Sign Language in Papua New Guinea


Book Description

This book presents in revised form and as a single monograph three papers on a sign language from the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea. Originally published in 1980, for more than twenty years these papers remained the only report of a sign language from that part of the world. The detailed descriptive analyses that the author provided are still fresh today, and in some respects they anticipate insights into the nature of sign languages that were not further explored until much more recently. The monograph is accompanied by two essays: Sherman Wilcox comments on value and relevance of the author’s work in the light of much more recent work on the linguistics of sign languages. An essay by Lauren Reed and Alan Rumsey provides an up to date survey of what is now known about sign languages in Papua New Guinea. Information about sign languages in the Solomon Island is also included.




Sign Language


Book Description

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.




Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia


Book Description

This 1988 book was the first full-length study ever to be published on the subject of sign language as a means of communication among Australian Aborigines. Based on fieldwork conducted over a span of nine years, the volume presents a thorough analysis of the structure of sign languages and their relationship to spoken languages.




Body - Language - Communication. Volume 2


Book Description

Volume II of the handbook offers a unique collection of exemplary case studies. In five chapters and 99 articles it presents the state of the art on how body movements are used for communication around the world. Topics include the functions of body movements, their contexts of occurrence, their forms and meanings, their integration with speech, and how bodily motion can function as language. By including an interdisciplinary chapter on ‘embodiment’, volume II explores the body and its role in the grounding of language and communication from one of the most widely discussed current theoretical perspectives. Volume II of the handbook thus entails the following chapters: VI. Gestures across cultures, VII. Body movements: functions, contexts and interactions, VIII. Gesture and language, IX. Embodiment: the body and its role for cognition, emotion, and communication, X. Sign Language: Visible body movements as language. Authors include: Mats Andrèn, Richard Asheley, Benjamin Bergen, Ulrike Bohle, Dominique Boutet, Heather Brookes, Penelope Brown, Kensy Cooperrider, Onno Crasborn, Seana Coulson, James Essegby, Maria Graziano, Marianne Gullberg, Simon Harrison, Hermann Kappelhoff, Mardi Kidwell, Irene Kimbara, Stefan Kopp, Grigoriy Kreidlin, Dan Loehr, Irene Mittelberg, Aliyah Morgenstern, Rafael Nuñez, Isabella Poggi, David Quinto-Pozos, Monica Rector, Pio Enrico Ricci-Bitti, Göran Sonesson, Timo Sowa, Gale Stam, Eve Sweetser, Mark Tutton, Ipke Wachsmuth, Linda Waugh, Sherman Wilcox.




Body - Language - Communication. Volume 1


Book Description

Volume I of the handbook presents contemporary, multidisciplinary, historical, theoretical, and methodological aspects of how body movements relate to language. It documents how leading scholars from differenct disciplinary backgrounds conceptualize and analyze this complex relationship. Five chapters and a total of 72 articles, present current and past approaches, including multidisciplinary methods of analysis. The chapters cover: I. How the body relates to language and communication: Outlining the subject matter, II. Perspectives from different disciplines, III. Historical dimensions, IV. Contemporary approaches, V. Methods. Authors include: Michael Arbib, Janet Bavelas, Marino Bonaiuto, Paul Bouissac, Judee Burgoon, Martha Davis, Susan Duncan, Konrad Ehlich, Nick Enfield, Pierre Feyereisen, Raymond W. Gibbs, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Uri Hadar, Adam Kendon, Antja Kennedy, David McNeill, Lorenza Mondada, Fernando Poyatos, Klaus Scherer, Margret Selting, Jürgen Streeck, Sherman Wilcox, Jeffrey Wollock, Jordan Zlatev.




Australian Sign Language (Auslan)


Book Description

This is first comprehensive introduction to the linguistics of Auslan, the sign language of Australia. Assuming no prior background in language study, it explores each key aspect of the structure of Auslan, providing an accessible overview of its grammar (how sentences are structured), phonology (the building blocks of signs), morphology (the structure of signs), lexicon (vocabulary), semantics (how meaning is created), and discourse (how Auslan is used in context). The authors also discuss a range of myths and misunderstandings about sign languages, provide an insight into the history and development of Auslan, and show how Auslan is related to other sign languages, such as those used in Britain, the USA and New Zealand. Complete with clear illustrations of the signs in use and useful further reading lists, this is an ideal resource for anyone interested in Auslan, as well as those seeking a clear, general introduction to sign language linguistics.




Evaluative Constructions in Italian Sign Language (LIS)


Book Description

The domain of evaluative morphology is vast and complex, as it requires the combination of morphological, semantic and pragmatic information to be understood. Nevertheless, cross-linguistic studies on spoken languages show that languages share some patterns in the way they encode evaluative features. It follows that investigating evaluative morphology in sign languages (SLs) can enrich the literature and offer new insights. This book provides descriptive and theoretical contributions by considering Italian Sign Language (LIS) as empirical ground of investigation. At the descriptive level, the analysis of corpus and elicited data improves the description of morphological processes in LIS, as well as typological studies on evaluative morphology by adding the patterns of a visuo-gestural language. At the theoretical level, the study shows the benefit of combining different approaches (Generative Linguistics, Linguistic Typology, Cognitive Linguistics) for the exploration of evaluative constructions in SLs, as it allows to identify both modality-specific and modality-independent properties. In sum, this book encourages the readers to rely on different data types, analyses and theoretical perspectives to investigate linguistic phenomena in SLs.




Sign Language Interpreting


Book Description

In her new, significant work, Melanie Metzger demonstrates clearly that the ideal of an interpreter as a neutral language conduit does not exist. Metzger offers evidence of this disparity by analyzing two videotaped ASL-English interpreted medical interviews, one an interpreter-trainee mock interview session, and the other an actual encounter between a deaf client and a medical professional. Sign Language Interpreting asks fundamental questions regarding interpreter neutrality. First, do interpreters influence discourse, and if so, how? Also, what kind of expectations do the participants bring to the event, and what do the interpreters bring to discussions? Finally, how do their remarks affect their alignment with participants in the interaction? This penetrating book discloses the ways in which interpreters affect exchanges, and it also addresses the potential implications of these findings regarding sign language interpretation in medical, educational, and all other general interactions. Interpreter trainers and their students will join certified interpreters and deaf studies scholars in applauding and benefitting from the fresh ground broken by this provocative study.




The Use of Signing Space in a Shared Sign Language of Australia


Book Description

In this book, an Australian Aboriginal sign language used by Indigenous people in the North East Arnhem Land (Northern Territory) is described on the level of spatial grammar. Topics discussed range from properties of individual signs to structure of interrogative and negative sentences. The main interest is the manifestation of signing space - the articulatory space surrounding the signers - for grammatical purposes in Yolngu Sign Language.




Visual language


Book Description

Traditionally, research on human language has taken speech and written language as the only domains of investigation. However, there is now a wealth of empirical studies documenting visual aspects of language, ranging from rich studies of sign languages, which are self-contained visual language systems, to the field of gesture studies, which examines speech-associated gestures, facial expressions, and other bodily movements related to communicative expressions. But despite this large body of work, sign language and gestures are rarely treated together in theoretical discussions. This volume aims to remedy that by considering both types of visual language jointly in order to transcend (artificial) theoretical divides, and to arrive at a comprehensive account of the human language faculty. This collection seeks to pave the way for an inherently multimodal view of language, in which visible actions of the body play a crucial role. The 19 papers in this volume address four broad and overlapping topics: (1) the multimodal nature of language; (2) multimodal representation of meaning; (3) multimodal and multichannel prosody; and (4) acquisition and development of visual language in children and adults.