This study examined the effect of a 1-day, 6-hour key word signing (KWS) workshop on in-service special education teachers' and speech-language pathologists' (SLPs) (a) skill identifying American Sign Language (ASL) signs; (b) skill producing ASL signs; (c) use of KWS in the classroom or therapy room; and (d) perceived changes from taking part in…

Across a diverse range of languages, children proceed through similar stages in their production of causal language: their initial verbs lack internal causal structure, followed by a period during which they produce causative overgeneralizations, indicating knowledge of a productive causative rule. We asked in this study whether a child not…

The American Sign Language construction commonly known as "role-shift" (referred to afterward as Constructed Action) superficially resembles mimic forms, however unlike mime, Constructed Action is a type of depicting construction in ASL discourse (Roy 1989). The signer may use eye gaze, head shift, facial expression, stylistic variation,…

The focus of this mixed method study was to investigate the play behaviors, play interactions, and language use--within a bilingual AS L/English classroom--of a Deaf child who is a native user of American Sign Language (ASL). Play is an essential element in all children's development. Previous research suggests that there is a strong relationship…

Examination of two native American Sign Language signers' use of negative headshakes found that negative headshakes (1) were used syntactically to indicate negation; (2) could be accompanied by other nonmanual behaviors; (3) could accompany a negative lexical item; and (4) were synchronized generally with syntactic constituents. (Author/CB)