use sign language as their primary mode of communication. This method can be used to design targeted interventions.

South African sign language human-computer interface in the context of the national accessibility portal

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Olivrin, GJ

2006-02-01

Full Text Available example, between a deaf person who can sign and an able person or a person with a different disability who cannot sign). METHODOLOGY A signing avatar is set up to work together with a chatterbot. The chatterbot is a natural language dialogue interface... are then offered in sign language as the replies are interpreted by a signing avatar, a living character that can reproduce human-like gestures and expressions. To make South African Sign Language (SASL) available digitally, computational models of the language...

Foreign Language Acquisition Of Souvenir Seller In Bawomataluo Village

OpenAIRE

Saniago Dakhi; Nur Intan Zagoto

2016-01-01

This research is addresses language functional and lexical acquisition domains of souvenir seller in Bawomataluo village, South Nias, North Sumatera. The reasons of lexical items acquired by souvenir seller is regarded as the function of language acquisition. On the contrary, form and process of lexical items acquired are totally viewed as language lexical domains. To obtain the whole accurate data of these research problems interview and observation were conducted. The research ...

Selected Lexical Patterns in Saudi Arabian Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Young, Lesa; Palmer, Jeffrey Levi; Reynolds, Wanette

2012-01-01

This combined paper will focus on the description of two selected lexical patterns in Saudi Arabian Sign Language (SASL): metaphor and metonymy in emotion-related signs (Young) and lexicalization patterns of objects and their derivational roots (Palmer and Reynolds). The over-arcing methodology used by both studies is detailed in Stephen and…

Is CALL Obsolete? Language Acquisition and Language Learning Revisited in a Digital Age

Science.gov (United States)

Jarvis, Huw; Krashen, Stephen

2014-01-01

In this article, Huw Jarvis and Stephen Krashen ask "Is CALL Obsolete?" When the term CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) was introduced in the 1960s, the language education profession knew only about language learning, not language acquisition, and assumed the computer's primary contribution to second language acquisition…

A Comparison of Comprehension Processes in Sign Language Interpreter Videos with or without Captions.

Science.gov (United States)

Debevc, Matjaž; Milošević, Danijela; Kožuh, Ines

2015-01-01

One important theme in captioning is whether the implementation of captions in individual sign language interpreter videos can positively affect viewers' comprehension when compared with sign language interpreter videos without captions. In our study, an experiment was conducted using four video clips with information about everyday events. Fifty-one deaf and hard of hearing sign language users alternately watched the sign language interpreter videos with, and without, captions. Afterwards, they answered ten questions. The results showed that the presence of captions positively affected their rates of comprehension, which increased by 24% among deaf viewers and 42% among hard of hearing viewers. The most obvious differences in comprehension between watching sign language interpreter videos with and without captions were found for the subjects of hiking and culture, where comprehension was higher when captions were used. The results led to suggestions for the consistent use of captions in sign language interpreter videos in various media.

Comprehending Sentences with the Body: Action Compatibility in British Sign Language?

Science.gov (United States)

Vinson, David; Perniss, Pamela; Fox, Neil; Vigliocco, Gabriella

2017-01-01

Previous studies show that reading sentences about actions leads to specific motor activity associated with actually performing those actions. We investigate how sign language input may modulate motor activation, using British Sign Language (BSL) sentences, some of which explicitly encode direction of motion, versus written English, where motion…

Semantic facilitation in bilingual first language acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Bilson, Samuel; Yoshida, Hanako; Tran, Crystal D; Woods, Elizabeth A; Hills, Thomas T

2015-07-01

Bilingual first language learners face unique challenges that may influence the rate and order of early word learning relative to monolinguals. A comparison of the productive vocabularies of 435 children between the ages of 6 months and 7 years-181 of which were bilingual English learners-found that monolinguals learned both English words and all-language concepts faster than bilinguals. However, bilinguals showed an enhancement of an effect previously found in monolinguals-the preference for learning words with more associative cues. Though both monolinguals and bilinguals were best fit by a similar model of word learning, semantic network structure and growth indicated that the two groups were learning English words in a different order. Further, in comparison with a model of two-monolinguals-in-one-mind, bilinguals overproduced translational equivalents. Our results support an emergent account of bilingual first language acquisition, where learning a word in one language facilitates its acquisition in a second language. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Ideologies and Attitudes toward Sign Languages: An Approximation

Science.gov (United States)

Krausneker, Verena

2015-01-01

Attitudes are complex and little research in the field of linguistics has focused on language attitudes. This article deals with attitudes toward sign languages and those who use them--attitudes that are influenced by ideological constructions. The article reviews five categories of such constructions and discusses examples in each one.

Graph theoretical analysis of functional network for comprehension of sign language.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Lanfang; Yan, Xin; Liu, Jin; Xia, Mingrui; Lu, Chunming; Emmorey, Karen; Chu, Mingyuan; Ding, Guosheng

2017-09-15

Signed languages are natural human languages using the visual-motor modality. Previous neuroimaging studies based on univariate activation analysis show that a widely overlapped cortical network is recruited regardless whether the sign language is comprehended (for signers) or not (for non-signers). Here we move beyond previous studies by examining whether the functional connectivity profiles and the underlying organizational structure of the overlapped neural network may differ between signers and non-signers when watching sign language. Using graph theoretical analysis (GTA) and fMRI, we compared the large-scale functional network organization in hearing signers with non-signers during the observation of sentences in Chinese Sign Language. We found that signed sentences elicited highly similar cortical activations in the two groups of participants, with slightly larger responses within the left frontal and left temporal gyrus in signers than in non-signers. Crucially, further GTA revealed substantial group differences in the topologies of this activation network. Globally, the network engaged by signers showed higher local efficiency (t (24) =2.379, p=0.026), small-worldness (t (24) =2.604, p=0.016) and modularity (t (24) =3.513, p=0.002), and exhibited different modular structures, compared to the network engaged by non-signers. Locally, the left ventral pars opercularis served as a network hub in the signer group but not in the non-signer group. These findings suggest that, despite overlap in cortical activation, the neural substrates underlying sign language comprehension are distinguishable at the network level from those for the processing of gestural action. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

How Much of Language Acquisition Does Operant Conditioning Explain?

Science.gov (United States)

Sturdy, Christopher B.; Nicoladis, Elena

2017-01-01

Since the 1950s, when Chomsky argued that Skinner’s arguments could not explain syntactic acquisition, psychologists have generally avoided explicitly invoking operant or instrumental conditioning as a learning mechanism for language among human children. In this article, we argue that this is a mistake. We focus on research that has been done on language learning in human infants and toddlers in order to illustrate our points. Researchers have ended up inventing learning mechanisms that, in actual practice, not only resemble but also in fact are examples of operant conditioning (OC) by any other name they select. We argue that language acquisition researchers should proceed by first ruling out OC before invoking alternative learning mechanisms. While it is possible that OC cannot explain all of the language acquisition, simple learning mechanisms that work across species may have some explanatory power in children’s language learning. PMID:29163295

How Much of Language Acquisition Does Operant Conditioning Explain?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christopher B. Sturdy

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Since the 1950s, when Chomsky argued that Skinner’s arguments could not explain syntactic acquisition, psychologists have generally avoided explicitly invoking operant or instrumental conditioning as a learning mechanism for language among human children. In this article, we argue that this is a mistake. We focus on research that has been done on language learning in human infants and toddlers in order to illustrate our points. Researchers have ended up inventing learning mechanisms that, in actual practice, not only resemble but also in fact are examples of operant conditioning (OC by any other name they select. We argue that language acquisition researchers should proceed by first ruling out OC before invoking alternative learning mechanisms. While it is possible that OC cannot explain all of the language acquisition, simple learning mechanisms that work across species may have some explanatory power in children’s language learning.

Continuous Chinese sign language recognition with CNN-LSTM

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Su; Zhu, Qing

2017-07-01

The goal of sign language recognition (SLR) is to translate the sign language into text, and provide a convenient tool for the communication between the deaf-mute and the ordinary. In this paper, we formulate an appropriate model based on convolutional neural network (CNN) combined with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network, in order to accomplish the continuous recognition work. With the strong ability of CNN, the information of pictures captured from Chinese sign language (CSL) videos can be learned and transformed into vector. Since the video can be regarded as an ordered sequence of frames, LSTM model is employed to connect with the fully-connected layer of CNN. As a recurrent neural network (RNN), it is suitable for sequence learning tasks with the capability of recognizing patterns defined by temporal distance. Compared with traditional RNN, LSTM has performed better on storing and accessing information. We evaluate this method on our self-built dataset including 40 daily vocabularies. The experimental results show that the recognition method with CNN-LSTM can achieve a high recognition rate with small training sets, which will meet the needs of real-time SLR system.

Poetry in South African Sign Language: What is different?

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Mary Theresa Biberauer

The study of literary expression in sign languages has increased over the last twenty .... extensively to express emotion on the part of a character in the narrative. ... township in her non-manual facial expressions while signing manually what is ...

Linguistic Diversity in First Language Acquisition Research: Moving beyond the Challenges

Science.gov (United States)

Kelly, Barbara F.; Forshaw, William; Nordlinger, Rachel; Wigglesworth, Gillian

2015-01-01

The field of first language acquisition (FLA) needs to take into account data from the broadest typological array of languages and language-learning environments if it is to identify potential universals in child language development, and how these interact with socio-cultural mechanisms of acquisition. Yet undertaking FLA research in remote…

Assess the Critical Period Hypothesis in Second Language Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

Du, Lihong

2010-01-01

The Critical Period Hypothesis aims to investigate the reason for significant difference between first language acquisition and second language acquisition. Over the past few decades, researchers carried out a series of studies to test the validity of the hypothesis. Although there were certain limitations in these studies, most of their results…

Generation of Signs within Semantic and Phonological Categories: Data from Deaf Adults and Children Who Use American Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Beal-Alvarez, Jennifer S.; Figueroa, Daileen M.

2017-01-01

Two key areas of language development include semantic and phonological knowledge. Semantic knowledge relates to word and concept knowledge. Phonological knowledge relates to how language parameters combine to create meaning. We investigated signing deaf adults' and children's semantic and phonological sign generation via one-minute tasks,…

Language acquisition for deaf children: Reducing the harms of zero tolerance to the use of alternative approaches

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Humphries Tom

2012-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract Children acquire language without instruction as long as they are regularly and meaningfully engaged with an accessible human language. Today, 80% of children born deaf in the developed world are implanted with cochlear devices that allow some of them access to sound in their early years, which helps them to develop speech. However, because of brain plasticity changes during early childhood, children who have not acquired a first language in the early years might never be completely fluent in any language. If they miss this critical period for exposure to a natural language, their subsequent development of the cognitive activities that rely on a solid first language might be underdeveloped, such as literacy, memory organization, and number manipulation. An alternative to speech-exclusive approaches to language acquisition exists in the use of sign languages such as American Sign Language (ASL, where acquiring a sign language is subject to the same time constraints of spoken language development. Unfortunately, so far, these alternatives are caught up in an "either - or" dilemma, leading to a highly polarized conflict about which system families should choose for their children, with little tolerance for alternatives by either side of the debate and widespread misinformation about the evidence and implications for or against either approach. The success rate with cochlear implants is highly variable. This issue is still debated, and as far as we know, there are no reliable predictors for success with implants. Yet families are often advised not to expose their child to sign language. Here absolute positions based on ideology create pressures for parents that might jeopardize the real developmental needs of deaf children. What we do know is that cochlear implants do not offer accessible language to many deaf children. By the time it is clear that the deaf child is not acquiring spoken language with cochlear devices, it might already be

The acquisition of English as a second language in Rwanda ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The acquisition of English as a second language in Rwanda: Challenges and ... E Sibomana ... Building on the factors which are believed to affect second language (L2) acquisition and learning, this article explores constraints, challenges, ...

Transfer and access to universal grammar in adult second language acquisition

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Sauter, Kim

2002-01-01

Summary This dissertation focuses on the roles of first language transfer and Universal Grammar in adult second (or foreign) language acquisition. It contributes to the ongoing debate whether second language acquisition is constrained by Universal Grammar. According to generative linguists,

Extricating Manual and Non-Manual Features for Subunit Level Medical Sign Modelling in Automatic Sign Language Classification and Recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

R, Elakkiya; K, Selvamani

2017-09-22

Subunit segmenting and modelling in medical sign language is one of the important studies in linguistic-oriented and vision-based Sign Language Recognition (SLR). Many efforts were made in the precedent to focus the functional subunits from the view of linguistic syllables but the problem is implementing such subunit extraction using syllables is not feasible in real-world computer vision techniques. And also, the present recognition systems are designed in such a way that it can detect the signer dependent actions under restricted and laboratory conditions. This research paper aims at solving these two important issues (1) Subunit extraction and (2) Signer independent action on visual sign language recognition. Subunit extraction involved in the sequential and parallel breakdown of sign gestures without any prior knowledge on syllables and number of subunits. A novel Bayesian Parallel Hidden Markov Model (BPaHMM) is introduced for subunit extraction to combine the features of manual and non-manual parameters to yield better results in classification and recognition of signs. Signer independent action aims in using a single web camera for different signer behaviour patterns and for cross-signer validation. Experimental results have proved that the proposed signer independent subunit level modelling for sign language classification and recognition has shown improvement and variations when compared with other existing works.

Revisiting First Language Acquisition through Empirical and Rational Perspectives

Science.gov (United States)

Tahriri, Abdorreza

2012-01-01

Acquisition in general and first language acquisition in particular is a very complex and a multifaceted phenomenon. The way that children acquire a language in a very limited period is astonishing. Various approaches have been proposed so far to account for this extraordinary phenomenon. These approaches are indeed based on various philosophical…

Numeral-Incorporating Roots in Numeral Systems: A Comparative Analysis of Two Sign Languages

Science.gov (United States)

Fuentes, Mariana; Massone, Maria Ignacia; Fernandez-Viader, Maria del Pilar; Makotrinsky, Alejandro; Pulgarin, Francisca

2010-01-01

Numeral-incorporating roots in the numeral systems of Argentine Sign Language (LSA) and Catalan Sign Language (LSC), as well as the main features of the number systems of both languages, are described and compared. Informants discussed the use of numerals and roots in both languages (in most cases in natural contexts). Ten informants took part in…

Observations on Word Order in Saudi Arabian Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Sprenger, Kristen; Mathur, Gaurav

2012-01-01

This article focuses on the syntactic level of the grammar of Saudi Arabian Sign Language by exploring some word orders that occur in personal narratives in the language. Word order is one of the main ways in which languages indicate the main syntactic roles of subjects, verbs, and objects; others are verbal agreement and nominal case morphology.…

Medical Signbank as a Model for Sign Language Planning? A Review of Community Engagement

Science.gov (United States)

Napier, Jemina; Major, George; Ferrara, Lindsay; Johnston, Trevor

2015-01-01

This paper reviews a sign language planning project conducted in Australia with deaf Auslan users. The Medical Signbank project utilised a cooperative language planning process to engage with the Deaf community and sign language interpreters to develop an online interactive resource of health-related signs, in order to address a gap in the health…

Review Article: Second Language Acquisition of Bantu Languages--A (Mostly) Untapped Research Opportunity

Science.gov (United States)

Spinner, Patti

2011-01-01

This review article presents a summary of research on the second language acquisition of Bantu languages, including Swahili, Zulu, Xhosa and Lingala. Although second language (L2) research on these languages is currently very limited, work in morphosyntax and phonology suggests promising directions for future study, particularly on noun class,…

"Language Learning" Roundtable: Memory and Second Language Acquisition 2012, Hong Kong

Science.gov (United States)

Wen, Zhisheng; McNeill, Arthur; Mota, Mailce Borges

2014-01-01

Organized under the auspices of the "Language Learning" Roundtable Conference Grant (2012), this seminar aimed to provide an interactive forum for a group of second language acquisition (SLA) researchers with particular interests in cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics to discuss key theoretical and methodological issues in the…

A brief discussion on the biological factors in the acquisition of language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ronivaldo Braz da Silva

2007-11-01

Full Text Available The understanding of how language is acquired and the role the brain plays in the language acquisition process are crucial because the development of language is one of the most important factcrs in human development. The analysis of language development is intrinsically connected with one's awareness of how human beings or human brains perceive, learn, control, and coordinate elaborate behaviour. The study of language development, therefore, involves research on motor, perceptual, and cognitive development. This paper reviews the three major theories of language acquisition, namely, behaviouristic, psycholinguistic, and interactionistic and examines the biological component of language acquisition and the brain's role in the language development process.

Variability and Variation in Second Language Acquisition Orders : A Dynamic Reevaluation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lowie, Wander; Verspoor, Marjolijn

2015-01-01

The traditional morpheme order studies in second language acquisition have tried to demonstrate the existence of a fixed order of acquisition of English morphemes, regardless of the second language learner's background. Such orders have been taken as evidence of the preprogrammed nature of language

Neural Basis of Action Understanding: Evidence from Sign Language Aphasia.

Science.gov (United States)

Rogalsky, Corianne; Raphel, Kristin; Tomkovicz, Vivian; O'Grady, Lucinda; Damasio, Hanna; Bellugi, Ursula; Hickok, Gregory

2013-01-01

The neural basis of action understanding is a hotly debated issue. The mirror neuron account holds that motor simulation in fronto-parietal circuits is critical to action understanding including speech comprehension, while others emphasize the ventral stream in the temporal lobe. Evidence from speech strongly supports the ventral stream account, but on the other hand, evidence from manual gesture comprehension (e.g., in limb apraxia) has led to contradictory findings. Here we present a lesion analysis of sign language comprehension. Sign language is an excellent model for studying mirror system function in that it bridges the gap between the visual-manual system in which mirror neurons are best characterized and language systems which have represented a theoretical target of mirror neuron research. Twenty-one life long deaf signers with focal cortical lesions performed two tasks: one involving the comprehension of individual signs and the other involving comprehension of signed sentences (commands). Participants' lesions, as indicated on MRI or CT scans, were mapped onto a template brain to explore the relationship between lesion location and sign comprehension measures. Single sign comprehension was not significantly affected by left hemisphere damage. Sentence sign comprehension impairments were associated with left temporal-parietal damage. We found that damage to mirror system related regions in the left frontal lobe were not associated with deficits on either of these comprehension tasks. We conclude that the mirror system is not critically involved in action understanding.

Why Doesn't Everyone Here Speak Sign Language? Questions of Language Policy, Ideology and Economics

Science.gov (United States)

Rayman, Jennifer

2009-01-01

This paper is a thought experiment exploring the possibility of establishing universal bilingualism in Sign Languages. Focusing in the first part on historical examples of inclusive signing societies such as Martha's Vineyard, the author suggests that it is not possible to create such naturally occurring practices of Sign Bilingualism in societies…

Foreign Language Acquisition Of Souvenir Seller In Bawomataluo Village

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Saniago Dakhi

2016-04-01

Full Text Available This research is addresses language functional and lexical acquisition domains of souvenir seller in Bawomataluo village, South Nias, North Sumatera. The reasons of lexical items acquired by souvenir seller is regarded as the function of language acquisition. On the contrary, form and process of lexical items acquired are totally viewed as language lexical domains. To obtain the whole accurate data of these research problems interview and observation were conducted. The research finding indicates four specified language lexical acquisition reasons: internal motivation, external motivation, access to native speaker and experience. In addition, eight English part of speech are acquired.It is discovered that lexical items acquired are dominated by noun. Verb and adjective posites at the next level of the amount of lexicals acquired. Adverb, conjunction, pronoun are less acquired. Interjection is more easily acquired by souvenir sellers. The processes involved to acquire the lexical consist of social, memory, compensation, and affective process. Finally, the research finding is thoroughly expected to be language teacher’s consideration in employing material selection and determining natural, contextual and situational language teaching model. Language leaners are highly advised to recall the language competence theoretically mastered in naturall setting in attempt to obtain practical competence.

Naturalistic acquisition in an early language classroom.

Science.gov (United States)

Dahl, Anne; Vulchanova, Mila D

2014-01-01

This study investigated whether it is possible to provide naturalistic second language acquisition (SLA) of vocabulary for young learners in a classroom situation without resorting to a classical immersion approach. Participants were 60 first-grade pupils in two Norwegian elementary schools in their first year. The control group followed regular instruction as prescribed by the school curriculum, while the experimental group received increased naturalistic target language input. This entailed extensive use of English by the teacher during English classes, and also during morning meetings and for simple instructions and classroom management throughout the day. Our hypothesis was that it is possible to facilitate naturalistic acquisition through better quality target language exposure within a normal curriculum. The students' English vocabulary knowledge was measured using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, version 4 (PPVT-IV, Dunn and Dunn, 2007a), at the beginning and the end of the first year of school. Findings are that (1) early-start second-language (L2) programs in school do not in themselves guarantee vocabulary development in the first year, (2) a focus on increased exposure to the L2 can lead to a significant increase in receptive vocabulary comprehension in the course of only 8 months, and (3) even with relatively modest input, learners in such an early-start L2 program can display vocabulary acquisition comparable in some respects to that of younger native children matched on vocabulary size. The overall conclusion is that naturalistic vocabulary acquisition is in fact possible in a classroom setting.

Incidental acquisition of foreign language vocabulary through brief multi-modal exposure.

Science.gov (United States)

Bisson, Marie-Josée; van Heuven, Walter J B; Conklin, Kathy; Tunney, Richard J

2013-01-01

First language acquisition requires relatively little effort compared to foreign language acquisition and happens more naturally through informal learning. Informal exposure can also benefit foreign language learning, although evidence for this has been limited to speech perception and production. An important question is whether informal exposure to spoken foreign language also leads to vocabulary learning through the creation of form-meaning links. Here we tested the impact of exposure to foreign language words presented with pictures in an incidental learning phase on subsequent explicit foreign language learning. In the explicit learning phase, we asked adults to learn translation equivalents of foreign language words, some of which had appeared in the incidental learning phase. Results revealed rapid learning of the foreign language words in the incidental learning phase showing that informal exposure to multi-modal foreign language leads to foreign language vocabulary acquisition. The creation of form-meaning links during the incidental learning phase is discussed.

Phonological Development in Hearing Learners of a Sign Language: The Influence of Phonological Parameters, Sign Complexity, and Iconicity

Science.gov (United States)

Ortega, Gerardo; Morgan, Gary

2015-01-01

The present study implemented a sign-repetition task at two points in time to hearing adult learners of British Sign Language and explored how each phonological parameter, sign complexity, and iconicity affected sign production over an 11-week (22-hour) instructional period. The results show that training improves articulation accuracy and that…

Production and Comprehension of Prosodic Markers in Sign Language Imperatives

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Diane Brentari

2018-05-01

Full Text Available In signed and spoken language sentences, imperative mood and the corresponding speech acts such as for instance, command, permission or advice, can be distinguished by morphosyntactic structures, but also solely by prosodic cues, which are the focus of this paper. These cues can express paralinguistic mental states or grammatical meaning, and we show that in American Sign Language (ASL, they also exhibit the function, scope, and alignment of prosodic, linguistic elements of sign languages. The production and comprehension of prosodic facial expressions and temporal patterns therefore can shed light on how cues are grammaticalized in sign languages. They can also be informative about the formal semantic and pragmatic properties of imperative types not only in ASL, but also more broadly. This paper includes three studies: one of production (Study 1 and two of comprehension (Studies 2 and 3. In Study 1, six prosodic cues are analyzed in production: temporal cues of sign and hold duration, and non-manual cues including tilts of the head, head nods, widening of the eyes, and presence of mouthings. Results of Study 1 show that neutral sentences and commands are well distinguished from each other and from other imperative speech acts via these prosodic cues alone; there is more limited differentiation among explanation, permission, and advice. The comprehension of these five speech acts is investigated in Deaf ASL signers in Study 2, and in three additional groups in Study 3: Deaf signers of German Sign Language (DGS, hearing non-signers from the United States, and hearing non-signers from Germany. Results of Studies 2 and 3 show that the ASL group performs significantly better than the other 3 groups and that all groups perform above chance for all meaning types in comprehension. Language-specific knowledge, therefore, has a significant effect on identifying imperatives based on targeted cues. Command has the most cues associated with it and is the

Multilingual Communication and Language Acquisition: New Research Directions

Science.gov (United States)

Canagarajah, A. Suresh; Wurr, Adrian J.

2011-01-01

In this article, we outline the differences between a monolingual and multilingual orientation to language and language acquisition. The increasing contact between languages in the context of globalization motivates such a shift of paradigms. Multilingual communicative practices have remained vibrant in non-western communities for a long time. We…

The Link between Form and Meaning in American Sign Language: Lexical Processing Effects

Science.gov (United States)

Thompson, Robin L.; Vinson, David P.; Vigliocco, Gabriella

2009-01-01

Signed languages exploit iconicity (the transparent relationship between meaning and form) to a greater extent than spoken languages. where it is largely limited to onomatopoeia. In a picture-sign matching experiment measuring reaction times, the authors examined the potential advantage of iconicity both for 1st- and 2nd-language learners of…

The Sign Language Situation in Mali

Science.gov (United States)

Nyst, Victoria

2015-01-01

This article gives a first overview of the sign language situation in Mali and its capital, Bamako, located in the West African Sahel. Mali is a highly multilingual country with a significant incidence of deafness, for which meningitis appears to be the main cause, coupled with limited access to adequate health care. In comparison to neighboring…

Word Order in Russian Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Kimmelman, Vadim

2012-01-01

In this paper the results of an investigation of word order in Russian Sign Language (RSL) are presented. A small corpus of narratives based on comic strips by nine native signers was analyzed and a picture-description experiment (based on Volterra et al. 1984) was conducted with six native signers. The results are the following: the most frequent…

First and second language acquisition: Towards a reconcillation

OpenAIRE

Nau Nicole

2015-01-01

For the past two decades, research on first language acquisition on the one side, and on second language acquisition and learning on the other have largely developed separately, probably as a reaction to the failure of earlier attempts to use the same methods or simply transfer insights gained in one of the fields to the other. T his article argues that a reconciliation may be fruitful, provided that different aspects which have often got blurred in the discussion are considered separately. T...

Toward More Substantial Theories of Language Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

Jenson, Cinnamon Ann

2015-01-01

Cognitive linguists argue that certain sets of knowledge of language are innate. However, critics have argued that the theoretical concept of "innateness" should be eliminated since it is ambiguous and insubstantial. In response, I aim to strengthen theories of language acquisition and identify ways to make them more substantial. I…

Incidental Foreign-Language Acquisition by Children Watching Subtitled Television Programs

Science.gov (United States)

Ina, Lekkai

2014-01-01

Series of international studies have shown that subtitled television programs provide a rich context for foreign language acquisition. This study investigated whether incidental language acquisition occurs from watching a television program with/without subtitles. Children in the experimental conditions watch: (a) a 15 minute snapshot of a well…

Neural systems supporting linguistic structure, linguistic experience, and symbolic communication in sign language and gesture.

Science.gov (United States)

Newman, Aaron J; Supalla, Ted; Fernandez, Nina; Newport, Elissa L; Bavelier, Daphne

2015-09-15

Sign languages used by deaf communities around the world possess the same structural and organizational properties as spoken languages: In particular, they are richly expressive and also tightly grammatically constrained. They therefore offer the opportunity to investigate the extent to which the neural organization for language is modality independent, as well as to identify ways in which modality influences this organization. The fact that sign languages share the visual-manual modality with a nonlinguistic symbolic communicative system-gesture-further allows us to investigate where the boundaries lie between language and symbolic communication more generally. In the present study, we had three goals: to investigate the neural processing of linguistic structure in American Sign Language (using verbs of motion classifier constructions, which may lie at the boundary between language and gesture); to determine whether we could dissociate the brain systems involved in deriving meaning from symbolic communication (including both language and gesture) from those specifically engaged by linguistically structured content (sign language); and to assess whether sign language experience influences the neural systems used for understanding nonlinguistic gesture. The results demonstrated that even sign language constructions that appear on the surface to be similar to gesture are processed within the left-lateralized frontal-temporal network used for spoken languages-supporting claims that these constructions are linguistically structured. Moreover, although nonsigners engage regions involved in human action perception to process communicative, symbolic gestures, signers instead engage parts of the language-processing network-demonstrating an influence of experience on the perception of nonlinguistic stimuli.

Three-dimensional grammar in the brain: Dissociating the neural correlates of natural sign language and manually coded spoken language.

Science.gov (United States)

Jednoróg, Katarzyna; Bola, Łukasz; Mostowski, Piotr; Szwed, Marcin; Boguszewski, Paweł M; Marchewka, Artur; Rutkowski, Paweł

2015-05-01

In several countries natural sign languages were considered inadequate for education. Instead, new sign-supported systems were created, based on the belief that spoken/written language is grammatically superior. One such system called SJM (system językowo-migowy) preserves the grammatical and lexical structure of spoken Polish and since 1960s has been extensively employed in schools and on TV. Nevertheless, the Deaf community avoids using SJM for everyday communication, its preferred language being PJM (polski język migowy), a natural sign language, structurally and grammatically independent of spoken Polish and featuring classifier constructions (CCs). Here, for the first time, we compare, with fMRI method, the neural bases of natural vs. devised communication systems. Deaf signers were presented with three types of signed sentences (SJM and PJM with/without CCs). Consistent with previous findings, PJM with CCs compared to either SJM or PJM without CCs recruited the parietal lobes. The reverse comparison revealed activation in the anterior temporal lobes, suggesting increased semantic combinatory processes in lexical sign comprehension. Finally, PJM compared with SJM engaged left posterior superior temporal gyrus and anterior temporal lobe, areas crucial for sentence-level speech comprehension. We suggest that activity in these two areas reflects greater processing efficiency for naturally evolved sign language. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Authentic Language Input Through Audiovisual Technology and Second Language Acquisition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Taher Bahrani

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Second language acquisition cannot take place without having exposure to language input. With regard to this, the present research aimed at providing empirical evidence about the low and the upper-intermediate language learners’ preferred type of audiovisual programs and language proficiency development outside the classroom. To this end, 60 language learners (30 low level and 30 upper-intermediate level were asked to have exposure to their preferred types of audiovisual program(s outside the classroom and keep a diary of the amount and the type of exposure. The obtained data indicated that the low-level participants preferred cartoons and the upper-intermediate participants preferred news more. To find out which language proficiency level could improve its language proficiency significantly, a post-test was administered. The results indicated that only the upper-intermediate language learners gained significant improvement. Based on the findings, the quality of the language input should be given priority over the amount of exposure.

Prior knowledge of deaf students fluent in brazilian sign languages regarding the algebraic language in high school

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Silvia Teresinha Frizzarini

2014-06-01

Full Text Available There are few researches with deeper reflections on the study of algebra with deaf students. In order to validate and disseminate educational activities in that context, this article aims at highlighting the deaf students’ prior knowledge, fluent in Brazilian Sign Language, referring to the algebraic language used in high school. The theoretical framework used was Duval’s theory, with analysis of the changes, by treatment and conversion, of different registers of semiotic representation, in particular inequalities. The methodology used was the application of a diagnostic evaluation performed with deaf students, all fluent in Brazilian Sign Language, in a special school located in the north of Paraná State. We emphasize the need to work in both directions of conversion, in different languages, especially when the starting record is the graphic. Therefore, the conclusion reached was that one should not separate the algebraic representation from other records, due to the need of sign language perform not only the communication function, but also the functions of objectification and treatment, fundamental in cognitive development.

Processability in Scandinavian second language acquisition

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Glahn, Esther; Håkansson, Gisela; Hammerberg, Björn

2001-01-01

. The three languages mentioned are very closely related and have the same adjective morphology and subordinate clause syntax. We can, therefore, treat them as one language for the purposes of this study. Three analyses have been carried out: The first follows Pienemann's theory and is concerned only...... with syntactic levels; the second is a semantic analysis of the acquisition of number versus that of gender; the third analysis studies the various kinds of mismatches between the inflection of the noun, the controller, and the adjective. The results are the following: The first test supports PT as it has been...... described by Pienemann. The second analysis shows that there is an acquisitional hierarchy such that number is acquired before gender (in adjectives), and the mismatch analysis raises questions about the fundamental assumptions of the theory....

Where "Sign Language Studies" Has Led Us in Forty Years: Opening High School and University Education for Deaf People in Viet Nam through Sign Language Analysis, Teaching, and Interpretation

Science.gov (United States)

Woodward, James; Hoa, Nguyen Thi

2012-01-01

This paper discusses how the Nippon Foundation-funded project "Opening University Education to Deaf People in Viet Nam through Sign Language Analysis, Teaching, and Interpretation," also known as the Dong Nai Deaf Education Project, has been implemented through sign language studies from 2000 through 2012. This project has provided deaf…

Generative Research on Second Language Acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Eubank, Lynn

1995-01-01

Reviews recent trends in generative research on second language acquisition, focusing on the role of universal grammar, parameter resetting, and anaphoric binding. An annotated bibliography discusses five important works in the field. (61 references) (MDM)

Signing Earth Science: Accommodations for Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing and Whose First Language Is Sign

Science.gov (United States)

Vesel, J.; Hurdich, J.

2014-12-01

TERC and Vcom3D used the SigningAvatar® accessibility software to research and develop a Signing Earth Science Dictionary (SESD) of approximately 750 standards-based Earth science terms for high school students who are deaf and hard of hearing and whose first language is sign. The partners also evaluated the extent to which use of the SESD furthers understanding of Earth science content, command of the language of Earth science, and the ability to study Earth science independently. Disseminated as a Web-based version and App, the SESD is intended to serve the ~36,000 grade 9-12 students who are deaf or hard of hearing and whose first language is sign, the majority of whom leave high school reading at the fifth grade or below. It is also intended for teachers and interpreters who interact with members of this population and professionals working with Earth science education programs during field trips, internships etc. The signed SESD terms have been incorporated into a Mobile Communication App (MCA). This App for Androids is intended to facilitate communication between English speakers and persons who communicate in American Sign Language (ASL) or Signed English. It can translate words, phrases, or whole sentences from written or spoken English to animated signing. It can also fingerspell proper names and other words for which there are no signs. For our presentation, we will demonstrate the interactive features of the SigningAvatar® accessibility software that support the three principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and have been incorporated into the SESD and MCA. Results from national field-tests will provide insight into the SESD's and MCA's potential applicability beyond grade 12 as accommodations that can be used for accessing the vocabulary deaf and hard of hearing students need for study of the geosciences and for facilitating communication about content. This work was funded in part by grants from NSF and the U.S. Department of Education.

Referential shift in Nicaraguan Sign Language: a transition from lexical to spatial devices.

Science.gov (United States)

Kocab, Annemarie; Pyers, Jennie; Senghas, Ann

2014-01-01

Even the simplest narratives combine multiple strands of information, integrating different characters and their actions by expressing multiple perspectives of events. We examined the emergence of referential shift devices, which indicate changes among these perspectives, in Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). Sign languages, like spoken languages, mark referential shift grammatically with a shift in deictic perspective. In addition, sign languages can mark the shift with a point or a movement of the body to a specified spatial location in the three-dimensional space in front of the signer, capitalizing on the spatial affordances of the manual modality. We asked whether the use of space to mark referential shift emerges early in a new sign language by comparing the first two age cohorts of deaf signers of NSL. Eight first-cohort signers and 10 second-cohort signers watched video vignettes and described them in NSL. Narratives were coded for lexical (use of words) and spatial (use of signing space) devices. Although the cohorts did not differ significantly in the number of perspectives represented, second-cohort signers used referential shift devices to explicitly mark a shift in perspective in more of their narratives. Furthermore, while there was no significant difference between cohorts in the use of non-spatial, lexical devices, there was a difference in spatial devices, with second-cohort signers using them in significantly more of their narratives. This suggests that spatial devices have only recently increased as systematic markers of referential shift. Spatial referential shift devices may have emerged more slowly because they depend on the establishment of fundamental spatial conventions in the language. While the modality of sign languages can ultimately engender the syntactic use of three-dimensional space, we propose that a language must first develop systematic spatial distinctions before harnessing space for grammatical functions.

Psychometric properties of a sign language version of the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI)

OpenAIRE

Øhre, Beate; Saltnes, Hege; von Tetzchner, Stephen; Falkum, Erik

2014-01-01

Background There is a need for psychiatric assessment instruments that enable reliable diagnoses in persons with hearing loss who have sign language as their primary language. The objective of this study was to assess the validity of the Norwegian Sign Language (NSL) version of the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI). Methods The MINI was translated into NSL. Forty-one signing patients consecutively referred to two specialised psychiatric units were assessed with a diagnos...

PROPOSING A LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE AND SELF-ASSESSMENT OF PROFICIENCY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR BILINGUAL BRAZILIAN SIGN LANGUAGE/PORTUGUESE HEARING TEACHERS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ingrid FINGER

2014-12-01

Full Text Available This article presents a language experience and self-assessment of proficiency questionnaire for hearing teachers who use Brazilian Sign Language and Portuguese in their teaching practice. By focusing on hearing teachers who work in Deaf education contexts, this questionnaire is presented as a tool that may complement the assessment of linguistic skills of hearing teachers. This proposal takes into account important factors in bilingualism studies such as the importance of knowing the participant’s context with respect to family, professional and social background (KAUFMANN, 2010. This work uses as model the following questionnaires: LEAP-Q (MARIAN; BLUMENFELD; KAUSHANSKAYA, 2007, SLSCO – Sign Language Skills Classroom Observation (REEVES et al., 2000 and the Language Attitude Questionnaire (KAUFMANN, 2010, taking into consideration the different kinds of exposure to Brazilian Sign Language. The questionnaire is designed for bilingual bimodal hearing teachers who work in bilingual schools for the Deaf or who work in the specialized educational department who assistdeaf students.

Serbian language acquisition in communist Romania

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sorescu-Marinković Annemarie

2010-01-01

Full Text Available The paper analyzes a unique linguistic phenomenon characterizing Romania’s western border areas for almost a decade, in the 1980s: the acquisition of the Serbian language by Romanians in Timişoara under the communist regime, primarily through exposure to Yugoslav television programmes. It gives a necessarily sketchy overview of private life under communism, notably the situation in the Banat province, whose privileged position as a result of being closest to the West both geographically and culturally was reflected in the acceptance of pluralism and a critical attitude towards authoritarianism. Taking into account the literature on foreign language acquisition through exposure to television programmes, the study is based on a research involving Romanian natives of Timişoara who, although lacking any formal instruction in Serbian, intensively and regularly watched Yugoslav television programmes in the period in question, and on evaluating their competence and proficiency in Serbian, through language tests, narrative interviews in Romanian and free conversations in Serbian. The conclusion is that most respondents, despite the varying degree of proficiency in Serbian depending on their active use of the language before and after 1989, showed a strong pragmatic competence, which appears to contradict the author’s initial hypothesis.

Neurolinguistics Aspects of Second Language Acquisition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Laleh Fakhraee Faruji

2011-12-01

Full Text Available   Fundamental breakthroughs in the neurosciences, combined with technical innovations for measuring brain activity, are shedding new light on the neural basis of second language (L2
processing, and on its relationship to native language processing (L1 (Perani & Abutalebi, 2005.  Over the past two decades, a large body of neuroimaging studies has been devoted to the study of the neural organization of language (De´monet, Thierry, & Cardebat, 2005; Indefrey & Levelt, 2004; Price, 2000 as cited in Abutalebi, 2008. The value that functional neuroimaging adds to language research is to improve the perspective on the distributed anatomy of language. Thus, it can be used with considerable precision to identify the neural networks underlying the different domains of language processing. In this paper some main issues related to neurolinguistics and second language acquisition with a focus on bilingualism will be discussed.

The effect of sign language structure on complex word reading in Chinese deaf adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Lu, Aitao; Yu, Yanping; Niu, Jiaxin; Zhang, John X

2015-01-01

The present study was carried out to investigate whether sign language structure plays a role in the processing of complex words (i.e., derivational and compound words), in particular, the delay of complex word reading in deaf adolescents. Chinese deaf adolescents were found to respond faster to derivational words than to compound words for one-sign-structure words, but showed comparable performance for two-sign-structure words. For both derivational and compound words, response latencies to one-sign-structure words were shorter than to two-sign-structure words. These results provide strong evidence that the structure of sign language affects written word processing in Chinese. Additionally, differences between derivational and compound words in the one-sign-structure condition indicate that Chinese deaf adolescents acquire print morphological awareness. The results also showed that delayed word reading was found in derivational words with two signs (DW-2), compound words with one sign (CW-1), and compound words with two signs (CW-2), but not in derivational words with one sign (DW-1), with the delay being maximum in DW-2, medium in CW-2, and minimum in CW-1, suggesting that the structure of sign language has an impact on the delayed processing of Chinese written words in deaf adolescents. These results provide insight into the mechanisms about how sign language structure affects written word processing and its delayed processing relative to their hearing peers of the same age.

The effect of sign language structure on complex word reading in Chinese deaf adolescents.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aitao Lu

Full Text Available The present study was carried out to investigate whether sign language structure plays a role in the processing of complex words (i.e., derivational and compound words, in particular, the delay of complex word reading in deaf adolescents. Chinese deaf adolescents were found to respond faster to derivational words than to compound words for one-sign-structure words, but showed comparable performance for two-sign-structure words. For both derivational and compound words, response latencies to one-sign-structure words were shorter than to two-sign-structure words. These results provide strong evidence that the structure of sign language affects written word processing in Chinese. Additionally, differences between derivational and compound words in the one-sign-structure condition indicate that Chinese deaf adolescents acquire print morphological awareness. The results also showed that delayed word reading was found in derivational words with two signs (DW-2, compound words with one sign (CW-1, and compound words with two signs (CW-2, but not in derivational words with one sign (DW-1, with the delay being maximum in DW-2, medium in CW-2, and minimum in CW-1, suggesting that the structure of sign language has an impact on the delayed processing of Chinese written words in deaf adolescents. These results provide insight into the mechanisms about how sign language structure affects written word processing and its delayed processing relative to their hearing peers of the same age.

Self-Organizing Map Models of Language Acquisition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ping eLi

2013-11-01

Full Text Available Connectionist models have had a profound impact on theories of language. While most early models were inspired by the classic PDP architecture, recent models of language have explored various other types of models, including self-organizing models for language acquisition. In this paper we aim at providing a review of the latter type of models, and highlight a number of simulation experiments that we have conducted based on these models. We show that self-organizing connectionist models can provide significant insights into long-standing debates in both monolingual and bilingual language development.

75 FR 60261 - Federal Acquisition Regulation; Award-Fee Language Revision

Science.gov (United States)

2010-09-29

...-AL42 Federal Acquisition Regulation; Award-Fee Language Revision AGENCIES: Department of Defense (DoD...: Final rule. SUMMARY: The Civilian Agency Acquisition Council and the Defense Acquisition Regulations Council (Councils) have adopted as final, with changes, the interim rule amending the Federal Acquisition...

An Intelligent Computer-Based System for Sign Language Tutoring

Science.gov (United States)

Ritchings, Tim; Khadragi, Ahmed; Saeb, Magdy

2012-01-01

A computer-based system for sign language tutoring has been developed using a low-cost data glove and a software application that processes the movement signals for signs in real-time and uses Pattern Matching techniques to decide if a trainee has closely replicated a teacher's recorded movements. The data glove provides 17 movement signals from…

Cochlear Implantation (CI for prelingual deafness: the relevance of studies of brain organization and the role of first language acquisition in considering outcome success.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ruth eCampbell

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Cochlear implantation (CI for profound congenital hearing impairment, while often successful in restoring hearing to the deaf child, does not always result in effective speech processing. Exposure to non-auditory signals during the pre-implantation period is widely held to be responsible for such failures. Here, we question the inference that such exposure irreparably distorts the function of auditory cortex, negatively impacting the efficacy of cochlear implantation. Animal studies suggest that in congenital early deafness there is a disconnection between (disordered activation in primary auditory cortex (A1 and activation in secondary auditory cortex (A2. In humans, one factor contributing to this functional decoupling is assumed to be abnormal activation of A1 by visual projections – including exposure to sign language. In this paper we show that that this abnormal activation of A1 does not routinely occur, while A2 functions effectively supramodally and multimodally to deliver spoken language irrespective of hearing status. What, then, is responsible for poor outcomes for some individuals with CI and for apparent abnormalities in cortical organization in these people? Since infancy is a critical period for the acquisition of language, deaf children born to hearing parents are at risk of developing inefficient neural structures to support skilled language processing. A sign language, acquired by a deaf child as a first language in a signing environment, is cortically organized like a heard spoken language in terms of specialization of the dominant perisylvian system. However, very few deaf children are exposed to sign language in early infancy. Moreover, no studies to date have examined sign language proficiency in relation to cortical organization in individuals with CI. Given the paucity of such relevant findings, we suggest that the best guarantee of good language outcome after CI is the establishment of a secure first language pre

BILINGUAL MULTIMODAL SYSTEM FOR TEXT-TO-AUDIOVISUAL SPEECH AND SIGN LANGUAGE SYNTHESIS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. A. Karpov

2014-09-01

Full Text Available We present a conceptual model, architecture and software of a multimodal system for audio-visual speech and sign language synthesis by the input text. The main components of the developed multimodal synthesis system (signing avatar are: automatic text processor for input text analysis; simulation 3D model of human's head; computer text-to-speech synthesizer; a system for audio-visual speech synthesis; simulation 3D model of human’s hands and upper body; multimodal user interface integrating all the components for generation of audio, visual and signed speech. The proposed system performs automatic translation of input textual information into speech (audio information and gestures (video information, information fusion and its output in the form of multimedia information. A user can input any grammatically correct text in Russian or Czech languages to the system; it is analyzed by the text processor to detect sentences, words and characters. Then this textual information is converted into symbols of the sign language notation. We apply international «Hamburg Notation System» - HamNoSys, which describes the main differential features of each manual sign: hand shape, hand orientation, place and type of movement. On their basis the 3D signing avatar displays the elements of the sign language. The virtual 3D model of human’s head and upper body has been created using VRML virtual reality modeling language, and it is controlled by the software based on OpenGL graphical library. The developed multimodal synthesis system is a universal one since it is oriented for both regular users and disabled people (in particular, for the hard-of-hearing and visually impaired, and it serves for multimedia output (by audio and visual modalities of input textual information.

A Correlational Study: Personality Types and Foreign Language Acquisition in Undergraduate Students

Science.gov (United States)

Capellan, Frank

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality types and second language acquisition. The study addressed a problem that is inadequately investigated in foreign language acquisition research; specifically, personality traits as predictors of language learning in college students studying Spanish as a foreign…

Frames of reference in spatial language acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Shusterman, Anna; Li, Peggy

2016-08-01

Languages differ in how they encode spatial frames of reference. It is unknown how children acquire the particular frame-of-reference terms in their language (e.g., left/right, north/south). The present paper uses a word-learning paradigm to investigate 4-year-old English-speaking children's acquisition of such terms. In Part I, with five experiments, we contrasted children's acquisition of novel word pairs meaning left-right and north-south to examine their initial hypotheses and the relative ease of learning the meanings of these terms. Children interpreted ambiguous spatial terms as having environment-based meanings akin to north and south, and they readily learned and generalized north-south meanings. These studies provide the first direct evidence that children invoke geocentric representations in spatial language acquisition. However, the studies leave unanswered how children ultimately acquire "left" and "right." In Part II, with three more experiments, we investigated why children struggle to master body-based frame-of-reference words. Children successfully learned "left" and "right" when the novel words were systematically introduced on their own bodies and extended these words to novel (intrinsic and relative) uses; however, they had difficulty learning to talk about the left and right sides of a doll. This difficulty was paralleled in identifying the left and right sides of the doll in a non-linguistic memory task. In contrast, children had no difficulties learning to label the front and back sides of a doll. These studies begin to paint a detailed account of the acquisition of spatial terms in English, and provide insights into the origins of diverse spatial reference frames in the world's languages. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Atypical Speech and Language Development: A Consensus Study on Clinical Signs in the Netherlands

Science.gov (United States)

Visser-Bochane, Margot I.; Gerrits, Ellen; van der Schans, Cees P.; Reijneveld, Sijmen A.; Luinge, Margreet R.

2017-01-01

Background: Atypical speech and language development is one of the most common developmental difficulties in young children. However, which clinical signs characterize atypical speech-language development at what age is not clear. Aim: To achieve a national and valid consensus on clinical signs and red flags (i.e. most urgent clinical signs) for…

Age of acquisition effects in word recognition and production in first and second languages

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrew W. Ellis

2002-01-01

Full Text Available Four experiments explored the age of acquisition effects in the first and second languages of dominant Spanish-English bilinguals. In Experiment 1 (picture naming task and Experiment 2 (lexical decision task, an age of acquisition effect was observed in a second language acquired after childhood as well as in the first language. The results suggest that age of acquisition effects reflect the order of word acquisition, which may in turn reflect the state of the lexical network when new words are learnt. The results do not support the idea that age of acquisition effects reflect differences between words learned during some critical period in childhood and words learned later in life. In Experiments 3 and 4, the age/order of second language acquisition affected lexical decision latencies regardless of the age at which translation equivalents were acquired in the first language, suggesting that the age of acquisition effect is linked to the acquisition of word forms rather than meanings.

Acquisition of speech rhythm in a second language by learners with rhythmically different native languages.

Science.gov (United States)

Ordin, Mikhail; Polyanskaya, Leona

2015-08-01

The development of speech rhythm in second language (L2) acquisition was investigated. Speech rhythm was defined as durational variability that can be captured by the interval-based rhythm metrics. These metrics were used to examine the differences in durational variability between proficiency levels in L2 English spoken by French and German learners. The results reveal that durational variability increased as L2 acquisition progressed in both groups of learners. This indicates that speech rhythm in L2 English develops from more syllable-timed toward more stress-timed patterns irrespective of whether the native language of the learner is rhythmically similar to or different from the target language. Although both groups showed similar development of speech rhythm in L2 acquisition, there were also differences: German learners achieved a degree of durational variability typical of the target language, while French learners exhibited lower variability than native British speakers, even at an advanced proficiency level.

Ovide Decroly's Views on Language Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

Lebrun, Yvan; Van De Craen, Piet

1975-01-01

Belgian physician and psychologist Ovide Decroly, keenly interested in language acquisition, devised tests to measure verbal skills in children and campaigned for the adoption of the sentence method rather than the word-building method in teaching reading and writing. (Author/CL)

Sign Language Translation in State Administration in Germany: Barrier Free Web Accessibility

OpenAIRE

Lišková, Kateřina

2014-01-01

The aim of this thesis is to describe Web accessibility in state administration in the Federal Republic of Germany in relation to the socio-demographic group of deaf sign language users who did not have the opportunity to gain proper knowledge of a written form of the German language. The demand of the Deaf to information in an accessible form as based on legal documents is presented in relation to the theory of translation. How translating from written texts into sign language works in pract...

Study of functional brain imaging for bilingual language cognition

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sun Da

2008-01-01

Bilingual and multilingual brain studies of language recognition is an interdisciplinary subject which needs to identify different levels involved in the neural representation of languages, such as neuroanatomical, neurofunctional, biochemical, psychological and linguistic levels. Furthermore, specific factor's such as age, manner of acquisition and environmental factors seem to affect the neural representation. Functional brain imaging, such as PET, SPECT and functional MRI can explore the neurolinguistics representation of bilingualism in the brain in subjects, and elucidate the neuronal mechanisms of bilingual language processing. Functional imaging methods show differences in the pattern of cerebral activation associated with a second language compared with the subject's native language. It shows that verbal memory processing in two unrelated languages is mediated by a common neural system with some distinct cortical areas. The different patterns of activation differ according to the language used. It also could be ascribed either to age of acquisition or to proficiency level. And attained proficiency is more important than age of acquisition as a determinant of the cortical representation of the second language. The study used PET and SPECT shows that sign and spoken language seem to be localized in the same brain areas, and elicit similar regional cerebral blood flow patterns. But for sign language perception, the functional anatomy overlaps that of language processing contain both auditory and visual components. And the sign language is dependent on spatial information too. (authors)

SECOND-LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND THE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

CAMELIA NEAGU

2012-05-01

Full Text Available As a branch of applied linguistics, language education or educational linguistics2 has had a long history dating back in ancient times. However, at present, under the influence of globalization, second-language acquisition3 has become a sine qua non condition for any potential employee or employer in the knowledge society. Basically, democratic regimes and developing countries encourage language education which they regard as an important asset in the process of globalization. Moreover, the study of foreign languages significantly contributes to the development of any human being’s personality and implicitly of any society by eliminating cultural biases and borders. Currently, countries which fail to understand the importance of second-language acquisition deprive their citizens of a key social and cultural development factor. Last but not least, we could say that at present the ability to speak English has become synonym with acquiring a universal language. In consequence, educational policies should seriously focus on the study of the new lingua franca4, i.e. English, while accepting as an undeniable possibility – given the rapidly changing political and economic environment – the fact that another language (such as Chinese or Spanish etc. may replace English in time.

The corpus-driven revolution in Polish Sign Language: the interview with Dr. Paweł Rutkowski

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Iztok Kosem

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Dr. Paweł Rutkowski is head of the Section for Sign Linguistics at the University of Warsaw. He is a general linguist and a specialist in the field of syntax of natural languages, carrying out research on Polish Sign Language (polski język migowy — PJM. He has been awarded a number of prizes, grants and scholarships by such institutions as the Foundation for Polish Science, Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, National Science Centre, Poland, Polish–U.S. Fulbright Commission, Kosciuszko Foundation and DAAD. Dr. Rutkowski leads the team developing the Corpus of Polish Sign Language and the Corpus-based Dictionary of Polish Sign Language, the first dictionary of this language prepared in compliance with modern lexicographical standards. The dictionary is an open-access publication, available freely at the following address: http://www.slownikpjm.uw.edu.pl/en/. This interview took place at eLex 2017, a biennial conference on electronic lexicography, where Dr. Rutkowski was awarded the Adam Kilgarriff Prize and gave a keynote address entitled Sign language as a challenge to electronic lexicography: The Corpus-based Dictionary of Polish Sign Language and beyond. The interview was conducted by Dr. Victoria Nyst from Leiden University, Faculty of Humanities, and Dr. Iztok Kosem from the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts.

Bootstrapping language acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Abend, Omri; Kwiatkowski, Tom; Smith, Nathaniel J; Goldwater, Sharon; Steedman, Mark

2017-07-01

The semantic bootstrapping hypothesis proposes that children acquire their native language through exposure to sentences of the language paired with structured representations of their meaning, whose component substructures can be associated with words and syntactic structures used to express these concepts. The child's task is then to learn a language-specific grammar and lexicon based on (probably contextually ambiguous, possibly somewhat noisy) pairs of sentences and their meaning representations (logical forms). Starting from these assumptions, we develop a Bayesian probabilistic account of semantically bootstrapped first-language acquisition in the child, based on techniques from computational parsing and interpretation of unrestricted text. Our learner jointly models (a) word learning: the mapping between components of the given sentential meaning and lexical words (or phrases) of the language, and (b) syntax learning: the projection of lexical elements onto sentences by universal construction-free syntactic rules. Using an incremental learning algorithm, we apply the model to a dataset of real syntactically complex child-directed utterances and (pseudo) logical forms, the latter including contextually plausible but irrelevant distractors. Taking the Eve section of the CHILDES corpus as input, the model simulates several well-documented phenomena from the developmental literature. In particular, the model exhibits syntactic bootstrapping effects (in which previously learned constructions facilitate the learning of novel words), sudden jumps in learning without explicit parameter setting, acceleration of word-learning (the "vocabulary spurt"), an initial bias favoring the learning of nouns over verbs, and one-shot learning of words and their meanings. The learner thus demonstrates how statistical learning over structured representations can provide a unified account for these seemingly disparate phenomena. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The verbal-visual discourse in Brazilian Sign Language – Libras

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tanya Felipe

2013-11-01

Full Text Available This article aims to broaden the discussion on verbal-visual utterances, reflecting upon theoretical assumptions of the Bakhtin Circle that can reinforce the argument that the utterances of a language that employs a visual-gestural modality convey plastic-pictorial and spatial values of signs also through non-manual markers (NMMs. This research highlights the difference between affective expressions, which are paralinguistic communications that may complement an utterance, and verbal-visual grammatical markers, which are linguistic because they are part of the architecture of phonological, morphological, syntactic-semantic and discursive levels in a particular language. These markers will be described, taking the Brazilian Sign Language–Libras as a starting point, thereby including this language in discussions of verbal-visual discourse when investigating the need to do research on this discourse also in the linguistic analyses of oral-auditory modality languages, including Transliguistics as an area of knowledge that analyzes discourse, focusing upon the verbal-visual markers used by the subjects in their utterance acts.

The non- (existent) native signer: sign language research in a small deaf population

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Costello, B.; Fernández, J.; Landa, A.; Quadros, R.; Möller de Quadros,

2008-01-01

This paper examines the concept of a native language user and looks at the different definitions of native signer within the field of sign language research. A description of the deaf signing population in the Basque Country shows that the figure of 5-10% typically cited for deaf individuals born

Dissociating linguistic and non-linguistic gesture processing: electrophysiological evidence from American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Grosvald, Michael; Gutierrez, Eva; Hafer, Sarah; Corina, David

2012-04-01

A fundamental advance in our understanding of human language would come from a detailed account of how non-linguistic and linguistic manual actions are differentiated in real time by language users. To explore this issue, we targeted the N400, an ERP component known to be sensitive to semantic context. Deaf signers saw 120 American Sign Language sentences, each consisting of a "frame" (a sentence without the last word; e.g. BOY SLEEP IN HIS) followed by a "last item" belonging to one of four categories: a high-close-probability sign (a "semantically reasonable" completion to the sentence; e.g. BED), a low-close-probability sign (a real sign that is nonetheless a "semantically odd" completion to the sentence; e.g. LEMON), a pseudo-sign (phonologically legal but non-lexical form), or a non-linguistic grooming gesture (e.g. the performer scratching her face). We found significant N400-like responses in the incongruent and pseudo-sign contexts, while the gestures elicited a large positivity. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Space and iconicity in German Sign Language (DGS)

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Perniss, P.M.

2007-01-01

This dissertation investigates the expression of spatial relationships in German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS). The analysis focuses on linguistic expression in the spatial domain in two types of discourse: static scene description (location) and event narratives (location and

Cross-Modal Recruitment of Auditory and Orofacial Areas During Sign Language in a Deaf Subject.

Science.gov (United States)

Martino, Juan; Velasquez, Carlos; Vázquez-Bourgon, Javier; de Lucas, Enrique Marco; Gomez, Elsa

2017-09-01

Modern sign languages used by deaf people are fully expressive, natural human languages that are perceived visually and produced manually. The literature contains little data concerning human brain organization in conditions of deficient sensory information such as deafness. A deaf-mute patient underwent surgery of a left temporoinsular low-grade glioma. The patient underwent awake surgery with intraoperative electrical stimulation mapping, allowing direct study of the cortical and subcortical organization of sign language. We found a similar distribution of language sites to what has been reported in mapping studies of patients with oral language, including 1) speech perception areas inducing anomias and alexias close to the auditory cortex (at the posterior portion of the superior temporal gyrus and supramarginal gyrus); 2) speech production areas inducing speech arrest (anarthria) at the ventral premotor cortex, close to the lip motor area and away from the hand motor area; and 3) subcortical stimulation-induced semantic paraphasias at the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus at the temporal isthmus. The intraoperative setup for sign language mapping with intraoperative electrical stimulation in deaf-mute patients is similar to the setup described in patients with oral language. To elucidate the type of language errors, a sign language interpreter in close interaction with the neuropsychologist is necessary. Sign language is perceived visually and produced manually; however, this case revealed a cross-modal recruitment of auditory and orofacial motor areas. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Semantic Fluency in Deaf Children Who Use Spoken and Signed Language in Comparison with Hearing Peers

Science.gov (United States)

Marshall, C. R.; Jones, A.; Fastelli, A.; Atkinson, J.; Botting, N.; Morgan, G.

2018-01-01

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…

Syntactic transfer in the initial stages of adult third language and fourth language acquisition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mahbube Tavakol

2016-01-01

Full Text Available This paper elucidates the articulated proposals for the initial stages of adult third language (L3 syntactic transfer, addressing their application for L3 and the subsequent fourth language (L4 acquisition. The study was set to demonstrate empirical evidence in line with or against the tenets of the models and to indicate if and how syntactic transfer might obtain differently depending on the language being acquired– L3 vs. L4. The models to be tested were Full Transfer/Full Access (FT/FA, L2 Status Factor Hypothesis (LSFH, Cumulative Enhancement Model (CEM and Typological Primacy Model (TPM. Following a principles and parameters framework, six parameters were selected to generate several language pairings and an adult female’s L3 Italian and L4 German’s early spontaneous productions of the selected features were audio-recorded. The accuracy levels with which the features were produced in tandem with the results of error analyses violated the positions of FT/FA as considered for L3/s acquisition and CEM and consistently identified Typological proximity and L2 status as affecting syntactic transfer during the early stages multilingual acquisition.

ASL-LEX: A lexical database of American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Caselli, Naomi K; Sehyr, Zed Sevcikova; Cohen-Goldberg, Ariel M; Emmorey, Karen

2017-04-01

ASL-LEX is a lexical database that catalogues information about nearly 1,000 signs in American Sign Language (ASL). It includes the following information: subjective frequency ratings from 25-31 deaf signers, iconicity ratings from 21-37 hearing non-signers, videoclip duration, sign length (onset and offset), grammatical class, and whether the sign is initialized, a fingerspelled loan sign, or a compound. Information about English translations is available for a subset of signs (e.g., alternate translations, translation consistency). In addition, phonological properties (sign type, selected fingers, flexion, major and minor location, and movement) were coded and used to generate sub-lexical frequency and neighborhood density estimates. ASL-LEX is intended for use by researchers, educators, and students who are interested in the properties of the ASL lexicon. An interactive website where the database can be browsed and downloaded is available at http://asl-lex.org .

Kinect-based sign language recognition of static and dynamic hand movements

Science.gov (United States)

Dalawis, Rando C.; Olayao, Kenneth Deniel R.; Ramos, Evan Geoffrey I.; Samonte, Mary Jane C.

2017-02-01

A different approach of sign language recognition of static and dynamic hand movements was developed in this study using normalized correlation algorithm. The goal of this research was to translate fingerspelling sign language into text using MATLAB and Microsoft Kinect. Digital input image captured by Kinect devices are matched from template samples stored in a database. This Human Computer Interaction (HCI) prototype was developed to help people with communication disability to express their thoughts with ease. Frame segmentation and feature extraction was used to give meaning to the captured images. Sequential and random testing was used to test both static and dynamic fingerspelling gestures. The researchers explained some factors they encountered causing some misclassification of signs.

Sign Language Planning in the Netherlands between 1980 and 2010

Science.gov (United States)

Schermer, Trude

2012-01-01

This article discusses several aspects of language planning with respect to Sign Language of the Netherlands, or Nederlandse Gebarentaal (NGT). For nearly thirty years members of the Deaf community, the Dutch Deaf Council (Dovenschap) have been working together with researchers, several organizations in deaf education, and the organization of…

Some Aspects of Developing Background Knowledge in Second Language Acquisition Revisited

Science.gov (United States)

Zashchitina, Galina; Moysyak, Natalia

2017-01-01

The article focuses on defining how background knowledge impacts on second-language acquisition by giving a brief overview of schema theory, the interaction of the basic modes of information processing. A challenge of dealing with culturally specific texts in second language acquisition is also touched upon. Different research-supported views on…

Second Language Acquisition, Culture Shock and Language Stress of Adult Latina Students in New York.

Science.gov (United States)

Buttaro, Lucia

This study identified the second language acquisition, culture shock, and language stress of adult Latinas in New York as related to language, culture, and education. Participants were eight adult Latinas, for whom Spanish was the first language, who had come to the United States 10-15 years previously and developed some functioning English as a…

ALPHABET SIGN LANGUAGE RECOGNITION USING LEAP MOTION TECHNOLOGY AND RULE BASED BACKPROPAGATION-GENETIC ALGORITHM NEURAL NETWORK (RBBPGANN

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wijayanti Nurul Khotimah

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Sign Language recognition was used to help people with normal hearing communicate effectively with the deaf and hearing-impaired. Based on survey that conducted by Multi-Center Study in Southeast Asia, Indonesia was on the top four position in number of patients with hearing disability (4.6%. Therefore, the existence of Sign Language recognition is important. Some research has been conducted on this field. Many neural network types had been used for recognizing many kinds of sign languages. However, their performance are need to be improved. This work focuses on the ASL (Alphabet Sign Language in SIBI (Sign System of Indonesian Language which uses one hand and 26 gestures. Here, thirty four features were extracted by using Leap Motion. Further, a new method, Rule Based-Backpropagation Genetic Al-gorithm Neural Network (RB-BPGANN, was used to recognize these Sign Languages. This method is combination of Rule and Back Propagation Neural Network (BPGANN. Based on experiment this pro-posed application can recognize Sign Language up to 93.8% accuracy. It was very good to recognize large multiclass instance and can be solution of overfitting problem in Neural Network algorithm.

Exploring the use of dynamic language assessment with deaf children, who use American Sign Language: Two case studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Mann, Wolfgang; Peña, Elizabeth D; Morgan, Gary

2014-01-01

We describe a model for assessment of lexical-semantic organization skills in American Sign Language (ASL) within the framework of dynamic vocabulary assessment and discuss the applicability and validity of the use of mediated learning experiences (MLE) with deaf signing children. Two elementary students (ages 7;6 and 8;4) completed a set of four vocabulary tasks and received two 30-minute mediations in ASL. Each session consisted of several scripted activities focusing on the use of categorization. Both had experienced difficulties in providing categorically related responses in one of the vocabulary tasks used previously. Results showed that the two students exhibited notable differences with regards to their learning pace, information uptake, and effort required by the mediator. Furthermore, we observed signs of a shift in strategic behavior by the lower performing student during the second mediation. Results suggest that the use of dynamic assessment procedures in a vocabulary context was helpful in understanding children's strategies as related to learning potential. These results are discussed in terms of deaf children's cognitive modifiability with implications for planning instruction and how MLE can be used with a population that uses ASL. The reader will (1) recognize the challenges in appropriate language assessment of deaf signing children; (2) recall the three areas explored to investigate whether a dynamic assessment approach is sensitive to differences in deaf signing children's language learning profiles (3) discuss how dynamic assessment procedures can make deaf signing children's individual language learning differences visible. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Processing of Biologically Plausible and Implausible forms in American Sign Language: Evidence for Perceptual Tuning.

Science.gov (United States)

Almeida, Diogo; Poeppel, David; Corina, David

The human auditory system distinguishes speech-like information from general auditory signals in a remarkably fast and efficient way. Combining psychophysics and neurophysiology (MEG), we demonstrate a similar result for the processing of visual information used for language communication in users of sign languages. We demonstrate that the earliest visual cortical responses in deaf signers viewing American Sign Language (ASL) signs show specific modulations to violations of anatomic constraints that would make the sign either possible or impossible to articulate. These neural data are accompanied with a significantly increased perceptual sensitivity to the anatomical incongruity. The differential effects in the early visual evoked potentials arguably reflect an expectation-driven assessment of somatic representational integrity, suggesting that language experience and/or auditory deprivation may shape the neuronal mechanisms underlying the analysis of complex human form. The data demonstrate that the perceptual tuning that underlies the discrimination of language and non-language information is not limited to spoken languages but extends to languages expressed in the visual modality.

Environmental Correlates of Individual Differences in Language Acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Furrow, David; Nelson, Katherine

1984-01-01

Reports on a study of mothers' uses of nouns and pronouns and their references to objects and persons as environmental variables which might relate to children's nominal preferences. Findings suggest that environmental factors do contribute to stylistic differences in language acquisition and that the communicative functions of language are an…

Sign languages and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages : Descriptors and approaches to assessment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

L. Leeson; Dr. Beppie van den Bogaerde; Tobias Haug; C. Rathmann

2015-01-01

This resource establishes European standards for sign languages for professional purposes in line with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and provides an overview of assessment descriptors and approaches. Drawing on preliminary work undertaken in adapting the CEFR to

Assessing language skills in adult key word signers with intellectual disabilities: Insights from sign linguistics.

Science.gov (United States)

Grove, Nicola; Woll, Bencie

2017-03-01

Manual signing is one of the most widely used approaches to support the communication and language skills of children and adults who have intellectual or developmental disabilities, and problems with communication in spoken language. A recent series of papers reporting findings from this population raises critical issues for professionals in the assessment of multimodal language skills of key word signers. Approaches to assessment will differ depending on whether key word signing (KWS) is viewed as discrete from, or related to, natural sign languages. Two available assessments from these different perspectives are compared. Procedures appropriate to the assessment of sign language production are recommended as a valuable addition to the clinician's toolkit. Sign and speech need to be viewed as multimodal, complementary communicative endeavours, rather than as polarities. Whilst narrative has been shown to be a fruitful context for eliciting language samples, assessments for adult users should be designed to suit the strengths, needs and values of adult signers with intellectual disabilities, using materials that are compatible with their life course stage rather than those designed for young children. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

HIV/AIDS knowledge among adolescent sign-language users in ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

, particularly sign language users, in HIV-prevention programmes. Keywords: communication, disability, disability studies, hearing impairment, qualitative research, scoping study. African Journal of AIDS Research 2010, 9(3): 307–313 ...

Deaf Students' Receptive and Expressive American Sign Language Skills: Comparisons and Relations

Science.gov (United States)

Beal-Alvarez, Jennifer S.

2014-01-01

This article presents receptive and expressive American Sign Language skills of 85 students, 6 through 22 years of age at a residential school for the deaf using the American Sign Language Receptive Skills Test and the Ozcaliskan Motion Stimuli. Results are presented by ages and indicate that students' receptive skills increased with age and…

Specific Cognitive Antecedents of Structures and Functions Involved in Language Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

Moerk, Ernst L.

1973-01-01

The antecedents of verbal behavior, together with the teaching skills of the adult linguistic community, probably constitute all the necessary bases for language acquisition. As they seemed to be sufficient for the explanation of all the known phenomena, an assumption of an innate linguistic language acquisition device was rejected as superfluous.…

On the temporal dynamics of sign production: An ERP study in Catalan Sign Language (LSC).

Science.gov (United States)

Baus, Cristina; Costa, Albert

2015-06-03

This study investigates the temporal dynamics of sign production and how particular aspects of the signed modality influence the early stages of lexical access. To that end, we explored the electrophysiological correlates associated to sign frequency and iconicity in a picture signing task in a group of bimodal bilinguals. Moreover, a subset of the same participants was tested in the same task but naming the pictures instead. Our results revealed that both frequency and iconicity influenced lexical access in sign production. At the ERP level, iconicity effects originated very early in the course of signing (while absent in the spoken modality), suggesting a stronger activation of the semantic properties for iconic signs. Moreover, frequency effects were modulated by iconicity, suggesting that lexical access in signed language is determined by the iconic properties of the signs. These results support the idea that lexical access is sensitive to the same phenomena in word and sign production, but its time-course is modulated by particular aspects of the modality in which a lexical item will be finally articulated. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Predictors of second language acquisition in Latino children with specific language impairment.

Science.gov (United States)

Gutiérrez-Clellen, Vera; Simon-Cereijido, Gabriela; Sweet, Monica

2012-02-01

This study evaluated the extent to which the language of intervention, the child's development in Spanish, and the effects of English vocabulary, use, proficiency, and exposure predict differences in the rates of acquisition of English in Latino children with specific language impairment (SLI). In this randomized controlled trial, 188 Latino preschoolers with SLI participated in a small-group academic enrichment program for 12 weeks and were followed up 3 and 5 months later. Children were randomly assigned to either a bilingual or an English-only program. Predictors of English growth included measures of Spanish language skills and English vocabulary, use, proficiency, and exposure. Performance on English outcomes (i.e., picture description and narrative sample) was assessed over time. A series of longitudinal models were tested via multilevel modeling with baseline and posttreatment measures nested within child. Children demonstrated growth on the English outcomes over time. The language of intervention, Spanish skills, English vocabulary, and English use significantly predicted differences in rates of growth across children for specific measures of English development. This study underscores the role of the child's first language skills, the child's level of English vocabulary development, and level of English use for predicting differences in English acquisition in Latino preschoolers with SLI. These factors should be carefully considered in making clinical decisions.

Interaction and Instructed Second Language Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

Loewen, Shawn; Sato, Masatoshi

2018-01-01

Interaction is an indispensable component in second language acquisition (SLA). This review surveys the instructed SLA research, both classroom and laboratory-based, that has been conducted primarily within the interactionist approach, beginning with the core constructs of interaction, namely input, negotiation for meaning, and output. The review…

Sign language interpreting education : Reflections on interpersonal skills

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hammer, A.; van den Bogaerde, B.; Cirillo, L.; Niemants, N.

2017-01-01

We present a description of our didactic approach to train undergraduate sign language interpreters on their interpersonal and reflective skills. Based predominantly on the theory of role-space by Llewellyn-Jones and Lee (2014), we argue that dialogue settings require a dynamic role of the

Deaf children attending different school environments: sign language abilities and theory of mind.

Science.gov (United States)

Tomasuolo, Elena; Valeri, Giovanni; Di Renzo, Alessio; Pasqualetti, Patrizio; Volterra, Virginia

2013-01-01

The present study examined whether full access to sign language as a medium for instruction could influence performance in Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks. Three groups of Italian participants (age range: 6-14 years) participated in the study: Two groups of deaf signing children and one group of hearing-speaking children. The two groups of deaf children differed only in their school environment: One group attended a school with a teaching assistant (TA; Sign Language is offered only by the TA to a single deaf child), and the other group attended a bilingual program (Italian Sign Language and Italian). Linguistic abilities and understanding of false belief were assessed using similar materials and procedures in spoken Italian with hearing children and in Italian Sign Language with deaf children. Deaf children attending the bilingual school performed significantly better than deaf children attending school with the TA in tasks assessing lexical comprehension and ToM, whereas the performance of hearing children was in between that of the two deaf groups. As for lexical production, deaf children attending the bilingual school performed significantly better than the two other groups. No significant differences were found between early and late signers or between children with deaf and hearing parents.

The influence of the age of acquisition of a foreign language on the activation patterns of language areas

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bryll, A.; Urbanik, A.; Herman-Sucharska, I.; Podsiadlo, L.; Binder, M.

2009-01-01

Background: The of aim of the present study was to evaluate the influence of the acquisition age of the second language on activation patterns of language areas. Material/Methods: Forty volunteers participated in the study (20 females and 20 males). Their age ranged from 18 to 40 years. A mean age was 28 years. All participants had possessed a high proficiency of the acquired foreign language. They were divided into two groups, according to the age of the foreign language acquisition. The participants who acquired the second language before puberty, were qualified to the early acquisition group. The remaining participants were qualified to the late acquisition group. The second criterion was the level of the acquired, foreign language. Proficiency in using the language was assessed by a teacher. Block design method was used in the performed experiment. The experimental task was speech production in the form of voiceless sentences, the control task was silence. Each experimental session consisted of five 30-second alternating blocks. Every volunteer participated in two sessions, where she/he described his house without the use of voice. One session applied the native language, L1, and the other one the foreign language, L2. The experiment was performed using MR Signa Horizon system (GE Medical Systems, USA) with 1.5 T magnetic field strength. Functional images were obtained using the echoplanar sequence (EPI) that applies spin echo and is sensitive to the changes of the BOLD (Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent signal) signal having the following parameters: TR = 3000 ms, TE = 60 ms, flip angle 90 0 , FOV = 28 x 21 cm, matrix 96 x 96 pixels, 1 NEX. Functional data analysis was performed using SPM2 software (Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, Great Britain). Results: In EA and LA groups, the cortex activation was not more intense in patients speaking their native language, as compared to the foreign language. In the LA group, left inferior frontal gyrus (pars

Prediction in a visual language: real-time sentence processing in American Sign Language across development.

Science.gov (United States)

Lieberman, Amy M; Borovsky, Arielle; Mayberry, Rachel I

2018-01-01

Prediction during sign language comprehension may enable signers to integrate linguistic and non-linguistic information within the visual modality. In two eyetracking experiments, we investigated American Sign language (ASL) semantic prediction in deaf adults and children (aged 4-8 years). Participants viewed ASL sentences in a visual world paradigm in which the sentence-initial verb was either neutral or constrained relative to the sentence-final target noun. Adults and children made anticipatory looks to the target picture before the onset of the target noun in the constrained condition only, showing evidence for semantic prediction. Crucially, signers alternated gaze between the stimulus sign and the target picture only when the sentential object could be predicted from the verb. Signers therefore engage in prediction by optimizing visual attention between divided linguistic and referential signals. These patterns suggest that prediction is a modality-independent process, and theoretical implications are discussed.

Learning theories in computer-assisted foreign language acquisition

OpenAIRE

Baeva, D.

2013-01-01

This paper reviews the learning theories, focusing to the strong interest in technology use for language learning. It is important to look at how technology has been used in the field thus far. The goals of this review are to understand how computers have been used in the past years to support foreign language learning, and to explore any research evidence with regards to how computer technology can enhance language skills acquisition

Language Justice for Sign Language Peoples: The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Science.gov (United States)

Batterbury, Sarah C. E.

2012-01-01

Sign Language Peoples (SLPs) across the world have developed their own languages and visuo-gestural-tactile cultures embodying their collective sense of Deafhood (Ladd 2003). Despite this, most nation-states treat their respective SLPs as disabled individuals, favoring disability benefits, cochlear implants, and mainstream education over language…

Sign Language Legislation as a Tool for Sustainability

Science.gov (United States)

Pabsch, Annika

2017-01-01

This article explores three models of sustainability (environmental, economic, and social) and identifies characteristics of a sustainable community necessary to sustain the Deaf community as a whole. It is argued that sign language legislation is a valuable tool for achieving sustainability for the generations to come.

Sign language interpreting education : Reflections on interpersonal skills

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Annemiek Hammer; Dr. Beppie van den Bogaerde

2017-01-01

We present a description of our didactic approach to train undergraduate sign language interpreters on their interpersonal and reflective skills. Based pre-dominantly on the theory of role-space by Llewellyn-Jones and Lee (2014), we argue that dialogue settings require a dynamic role of the

Bi-channel Sensor Fusion for Automatic Sign Language Recognition

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kim, Jonghwa; Wagner, Johannes; Rehm, Matthias

2008-01-01

In this paper, we investigate the mutual-complementary functionality of accelerometer (ACC) and electromyogram (EMG) for recognizing seven word-level sign vocabularies in German sign language (GSL). Results are discussed for the single channels and for feature-level fusion for the bichannel senso......-independent condition, where subjective differences do not allow for high recognition rates. Finally we discuss a problem of feature-level fusion caused by high disparity between accuracies of each single channel classification....

A study of syllable codas in South African Sign Language

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Kate H

A South African Sign Language Dictionary for Families with Young Deaf Children (SLED 2006) was used with permission ... Figure 1: Syllable structure of a CVC syllable in the word “bed”. In spoken languages .... often than not, there is a societal emphasis on 'fixing' a child's deafness and attempting to teach deaf children to ...

V2S: Voice to Sign Language Translation System for Malaysian Deaf People

Science.gov (United States)

Mean Foong, Oi; Low, Tang Jung; La, Wai Wan

The process of learning and understand the sign language may be cumbersome to some, and therefore, this paper proposes a solution to this problem by providing a voice (English Language) to sign language translation system using Speech and Image processing technique. Speech processing which includes Speech Recognition is the study of recognizing the words being spoken, regardless of whom the speaker is. This project uses template-based recognition as the main approach in which the V2S system first needs to be trained with speech pattern based on some generic spectral parameter set. These spectral parameter set will then be stored as template in a database. The system will perform the recognition process through matching the parameter set of the input speech with the stored templates to finally display the sign language in video format. Empirical results show that the system has 80.3% recognition rate.

The Relationship between Second Language Acquisition Process and English Language Teaching in Indonesia

OpenAIRE

Pritz Hutabarat

2016-01-01

English as a global language is learned worldwide and a plethora of methods and approaches have been developed and practiced in English classrooms by dedicated teachers and students. Understanding the underlying theories of second and foreign language acquisition and learning will help both teachers and students in learning and teaching a target language. There has not been many research conducted in the area, especially within Indonesian context. This research therefore attempts to fill in g...

Endogenous sources of variation in language acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Han, Chung-Hye; Musolino, Julien; Lidz, Jeffrey

2016-01-26

A fundamental question in the study of human language acquisition centers around apportioning explanatory force between the experience of the learner and the core knowledge that allows learners to represent that experience. We provide a previously unidentified kind of data identifying children's contribution to language acquisition. We identify one aspect of grammar that varies unpredictably across a population of speakers of what is ostensibly a single language. We further demonstrate that the grammatical knowledge of parents and their children is independent. The combination of unpredictable variation and parent-child independence suggests that the relevant structural feature is supplied by each learner independent of experience with the language. This structural feature is abstract because it controls variation in more than one construction. The particular case we examine is the position of the verb in the clause structure of Korean. Because Korean is a head-final language, evidence for the syntactic position of the verb is both rare and indirect. We show that (i) Korean speakers exhibit substantial variability regarding this aspect of the grammar, (ii) this variability is attested between speakers but not within a speaker, (iii) this variability controls interpretation in two surface constructions, and (iv) it is independent in parents and children. According to our findings, when the exposure language is compatible with multiple grammars, learners acquire a single systematic grammar. Our observation that children and their parents vary independently suggests that the choice of grammar is driven in part by a process operating internal to individual learners.

Making an Online Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

... is n example of a contemporary sign language dictionary that leverages the 21st ... informed development of this bilingual, bi-directional, multimedia dictionary. ... and dealing with sociolinguistic variation in the selection and performance of ...

Bilingual Language Acquisition in a Minority Context: Using the Irish-English Communicative Development Inventory to Track Acquisition of an Endangered Language

Science.gov (United States)

O'Toole, Ciara; Hickey, Tina M.

2017-01-01

This study investigated the role of language exposure in vocabulary acquisition in Irish, a threatened minority language in Ireland which is usually acquired with English in a bilingual context. Using a bilingual Irish-English adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories) [Fenson, L., V. A. Marchman, D. J. Thal, P. S.…

Acquisition of French as a second language new developmental perspectives

CERN Document Server

Lindqvist, Christina

2014-01-01

It has been argued that the study of child L2 development can inform different maturational accounts of language acquisition. One such specific proposal was put forward by Meisel (2008), arguing for a cut-off point for monolingual or bilingual first language acquisition - (2)L1 - type of development at 3-4 years. The paper analyses the longitudinal development of object clitics in child L2 French (L1 Swedish) and compares the developmental sequence in child L2 learners (n = 7) with different Ages of onset of Acquisition (AoA) (from 3;0 to 6;5) to the adult L2 sequence that was found in previou

The Ubiquity of Frequency Effects in First Language Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

Ambridge, Ben; Kidd, Evan; Rowland, Caroline F.; Theakston, Anna L.

2015-01-01

This review article presents evidence for the claim that frequency effects are pervasive in children's first language acquisition, and hence constitute a phenomenon that any successful account must explain. The article is organized around four key domains of research: children's acquisition of single words, inflectional morphology, simple…

Frequency Effects in Second Language Acquisition: An Annotated Survey

Science.gov (United States)

Kartal, Galip; Sarigul, Ece

2017-01-01

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between frequency and language acquisition from many perspectives including implicit and explicit instruction, frequency effects on morpheme acquisition in L2, the relationship between frequency and multi-word constructions, frequency effects on phonetics, vocabulary, gerund and infinitive…

The comparative method of language acquisition research: a Mayan case study.

Science.gov (United States)

Pye, Clifton; Pfeiler, Barbara

2014-03-01

This article demonstrates how the Comparative Method can be applied to cross-linguistic research on language acquisition. The Comparative Method provides a systematic procedure for organizing and interpreting acquisition data from different languages. The Comparative Method controls for cross-linguistic differences at all levels of the grammar and is especially useful in drawing attention to variation in contexts of use across languages. This article uses the Comparative Method to analyze the acquisition of verb suffixes in two Mayan languages: K'iche' and Yucatec. Mayan status suffixes simultaneously mark distinctions in verb transitivity, verb class, mood, and clause position. Two-year-old children acquiring K'iche' and Yucatec Maya accurately produce the status suffixes on verbs, in marked distinction to the verbal prefixes for aspect and agreement. We find evidence that the contexts of use for the suffixes differentially promote the children's production of cognate status suffixes in K'iche' and Yucatec.

Achieving mutual understanding in Argentine Sign Language (LSA)

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Manrique Cordeje, M.E.

2017-01-01

How does (mis)understanding works in conversation? Problems of understanding occur all the time in our everyday social life. How does miscommunication happen and how do we deal with it? This thesis reports on how sign language users manage to understand each other based on a large Conversational

Foreign language aptitude of pupils with learning disabilities at the beginning of the foreign language acquisition at the elementary school

OpenAIRE

Špačková, Klára

2011-01-01

The dissertation is dealing with the issue of foreign language aptitude and foreign language abilities of pupils with learning disabilities at the beginning of the foreign language acquisition. The first part of the work describes general theories of the foreign language acquisition and introduces the current trends in education of pupils with learning disabilities in the process of foreign language learning. The second part of the work describes the research, which aim was to investigate the...

Signed language and human action processing: evidence for functional constraints on the human mirror-neuron system.

Science.gov (United States)

Corina, David P; Knapp, Heather Patterson

2008-12-01

In the quest to further understand the neural underpinning of human communication, researchers have turned to studies of naturally occurring signed languages used in Deaf communities. The comparison of the commonalities and differences between spoken and signed languages provides an opportunity to determine core neural systems responsible for linguistic communication independent of the modality in which a language is expressed. The present article examines such studies, and in addition asks what we can learn about human languages by contrasting formal visual-gestural linguistic systems (signed languages) with more general human action perception. To understand visual language perception, it is important to distinguish the demands of general human motion processing from the highly task-dependent demands associated with extracting linguistic meaning from arbitrary, conventionalized gestures. This endeavor is particularly important because theorists have suggested close homologies between perception and production of actions and functions of human language and social communication. We review recent behavioral, functional imaging, and neuropsychological studies that explore dissociations between the processing of human actions and signed languages. These data suggest incomplete overlap between the mirror-neuron systems proposed to mediate human action and language.

South African sign language assistive translation

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Olivrin, GJ

2008-04-01

Full Text Available , the fact that the target structure is SASL, the home language of the Deaf user, already facilitates the communication. Ul- timately the message will be delivered more naturally by a signing avatar [14]. We shall present further scenarios for future... Work 6.1 Disambiguation Disambiguation can be improved on two levels: firstly, by eliciting more or better information from the user through the AAC interface and secondly, by improving certain as- pects of the MT system. We discuss both...

Psychometric properties of a sign language version of the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI).

Science.gov (United States)

Øhre, Beate; Saltnes, Hege; von Tetzchner, Stephen; Falkum, Erik

2014-05-22

There is a need for psychiatric assessment instruments that enable reliable diagnoses in persons with hearing loss who have sign language as their primary language. The objective of this study was to assess the validity of the Norwegian Sign Language (NSL) version of the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI). The MINI was translated into NSL. Forty-one signing patients consecutively referred to two specialised psychiatric units were assessed with a diagnostic interview by clinical experts and with the MINI. Inter-rater reliability was assessed with Cohen's kappa and "observed agreement". There was 65% agreement between MINI diagnoses and clinical expert diagnoses. Kappa values indicated fair to moderate agreement, and observed agreement was above 76% for all diagnoses. The MINI diagnosed more co-morbid conditions than did the clinical expert interview (mean diagnoses: 1.9 versus 1.2). Kappa values indicated moderate to substantial agreement, and "observed agreement" was above 88%. The NSL version performs similarly to other MINI versions and demonstrates adequate reliability and validity as a diagnostic instrument for assessing mental disorders in persons who have sign language as their primary and preferred language.

Psychometric properties of a sign language version of the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI)

Science.gov (United States)

2014-01-01

Background There is a need for psychiatric assessment instruments that enable reliable diagnoses in persons with hearing loss who have sign language as their primary language. The objective of this study was to assess the validity of the Norwegian Sign Language (NSL) version of the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI). Methods The MINI was translated into NSL. Forty-one signing patients consecutively referred to two specialised psychiatric units were assessed with a diagnostic interview by clinical experts and with the MINI. Inter-rater reliability was assessed with Cohen’s kappa and “observed agreement”. Results There was 65% agreement between MINI diagnoses and clinical expert diagnoses. Kappa values indicated fair to moderate agreement, and observed agreement was above 76% for all diagnoses. The MINI diagnosed more co-morbid conditions than did the clinical expert interview (mean diagnoses: 1.9 versus 1.2). Kappa values indicated moderate to substantial agreement, and “observed agreement” was above 88%. Conclusion The NSL version performs similarly to other MINI versions and demonstrates adequate reliability and validity as a diagnostic instrument for assessing mental disorders in persons who have sign language as their primary and preferred language. PMID:24886297

Interactive natural language acquisition in a multi-modal recurrent neural architecture

Science.gov (United States)

Heinrich, Stefan; Wermter, Stefan

2018-01-01

For the complex human brain that enables us to communicate in natural language, we gathered good understandings of principles underlying language acquisition and processing, knowledge about sociocultural conditions, and insights into activity patterns in the brain. However, we were not yet able to understand the behavioural and mechanistic characteristics for natural language and how mechanisms in the brain allow to acquire and process language. In bridging the insights from behavioural psychology and neuroscience, the goal of this paper is to contribute a computational understanding of appropriate characteristics that favour language acquisition. Accordingly, we provide concepts and refinements in cognitive modelling regarding principles and mechanisms in the brain and propose a neurocognitively plausible model for embodied language acquisition from real-world interaction of a humanoid robot with its environment. In particular, the architecture consists of a continuous time recurrent neural network, where parts have different leakage characteristics and thus operate on multiple timescales for every modality and the association of the higher level nodes of all modalities into cell assemblies. The model is capable of learning language production grounded in both, temporal dynamic somatosensation and vision, and features hierarchical concept abstraction, concept decomposition, multi-modal integration, and self-organisation of latent representations.

The emergence of embedded structure: insights from Kafr Qasem Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Kastner, Itamar; Meir, Irit; Sandler, Wendy; Dachkovsky, Svetlana

2014-01-01

This paper introduces data from Kafr Qasem Sign Language (KQSL), an as-yet undescribed sign language, and identifies the earliest indications of embedding in this young language. Using semantic and prosodic criteria, we identify predicates that form a constituent with a noun, functionally modifying it. We analyze these structures as instances of embedded predicates, exhibiting what can be regarded as very early stages in the development of subordinate constructions, and argue that these structures may bear directly on questions about the development of embedding and subordination in language in general. Deutscher (2009) argues persuasively that nominalization of a verb is the first step—and the crucial step—toward syntactic embedding. It has also been suggested that prosodic marking may precede syntactic marking of embedding (Mithun, 2009). However, the relevant data from the stage at which embedding first emerges have not previously been available. KQSL might be the missing piece of the puzzle: a language in which a noun can be modified by an additional predicate, forming a proposition within a proposition, sustained entirely by prosodic means. PMID:24917837

The Bilingual Brain: Human Evolution and Second Language Acquisition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

L. Kirk Hagen

2008-01-01

Full Text Available For the past half-century, psycholinguistic research has concerned itself with two mysteries of human cognition: (1 that children universally acquire a highly abstract, computationally complex set of linguistic rules rapidly and effortlessly, and (2 that second language acquisition (SLA among adults is, conversely, slow, laborious, highly variable, and virtually never results in native fluency. We now have a decent, if approximate, understanding of the biological foundations of first language acquisition, thanks in large part to Lenneberg's (1964, 1984 seminal work on the critical period hypothesis. More recently, the elements of a promising theory of language and evolution have emerged as well (see e.g. Bickerton, 1981, 1990; Leiberman, 1984, 1987. I argue here that the empirical foundations of an evolutionary theory of language are now solid enough to support an account of bilingualism and adult SLA as well. Specifically, I will show that evidence from the environment of evolutionary adaptation of paleolithic humans suggests that for our nomadic ancestors, the ability to master a language early in life was an eminently useful adaptation. However, the ability to acquire another language in adulthood was not, and consequently was not selected for propagation.

Deliberate Learning and Vocabulary Acquisition in a Second Language

Science.gov (United States)

Elgort, Irina

2011-01-01

This study investigates outcomes of deliberate learning on vocabulary acquisition in a second language (L2). Acquisition of 48 pseudowords was measured using the lexical decision task with visually presented stimuli. The experiments drew on form priming, masked repetition priming, and automatic semantic priming procedures. Data analyses revealed a…

Accessibility perspectives on enabling South African sign language in the South African National Accessibility Portal

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Coetzee, L

2009-04-01

Full Text Available and services. One such mechanism is by embedding animated Sign Language in Web pages. This paper analyses the effectiveness and appropriateness of using this approach by embedding South African Sign Language in the South African National Accessibility Portal...

Sign Language Recognition System using Neural Network for Digital Hardware Implementation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vargas, Lorena P; Barba, Leiner; Torres, C O; Mattos, L

2011-01-01

This work presents an image pattern recognition system using neural network for the identification of sign language to deaf people. The system has several stored image that show the specific symbol in this kind of language, which is employed to teach a multilayer neural network using a back propagation algorithm. Initially, the images are processed to adapt them and to improve the performance of discriminating of the network, including in this process of filtering, reduction and elimination noise algorithms as well as edge detection. The system is evaluated using the signs without including movement in their representation.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Computer Technology in Second Language Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

Lai, Cheng-Chieh; Kritsonis, William Allan

2006-01-01