Sign language processing is often performed by processing each individual sign. Such an approach relies on an exhaustive description of the signs and does not take into account the spatial structure of the sentence. In this paper, we will present a general model of sign language sentences that uses the construction of the signing space as a representation of both the meaning and the realization...

BACKGROUND Most children with hearing loss who receive cochlear implants (CI) learn spoken language, and parents must choose early on whether to use sign language to accompany speech at home. We address whether parents' use of sign language before and after CI positively influences auditory-only speech recognition, speech intelligibility, spoken language, and reading outcomes. METHODS Three g...

The notion of subject in human language has a privileged status relative to other arguments. This special status is manifested in the behavior of subjects at the morphological, syntactic, semantic and discourse levels. Here we bring evidence that subjects have privileged status at the lexical level as well, by analyzing lexicalization patterns of verbs in three different sign languages. Our ana...

Complexity has been linked to ease of learning. This article explores the roles of two measures of complexity – feature economy and logical complexity – in the acquisition of sets of signs, taken from a small sign language that serves as an analogue of plosive inventories in spoken language. In a learning experiment, participants acquired data sets that varied in feature economy and logical com...

Sign languages have two strikingly different kinds of morphological structure: sequential and simultaneous. The simultaneous morphology of two unrelated sign languages, American and Israeli Sign Language, is very similar and is largely inflectional, while what little sequential morphology we have found differs significantly and is derivational. We show that at least two pervasive types of infle...

Sign language poetry is the ultimate form of aesthetic signing, in which the form of language used is as important as or even more important than the message. Like so much poetry in any language, sign language poetry is a means of expressing ideas unusually succinctly, through means of heightened "art" language. It uses specific language devices to maximise the significance of the poem, just as...

t. This paper is part of a study examining how negation is marked in Greek Sign Language (GSL). Head movements which are reported to mark negation in other sign languages have been examined to see if they are also used in GSL. Of particular interest is the analysis of the backward tilt of the head which is distinct for marking negation in GSL. Introduction. Backwards tilt of the head seems to o...