Search results for "sign languages"

Le forme della multimodalità. Segni, gesti e parole in classe.

2020

La comunicazione umana è un evento complesso e multimodale: nella interazione faccia a faccia, la maggior parte del significato viene veicolato attraverso il canale non verbale e l’analogico del linguaggio. L’attenzione a tale aspetto risulta cruciale nella relazione educativa tra insegnanti e alunni e nella didattica in classe . Il presente contributo intende quindi approfondire la nozione di multimodalità nelle diverse forme in cui si realizza esplorando cosa accade con le lingue vocali (in cui si utilizza il canale acustitco vocale) e con le lingue segniche (in cui si utilizza il canale visivo-gestuale). Viene definito, in primo luogo, il concetto di multimodalità nel linguaggio facendo …

A chi giovano le lingue segnate?

2020

<div> <p>If much attention has been gained in recent times by sign languages (in particular in the comparison on their nature and on their main peculiar properties also towards a recognition as proper languages, as well as on the challenges they pose to some traditional notions which have been employed so far to describe linguistic phenomena), their possible value from the perspective of inclusiveness deserves at least a brief reflection: the debate on this topic could be moved, from a theoretical point of view, within the search for vehicular languages that conformed humanity’s whole cultural life (in different ways and times), to discuss the possibility that a sign language co…

Transitivity prominence within and across modalities

2020

The idea of transitivity as a scalar phenomenon is well known (e.g., Hopper & Thompson 1980; Tsunoda 1985; Haspelmath 2015). However, as with most areas of linguistic study, it has been almost exclusively studied with a focus on spoken languages. A rare exception to this is Kimmelman (2016), who investigates transitivity in Russian Sign Language (RSL) on the basis of corpus data. Kimmelman attempts to establish a transitivity prominence hierarchy of RSL verbs, and compares this ranking to the verb meanings found in the ValPal database (Hartmann, Haspelmath & Bradley 2013). He arrives at the conclusion that using the frequency of overt objects in corpus data is a successful measure o…

Towards understanding nonmanuality : A semiotic treatment of signers’ head movements

2019

This article discusses a certain type of nonmanual action, signers’ head movements, from a semiotic perspective. It presents a typology of head movements and their iconic, indexical and symbolic features based on Peircean and post-Peircean semiotics. The paper argues for the view that (i) indexical strategies are very prominent in head movements, (ii) iconic features are most evident in enacting, while non-enacting description is less common, (iii) symbolic types for tokens are infrequent, although some movements—such as nodding and shaking the head—may become more conventional or schematized, and (iv) different types of head movements involve different proportions of iconicity, indexicalit…

From Erasure to Recognition (and Back Again?)

2015

Relationship Between the Linguistic Environments and Early Bilingual Language Development of Hearing Children in Deaf-parented Families

2013

We explored variation in the linguistic environments of hearing children of Deaf parents and how it was associated with their early bilingual language development. For that purpose we followed up the children's productive vocabulary (measured with the MCDI; MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory) and syntactic complexity (measured with the MLU10; mean length of the 10 longest utterances the child produced during videorecorded play sessions) in both Finnish Sign Language and spoken Finnish between the ages of 12 and 30 months. Additionally, we developed new methodology for describing the linguistic environments of the children (N = 10). Large variation was uncovered in both the amount…

The power of language policy : the legal recognition of sign languages and the aspirations of deaf communities

2016

This thesis explores Sign Language Peoples’ aspirations for the legal recognition of sign languages, with specific focus on Finland and Scotland. It highlights the timely need to strengthen (in practice) and scrutinize (academically) the legal measures that have been achieved as well as their implementation – and to measure all this against the challenges of endangerment and sustaining vitality. The theoretical framework for this study is centred in language policy and planning and political theory. The research methodology draws on principles of the ethnography of language policy and uses two traditional qualitative research methods, that is, interviews and participant observation, plus de…

Embodiment and American Sign Language

2016

Little is known about how individual signs that occur in naturally produced signed languages are recognized. Here we examine whether sign understanding may be grounded in sensorimotor properties by evaluating a signer’s ability to make lexical decisions to American Sign Language (ASL) signs that are articulated either congruent with or incongruent with the observer’s own handedness. Our results show little evidence for handedness congruency effects for native signers’ perception of ASL, however handedness congruency effects were seen in non-native late learners of ASL and hearing ASL-English bilinguals. The data are compatible with a theory of sign recognition that makes reference to intern…

Electrical Modeling of Monolithically Integrated GMR Based Current Sensors

2018

We report on the electrical compact model, using Verilog-A, of a monolithically integrated giant magnetoresistance (GMR) based electrical current sensors. For this purpose, a specifically designed ASIC (AMS $0.35\mu \mathrm{m}$ technology) has been considered, onto which such sensors have been patterned and fabricated, following a two-steps procedure. This work is focused on the DC regime model extraction, giving evidences of its good performance and stating the bases for subsequent model improvements.

Variation in the use of constructed action according to discourse type and age in Finnish Sign Language

2022

This paper presents a study of the use of constructed action (CA) in the stories and conversations of adult Finnish Sign Language (FinSL) signers of different ages. CA is defined here as a type of depiction in which a signer enacts the actions, feelings, thoughts and utterances of discourse referents with different parts of their body. Most studies on CA in sign languages have been done on the basis of signed storytelling, and little is known about how the use of CA varies in different discourse types. The use of CA has also been noted to vary between individual signers, but we do not yet know much about the socio-individual phenomena that may be linked to this variation. In the present stu…