Download or read book A Descriptive Analysis of Adamorobe Sign Language Ghana written by Victoria Anna Sophie Nyst and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adamorobe, a small Akan village in Ghana, has an unusually high incidence of hereditary deafness. As a result, a sign language came into being, Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL), which is unrelated to any other sign language described so far and is assumed to be about 200 years old. The present study describes selected aspects of AdaSL, notably phonology, lexicon, the expression of size and shape and the encoding of motion events. A comparison of these aspects with descriptions of other sign languages reveals interesting cross-linguistic differences in the use of iconicity as well as in the use of space and classifier constructions. Data were collected during three periods of fieldwork of nine months in total. Moreover, this study considers to what extent the social setting may influence the development of structural features in sign languages. This investigation nuances the impact the visual-spatial modality has on sign language structure. The book is of interest to scholars of sign linguistics, African linguistics, as well as contact linguistics and Deaf studies.

Download or read book Sign Language written by Roland Pfau and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-08-31 with total page 1140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sign language linguists show here that all 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 spoken languages. The HSK handbook Sign Language aims to provide a concise and comprehensive overview of the state of the art in sign language linguistics. It includes 44 chapters, written by leading researchers in the field, that address issues in language typology, sign language grammar, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language documentation and transcription. Crucially, all topics are presented in a way that makes them accessible to linguists who are not familiar with sign language linguistics.

Download or read book Sign Multilingualism written by Ulrike Zeshan and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-11-18 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume has arisen from a three-part, five-year study on language contact among multilingual sign language users, which has three strands: cross-signing, sign-switching, and sign-speaking. These phenomena are only sparsely documented so far, and thus the volume is highly innovative and presents data and analyses not previously available.

Download or read book Simultaneity in Signed Languages written by Myriam Vermeerbergen and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-02-21 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Signed language users can draw on a range of articulators when expressing linguistic messages, including the hands, torso, eye gaze, and mouth. Sometimes these articulators work in tandem to produce one lexical item while in other instances they operate to convey different types of information simultaneously. Over the past fifteen years, there has been a growing interest in the issue of simultaneity in signed languages. However, this book is the first to offer a comprehensive treatment of this topic, presenting a collection of papers dealing with different aspects of simultaneity in a range of related and unrelated signed languages, in descriptive and cross-linguistic treatments which are set in different theoretical frameworks. This volume has relevance for those interested in sign linguistics, in teaching and learning signed languages, and is also highly recommended to anyone interested in the fundamental underpinnings of human language and the effects of signed versus spoken modality.

Download or read book Semantic Fields in Sign Languages written by Ulrike Zeshan and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-02-22 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Typological studies require a broad range of linguistic data from a variety of countries, especially developing nations whose languages are under-researched. This is especially challenging for investigations of sign languages, because there are no existing corpora for most of them, and some are completely undocumented. To examine three cross-linguistically fruitful semantic fields in sign languages from a typological perspective for the first time, a detailed questionnaire was generated and distributed worldwide through emails, mailing lists, websites and the newsletter of the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD). This resulted in robust data on kinship, colour and number in 32 sign languages across the globe, 10 of which are revealed in depth within this volume. These comprise languages from Europe, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region, including Indonesian sign language varieties, which are rarely studied. Like other volumes in this series, this book will be illuminative for typologists, students of linguistics and deaf studies, lecturers, researchers, interpreters, and sign language users who travel internationally.

Download or read book The Global Politics of Impairment and Disability written by Helen Meekosha and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-13 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disability is of central concern to the developing world but has largely been under-represented in global development debates, discourses and negotiations. Similarly, disability studies has overlooked the theorists, or the social experience, of the global South and there has been a one-way transfer of ideas and knowledge from the North to the South in this field. This volume seeks to redress the processes of scholarly colonialism by drawing together a diverse set of understandings, theorizing and experiences. The chapters situate disability within the Southern context and support the work of Southern disabled scholars and activists seeking to decolonize Southern experiences, knowledges and absences in the field while simultaneously attempting to make an intervention into able-bodied (mainstream) development discourses, practices and politics. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Download or read book Sociolinguistics and Deaf Communities written by Adam C. Schembri and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-12 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do people use sign languages in different situations around the world? How are sign languages distributed globally? What happens when they come in contact with spoken and written languages? These and other questions are explored in this new introduction to the sociolinguistics of sign languages and deaf communities. An international team brings insights and data from a wide range of sign languages, from the USA, Canada, England, Spain, Brazil and Australia. Topics covered include multilingualism in the global deaf community, sociolinguistic variation and change in sign languages, bilingualism and language contact between signed and spoken languages, attitudes towards sign languages, sign language planning and policy, and sign language discourse. Sociolinguistics and Deaf Communities will be welcomed by students of sign language and interpreting, teachers of sign language, and students and academics working in linguistics.

Download or read book Concise Lexicon for Sign Linguistics written by Jan Nijen Twilhaar and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2016-06-15 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This extensive, well-researched and clearly formatted lexicon of a wide variety of linguistic terms is a long overdue. It is an extremely welcome addition to the bookshelves of sign language teachers, interpreters, linguists, learners and other sign language users, and of course of the Deaf themselves. Unique to this lexicon is not only the inclusion of many terms that are used especially for sign languages, but also the fact that for the terms, there are not only examples from spoken languages but there are also glossed and translated examples from several different sign languages. There are many interesting features to this lexicon. There is an immediate temptation to find examples of terms in the sign language one is studying as well as determining how many of the most used concepts would be signed in the local language. As there are to date still almost no reference grammars of sign languages, the definitions of many of these concepts would be extremely helpful for those linguists planning to make a reference grammar of their sign language.

Download or read book Sign Languages in Village Communities written by Ulrike Zeshan and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is a unique collection of research on sign languages that have emerged in rural communities with a high incidence of, often hereditary, deafness. These sign languages represent the latest addition to the comparative investigation of languages in the gestural modality, and the book is the first compilation of a substantial number of different "village sign languages".Written by leading experts in the field, the volume uniquely combines anthropological and linguistic insights, looking at both the social dynamics and the linguistic structures in these village communities. The book includes primary data from eleven different signing communities across the world, including results from Jamaica, India, Turkey, Thailand, and Bali. All known village sign languages are endangered, usually because of pressure from larger urban sign languages, and some have died out already. Ironically, it is often the success of the larger sign language communities in urban centres, their recognition and subsequent spread, which leads to the endangerment of these small minority sign languages. The book addresses this specific type of language endangerment, documentation strategies, and other ethical issues pertaining to these sign languages on the basis of first-hand experiences by Deaf fieldworkers.

Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology written by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-30 with total page 1661 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguistic typology identifies both how languages vary and what they all have in common. This Handbook provides a state-of-the art survey of the aims and methods of linguistic typology, and the conclusions we can draw from them. Part I covers phonological typology, morphological typology, sociolinguistic typology and the relationships between typology, historical linguistics and grammaticalization. It also addresses typological features of mixed languages, creole languages, sign languages and secret languages. Part II features contributions on the typology of morphological processes, noun categorization devices, negation, frustrative modality, logophoricity, switch reference and motion events. Finally, Part III focuses on typological profiles of the mainland South Asia area, Australia, Quechuan and Aymaran, Eskimo-Aleut, Iroquoian, the Kampa subgroup of Arawak, Omotic, Semitic, Dravidian, the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian and the Awuyu-Ndumut family (in West Papua). Uniting the expertise of a stellar selection of scholars, this Handbook highlights linguistic typology as a major discipline within the field of linguistics.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies Language and Education Vol 2 written by Marc Marschark and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-28 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxford Handbooks offer authoritative and up-to-date reviews of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned chapters from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates, as well as a foundation for future research. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives upon a wide range of subjects in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. The adage Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it is a powerful one for parents, teachers, and other professionals involved with or interested in deaf individuals or the Deaf community. Myths grown from ignorance have long dogged the field, and faulty assumptions and overgeneralizations have persisted despite contrary evidence. A study of the history of deaf education reveals patterns that have affected educational policy and legislation for deaf people around the world; these patterns are related to several themes critical to the chapters of this volume. One such theme is the importance of parental involvement in raising and educating deaf children. Another relates to how Deaf people have taken an increasingly greater role in influencing their own futures and places in society. In published histories, we see the longstanding conflicts through the centuries that pertain to sign language and spoken communication philosophies, as well as the contributions of the individuals who advocated alternative strategies for teaching deaf children. More recently, investigators have recognized the need for a diverse approach to language and language learning. Advances in technology, cognitive science, linguistics, and the social sciences have alternately led and followed changes in theory and practice, resulting in a changing landscape for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals and those connected to them. This second volume of the The Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies, Language, and Education (2003) picks up where that first landmark volume left off, describing those advances and offering readers the opportunity to understand the current status of research in the field while recognizing the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. In Volume 2, an international group of contributing experts provide state-of-the-art summaries intended for students, practitioners, and researchers. Not only does it describe where we are, it helps to chart courses for the future.

Download or read book Studies on Indigenous Signed and Spoken Languages in Africa written by Emmanuel Asonye and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is an important exploration of Africa’s rich linguistic diversity. The chapters delve into the complexities of linguistic research, preservation, and cultural understanding, with a regional focus covering indigenous African languages. It honours often-overlooked sign languages, making it a trailblazing work in its combination of signed and spoken languages within the African environment. This book is a must-have for anybody interested in African languages, providing new perspectives on language preservation, cultural identity, and the lasting spirit of linguistic diversity. The individual chapters present an invitation to discover, appreciate, and preserve Africa’s indigenous languages. This volume, intended for linguists, policy makers, and graduate and undergraduate students, presents a practical approach to deciphering the complexity of indigenous African languages, both signed and spoken.

Download or read book Research Methods in Sign Language Studies written by Eleni Orfanidou and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-03-16 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research Methods in Sign Language Studies is a landmark work on sign language research, which spans the fields of linguistics, experimental and developmental psychology, brain research, and language assessment. Examines a broad range of topics, including ethical and political issues, key methodologies, and the collection of linguistic, cognitive, neuroscientific, and neuropsychological data Provides tips and recommendations to improve research quality at all levels and encourages readers to approach the field from the perspective of diversity rather than disability Incorporates research on sign languages from Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa Brings together top researchers on the subject from around the world, including many who are themselves deaf

Download or read book The People of the Eye written by Harlan Lane and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-07 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are ethnic groups? Are Deaf people who sign American Sign Language (ASL) an ethnic group? In The People of the Eye, Deaf studies, history, cultural anthropology, genetics, sociology, and disability studies are brought to bear as the authors compare the values, customs, and social organization of the Deaf World to those in ethnic groups. Arguing against the common representation of ASL signers as a disability group, the authors discuss the many challenges to Deaf ethnicity in this first book-length examination of these issues. Stepping deeper into the debate around ethnicity status, The People of the Eye also describes, in a compelling narrative, the story of the founding families of the Deaf World in the US. Tracing ancestry back hundreds of years, the authors reveal that Deaf people's preference to marry other Deaf people led to the creation of Deaf clans, and thus to shared ancestry and the discovery that most ASL signers are born into the Deaf World, and many are kin. In a major contribution to the historical record of Deaf people in the US, The People of the Eye portrays how Deaf people- and hearing people, too- lived in early America. For those curious about their own ancestry in relation to the Deaf World, the figures and an associated website present pedigrees for over two hundred lineages that extend as many as three hundred years and are unique in genealogy research. The book contains an every-name index to the pedigrees, providing a rich resource for anyone who is interested in Deaf culture.

Download or read book SignGram Blueprint written by Josep Quer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-11-20 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It is common for grammars to include an introductory chapter that offers a general introduction to the language under investigation as well as its users. We encourage the grammar writer to include this type of information for the sign language to be described. If a certain variant of the sign language is described, this should be made clear at the outset. The structure of this part is fairly flexible. As can be seen from the table of contents, we suggest including information about (i) the history of the sign language, (ii) characteristics of the Deaf community, (iii) the status of the sign language, and (iv) previous linguistic work on the sign language. The last section in particular will have an impact on the content of subsequent parts, as we encourage the grammar writer to include findings from previous studies in the grammatical description of the sign language. Clearly, alternative structures are possible. The overview of previous linguistic work, for instance, could be provided under the "History" header, and Deaf culture and/or Deaf education could be discussed under dedicated first-level headers - to give just two examples. Also, depending on the available information, sub-headers could be added. Note that we adopt the convention of writing Deaf with a capital D when it refers to issues related to a community that is characterized by the use of a sign language. In contrast, deaf with a small d refers to the medical condition of not being able to hear. It is up to the grammar writer to decide whether to stick to this convention in the grammar"--

Download or read book Visible Variation written by Pamela M. Perniss and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-09-25 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been argued that properties of the visual-gestural modality impose a homogenizing effect on sign languages, leading to less structural variation in sign language structure as compared to spoken language structure. However, until recently, research on sign languages was limited to a number of (Western) sign languages. Before we can truly answer the question of whether modality effects do indeed cause less structural variation, it is necessary to investigate the similarities and differences that exist between sign languages in more detail and, especially, to include in this investigation less studied sign languages. The current research climate is testimony to a surge of interest in the study of a geographically more diverse range of sign languages. The volume reflects that climate and brings together work by scholars engaging in comparative sign linguistics research. The 11 articles discuss data from many different signed and spoken languages and cover a wide range of topics from different areas of grammar including phonology (word pictures), morphology (pronouns, negation, and auxiliaries), syntax (word order, interrogative clauses, auxiliaries, negation, and referential shift) and pragmatics (modal meaning and referential shift). In addition to this, the contributions address psycholinguistic issues, aspects of language change, and issues concerning data collection in sign languages, thereby providing methodological guidelines for further research. Although some papers use a specific theoretical framework for analyzing the data, the volume clearly focuses on empirical and descriptive aspects of sign language variation.

Download or read book Understanding Linguistic Fieldwork written by Felicity Meakins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-19 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Linguistic Fieldwork offers a diverse and practical introduction to research methods used in field linguistics. Designed to teach students how to collect quality linguistic data in an ethical and responsible manner, the key features include: A focus on fieldwork in countries and continents that have undergone colonial expansion, including Australia, the United States of America, Canada, South America and Africa; A description of specialist methods used to conduct research on phonological, grammatical and lexical description, but also including methods for research on gesture and sign, language acquisition, language contact and the verbal arts; Examples of resources that have resulted from collaborations with language communities and which both advance linguistic understanding and support language revitalisation work; Annotated guidance on sources for further reading. This book is essential reading for students studying modules relating to linguistic fieldwork or those looking to embark upon field research.