One of the fundamental issues for a language is its capacity to express argument structure unambiguously. This study presents evidence for the emergence and the incremental development of these basic mechanisms in a newly developing language, Central Taurus Sign Language. Our analyses identify universal patterns in both the emergence and…

Despite the fact that Indian Sign Language (ISL) has a significant influence on the native signers in northeastern India, no studies of ISL have yet taken into account the nature of the sign languages in use in this region. This article examines the emergence of both Shillong Sign Language and the Deaf community of Shillong and discusses the…

Support for baby signing (BS) with hearing infants tends to converge toward three camps or positions. Those who advocate BS to advance infant language, literacy, behavioral, and cognitive development rely heavily on anecdotal evidence and social media to support their claims. Those who advocate BS as an introduction to another language, such as…

Recent technologies in the area of video and Internet are allowing the creation and online publication of large signed language corpora. Primarily addressing the needs of linguists and other researchers, because of their unique character in history these data collections are also made accessible online for a general audience. This "open access"…

In sign language studies, it is generally assumed that a sign can be divided into several phases in time (preparation, stroke, and retraction) and that the stroke contains all of the necessary information. However, this has not been tested empirically. In order to learn where the information truly resides, we present an experiment that…