In three structural priming experiments, we investigated whether deaf and hearing writers differ in the processes and representations underlying written language production. Experiment 1 showed that deaf writers of Mandarin Chinese exhibited comparable extents of structural priming and comparable lexical boosts, suggesting that syntactic encoding…

Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children show difficulties in their morphosyntactic abilities. Purpose: The current study aimed to examine morphosyntactic errors in sentences produced by DHH students, who are signers of Israeli Sign Language, and also users of Palestinian Colloquial Arabic (PCA) and written Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Method:…

Situations of language contact are often the norm for sign languages. This article investigates a case of unimodal contact between Cena, a young sign language in its third generation that is used in a small rural community in Brazil, and Libras, the national sign language of Brazil. Our analysis concerns one by-product of this contact: reiterative…

This study presents a corpus-based investigation of self-repairs in hearing adult L2 (M2L2, second modality and second language) learners of Swedish Sign Language ("Svenskt teckenspråk," STS). This study analyses M2L2 learners' STS conversations with a deaf signer and examines the learners' self-repair practices and whether there are…

Because sign languages have two main articulators, signers simultaneously experience both possibilities and constraints in the articulation and perception of linguistic messages. Sign languages commonly convey different linguistic units with each hand, and additional information is conveyed in nonmanual signals. Meaningful perseverations (or sign…

Among the existing sign language assessment tools, only a small number can be used in clinical settings. This contribution aims at presenting three comprehension assessment tests (two lexical and one syntactic) that offer a solid basis to build tools to assess language impairments in deaf signing adults. We provide the material and guidelines,…

Purpose: This study aimed to examine how speech while sign (simultaneous communication [SimCom]) affects the spoken language of bimodal bilingual teachers and how individual differences in sign-language vocabulary knowledge, SimCom teaching experience, and the ability to perform speech under dual-task conditions explain the variability in SimCom…

This study explores relationships between Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL) and Chinese reading comprehension with 65 deaf adults/youth (study 1: ages 14--50 years) and 27 deaf children (study 2: ages 6--13 years). Significant relationships were found between scores on two tests measuring TSL tasks. In study #1, the TSL tasks (measured by Taiwan Sign…

Acquisition of natural language has been shown to fundamentally impact both one's ability to use the first language and the ability to learn subsequent languages later in life. Sign languages offer a unique perspective on this issue because Deaf signers receive access to signed input at varying ages. The majority acquires sign language in (early)…

This article describes the lexical and syntactic development of written narratives in 24 deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students aged between 8 and 18 and takes into account how their varying linguistic backgrounds may predict their written performance. All participants use spoken Swedish, but the study also considers their proficiency in Swedish…

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…

While current debates oppose the cochlear implant's privileging of speech acquisition to teaching sign language, nineteenth-century debates, in contrast, opposed those who saw sign language as a tool for learning to read and write, and those who saw in it an autonomous language for organizing thought itself. Should the order of gestural signs…

In line with a recent trend in sociolinguistic research focusing on the visual dimension of multilingual urban environments, this study investigates multilingualism, as seen in street signage, more particularly shopfronts, in the Parisian neighbourhood of Belleville. Through this illustrative account, the study aims to highlight the ways in which,…

Purpose: Diagnoses, assessments, and treatments, as well as social and language interventions, can be effective in identifying and interpreting specific linguistic features that present special challenges to the language abilities of individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). This article reports on a study analyzing complex sentences and…

In this article two dimensions of handshape complexity are analyzed as potential building blocks of phonological contrast-joint complexity and finger group complexity. We ask whether sign language patterns are elaborations of those seen in the gestures produced by hearing people without speech (pantomime) or a more radical reorganization of them.…