Group items tagged

This article talks about the ASL-LEX database that four scientists created. The map of signs is meant to represent a mental lexicon and is allowing them to examine how signs are organized in the human mind. The article explains that signs may rhyme in a visual way even though the words do not, which causes the brain to relate groups of signs together. One pattern that was noticed is that the more commonly used signs tend to be simpler and shorter than the rare ones, which is comparable to spoken language. They also found that common signs are more likely to be in clusters of visually similar words, while rare signs are more isolated.

Deaf people from Philadelphia have a noteworthy, distinctive regional accent in their signg language. When most people talk about a dialect in spoken languages, and in sign languages too, a lot of what they center on are lexical differences: differences in words. In ASL, there are many, many signs that have lexical differences. For example, the (Philadelphia) sign for hospital is exceptionally different from what standard ASL would be, and among other things. To the point where the signs are not able to be deciphered based on what they look like. The historical reason for the differences between Philadelphian sign language and standard ASL: the first school for the deaf was founded by a French teacher, and therefore Philadelphia sign is more akin to French signing than American signing.

People in Philadelphia speak with a distinctive Philly accent, and those who converse in sign language are no different. The area is known for having one of the most distinctive regional sign language accents, and two researchers based at the University of Pennsylvania are trying to figure out why. In sign language, an accent is apparent in how words are signed differently-it's a lexical difference, similar to how some Americans say "pop" while others say "soda," explains Meredith Tamminga, one of the professors conducting the research. Some possible reasons: the first sign language teacher in the United States and the person who founded the first Philadelphia school for the deaf, Laurent Clerc, was a Frenchman. Many Philadelphia deaf signers were educated at the school, and moreover, remained geographically stable, limiting their exposure to signers who used conventional ASL. While ASL has evolved to a distinctive American sign language over time, the Philadelphia version maintains more of its French roots.

Researchers have noticed that in Philly, signers have a distinct accent just like the language spoken there. The sign language in Philly is so different from ASL that it would be almost impossible for a person who uses ASL and a person who use Philadelphia sign language to communicate with each other. This is because Philadelphia sign language is similar to French Sign Language. As more advancements are made to help deaf people hear, the less people are learning how to sign and slowly the usage of the unique Philadelphia sign language decrease. Researchers are trying to find ways to help preserve this unique way of signing.

The World Health Organisation counts 430m people as deaf or hard of hearing. Many use sign languages to communicate. If they cannot also use those languages to talk to computers, they risk being excluded from the digitisation that is taking over everyday life. Sign language poses particular issues in re: its translation to either text or speech. Some challenges include improving the machine-learning algorithms that recognise signs and their meaning and developing the best methods to interpret sign languages' distinctive grammars. The applications of such technology could improve the lives of the deaf, for example, allowing them to use their cell phones to search for directions or look up the meanings of unknown signs, without resorting to the written form of a spoken language.

A unique sign language, possibly dating back to the 1800s or before, is being used in Hawaii, marking the first time in 80 years a previously unknown language -- spoken or signed -- has been documented in the U.S. The language is not a dialect of American Sign Language, as previously believed, but an unrelated language with unique vocabulary and grammar. It also is on the verge of extinction, with an estimated 40 users of the language.

Neuroimaging studies suggest that sign languages are complex linguistic systems processed much like spoken languages, even though they're gestural/visual, not oral. Wernicke's area activates when perceiving sign language; Broca's when producing sign language. In deaf people, lesions in left hemisphere "speech centres" like Broca's and Wernicke's areas produced significantly more sign errors on naming, repetition and sentence-comprehension tasks than signers with damaged right hemispheres.

Hawaii Sign Language (HSL) was once believed to be similar to American Sign Language (ASL), used in the majority of deaf communities in the U.S. However, the work of Woodward and his team revealed they're not similar at all. In 2013, the language was recognized as its own distinct language. "Everything is different," Woodward says. "The vocabulary has less than 10% correlation to ASL, which is typical of languages that don't have a relationship to each other and were developed independently." HSL also uses much more body movement and facial expression than ASL.

Douglas Quenqua reports on crowdsourcing projects in both American Sign Language and British Sign Language are under way at several universities, and how those projects standardize signs for commonly used science terms.

the part of this text that I was able to read, talked about the basics of sign language and how it is characterized as a language in the field of linguistics. This text explains how there are different meanings for similar signs based on hand shape, movement, location, orientation, and non-manual signs.

Some metaphors are common in spoken language but are inappropriate in sign, body-part metaphors are possible in sign metaphors but odd/uncommon in spoken metaphor. In spoken language, tone and body position determine when a metaphor is that and not literal. Sign metaphors also have similar markers such as change in facial expression but are more limited in expressing change in tone and body position (as the body is already the main mode of communication). There is a sign for "metaphor" or a way to slightly change the signs for common words in metaphor so that the "listener" knows that the "speaker" means something metaphorically as opposed to literally.

Ubiquitous video technology and social media have given deaf people a new way to communicate. They're using it to transform American Sign Language. For more than a century, the telephone has helped shape how people communicate. But it had a less profound impact on American Sign Language, which relies on both hand movements and facial expressions to convey meaning. Until, that is, phones started to come with video screens. Over the past decade or so, smartphones and social media have allowed ASL users to connect with one another as never before. Face-to-face interaction, once a prerequisite for most sign language conversations, is no longer required. Video has also given users the opportunity to teach more people the language - there are thriving ASL communities on YouTube and TikTok - and the ability to quickly invent and spread new signs, to reflect either the demands of the technology or new ways of thinking.

There's evidence deaf Hawaiians had been communicating with a homegrown sign language for generations, predating the arrival of missionaries, sugar plantations and the Americans who would overthrow the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. But linguists didn't officially document the language until 2013, when research by the University of Hawaii found HSL to be a language isolate: born and bred on the Hawaiian Islands with no outside influence. More than 80 percent of its vocabulary bears no similarity to ASL. The findings launched a three-year project to document what remained of HSL, led by Lambrecht and linguistics professor James "Woody" Woodward, who has spent the last 30 years studying and documenting sign languages throughout Asia. By 2016, the team had built a video archive and developed a manuscript for an introductory HSL handbook and dictionary, featuring illustrations of Lambrecht demonstrating signs.

University of Washington students have created gloves called SignAloud. These gloves sense hand motions and translate the meanings, allowing more people to understand sign language.

ASL dictionary Browse thousands of words in the ASL dictionary online. May 2012: There are linguistic and educational benefits of learning both American Sign Language and spoken/written English. Deaf children can acquire two languages ... An interview with Francois Grosjean by Nataly Kelly, Chief Research Offier, Common Sense Advisory. Not only does this site act as a dictionary for ASL, but it teachers baby signing and finger signing too! It also highlights benefits of knowing sign.

Recently, researchers have found a new language within Hawai'i, Hawaiian sign language. It has apparently been used since the 1800's by the deaf in Hawaii. Some linguists claim that it could be the last language to be discovered in the United States.

A dying language has been uncovered here in Hawai'i. Researchers are calling its existence ground-breaking - especially considering how close it came to being lost forever. Now a team of experts are working together to revive Hawai'i Sign Language, the indigenous language of Deaf people in Hawai'i. Researchers have identified 40 Native signers of Hawaii Sign Language. Most are in their 70s or older, which is why linguists say without this effort to restore HSL-the language would've died with this generation.

"Baby Sign" is a popular new method or parenting in which the parents teach the baby sign language to help develop the baby's language development. Although it seems as if teaching a baby sign would help the baby learn to communicate verbally, scientists say otherwise.

Code-switching involves moving freely between two different languages or dialects of a single language. Many people of color, especially mixed-race and multi-cultural people naturally code-switch. This article shows us Sheena Cobb as an example because she uses both the American Sign Language (ASL) and Black ASL depending on who she is with. Elements of black culture appear in Black ASL such as religious practice, cooking, humor, music, hairstyles, words and phrases typically used in the black communities. People who use Black ASL tend to sign with two hands, in different positions, in a larger signing space and with more repetition than with regular ASL signs.

This article delves into the grammatical structure of sign languages and highlights the differences between spoken and signed languages. It places an emphasis on the primary differences between them, which is the fact that signed symbols can be delivered simultaneously instead of in a linear fashion.