“Hold infinity in the palm of your hand.” A functional description of time expressions through fingers based on Chinese Sign Language naturalistic data

This paper investigates the relationship between fingers and time representations in naturalistic Chinese Sign Language (CSL). Based on a CSL Corpus (Shanghai Variant, 2016–), we offer a thorough description of finger configurations for time expressions from 63 deaf signers, including three main types: digital, numeral incorporation, and points-to-fingers. The former two were further divided into vertical and horizontal fingers according to the orientation of fingertips. The results showed that there were interconnections between finger representations, numbers, ordering, and time in CSL. Vertical fingers were mainly used to quantify time units, whereas horizontal fingers were mostly used for sequencing or ordering events, and their forms could be influenced by Chinese number characters and the vertical writing direction. Furthermore, the use of points-to-fingers (e.g., pointing to the thumb, index, or little finger) formed temporal connectives in CSL and could be patterned to put a conversation in order. Additionally, CSL adopted similar linguistic forms in sequential time and adverbs of reason (e.g., cause and effect: events that happened earlier and events that happen later). Such a cause-and-effect relationship was a special type of temporal sequence. In conclusion, fingers are essential for time representation in CSL and their forms are biologically and culturally shaped.

Deaf signers in Flanders and 25 years of Community Interpreting

Looking back on 25 years of Community Interpreting in the Deaf communi - ty in Flanders at least three issues seem to be noteworthy.Linguistic research into Flemish Sign Language has clearly influenced the sign language interpreter trainingprogrammes. When thefirst programmes were started up in the early 1980s, interpreter students were taught Signed Dutch. The shift to Flemish Sign Language came about in the latter half of the 1990s, some years after the first results of Flemish Sign Language research were made available in the public domain.A second important factor is the professionalisation of the interpreter. The internationally recognised evolution from a ‘helper philosophy’ via a ‘machine (conduit) philosophy’ to a ‘bilingual-bicultural philosophy’ has also taken place in Flanders.Thirdly, we can see a certain impact of Community Interpreting on Deaf Empowerment. Since it is very hard to exactly identify this and more research would be necessary, these will only be briefand tentative statements.

Initial person reference in Providence Island Sign Language

When referring to non-present entities, speakers and signers can select from a range of different strategies to create expressions that range from extremely concise to highly elaborate. This design of referring expressions is based partly on the availability of contextual information that can aid addressee understanding. In the small signing community of Providence Island, signers’ heavy reliance on extra-linguistic information has led to their language being labelled as context-dependent (Washabaugh, de Santis & Woodward 1978). This study investigates the semiotic strategies that deaf signers in Providence Island use to introduce non-present third person referents, and examines how signers optimise specificity and minimise ambiguity by drawing on shared context. We examined first introductions to non-present people in spontaneous dyadic conversations between deaf signers and analysed the semiotic strategies used. We found that signers built referring expressions using the same strategies found in other sign languages, yet designed expressions that made use of contextual knowledge shared through community membership, such as geography, local spoken languages and traits of fellow islanders. Our signers also used strategies described as unusual or unattested in other sign languages, such as unframed constructed action sequences and stand-alone mouthings. This study deepens our understanding of context dependence by providing examples of how context is drawn upon by communities with high degrees of shared knowledge. Our results call into question the classification of sign languages as context-dependent or context-independent and highlights the differences in data collection across communities and the resulting limitations of cross-linguistic comparisons.

Serbian Sign Language: officially recognised, yet not used in deaf education

The No Child Left Behind Act in the US (2001), the programme “Write it Right” in Australia (1994) and the Council of Europe’s project Languages of Schooling (2006) point towards a growing awareness of unequal access to education. All over the world legislative initiatives have been taken to ensure that all students have access, both in terms of social cost and linguistic barriers (Reffell & McKee, 2009). However, in some countries, the deaf community with its often invisible cultural linguistic identity appears not to benefit from the change in ideology towards equal education. In this paper we are looking at one such deaf community, i.e. the Serbian deaf community, and at past and present language ideologies, attitudes and practices with respect to their language, i.e. Serbian Sign Language or SZJ. We start by situating these ideological positions of language users and educators within a broader historical context by giving the first account of SZJ, its place in education and its history within the Western Balkan sociopolitical and linguistic context. We then focus on a thematic analysis of data from interviews with deaf signers and teachers about how they experienced and perceived language in education. This revealed that deaf signers see SZJ as the most important building block in their learning process whilst the teachers emphasise hearing as the major factor in learning. The findings clearly point at a discrepancy in sign language ideologies between deaf SZJ users and their teachers resulting in conflicting attitudes and practices in Serbia today. Keywords: Serbian Sign Language, deaf education, language policy, practice, language attitudes

The ASL-LEX 2.0 Project: A Database of Lexical and Phonological Properties for 2,723 Signs in American Sign Language

ASL-LEX is a publicly available, large-scale lexical database for American Sign Language (ASL). We report on the expanded database (ASL-LEX 2.0) that contains 2,723 ASL signs. For each sign, ASL-LEX now includes a more detailed phonological description, phonological density and complexity measures, frequency ratings (from deaf signers), iconicity ratings (from hearing non-signers and deaf signers), transparency (“guessability”) ratings (from non-signers), sign and videoclip durations, lexical class, and more. We document the steps used to create ASL-LEX 2.0 and describe the distributional characteristics for sign properties across the lexicon and examine the relationships among lexical and phonological properties of signs. Correlation analyses revealed that frequent signs were less iconic and phonologically simpler than infrequent signs and iconic signs tended to be phonologically simpler than less iconic signs. The complete ASL-LEX dataset and supplementary materials are available at https://osf.io/zpha4/ and an interactive visualization of the entire lexicon can be accessed on the ASL-LEX page: http://asl-lex.org/.