The role of verbs in American Sign Language (ASL) is investigated. Verb mutations in ASL are very different from the kinds of grammatical deformations that occur in English, and are different from those that occur in spoken languages as a whole. (HP)

Listed with ordering information and in some cases brief annotations are 61 resources pertinent to use of manual communication by retarded, autistic, and aphasic individuals who cannot communicate effectively by speaking. (JG)

Four keynote papers, presented at an international conference on sign language research, discussed general linguistic issues of sign language, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language acquisition. (CB)

The simultaneous presentation of picture book and signer on split screen videotape made literature more accessible and vital to hearing-impaired students. Suggestions are provided for preparing students for the viewing, discussing the story after viewing, and making videotapes. (CB)

Code switching (between oral and manual communication ) was examined with seven prelingually deaf adults. Deaf signers with deaf parents who learned American sign language (ASL) at an early age evidenced the most code switching behavior and the most English-like signed segments. Early signers with hearing parents were least likely to vary from…

The article stresses (1) the importance of vocational rehabilitation personnel and deaf clients establishing effective communication, and (2) the importance of an integrated approach to sign communication skills assessment and development for vocational rehabilitation personnel. Georgia and New York State programs and the Sign Communication…

"Grandfather Moose" rhymes, written to follow the Mother Goose tradition, are short, appealing, easy-to-memorize sign language nursery rhymes which employ visual poetic devices such as similar signs and transitional flow of movement. (CB)

Five nonverbal severely mentally retarded and three nonverbal deaf children learned to use a sign-rehearsal strategy in one of two memory tasks. Generalization to a simpler task was accomplished for two Ss trained in a more complex task. (Author/CL)

Reports that four deaf children of hearing parents, who lacked usable conventional linguistic input, developed a gestural communication system that showed some of the structural regularities characteristic of early child language. Suggests that communication with a number of language-like properties can develop in an atypical language-learning…

Discusses the data from an analysis of Simulataneous Communication, a basically bimodal English with full English being presented in the speech channel and a systematically abbreviated form of English presented in the sign channel. Data suggest that the notion of a bilingual continuum needs to be reconsidered. (SED)

Results of a study involving 14 three- to 11-year-olds with language impairments revealed that, for both functor acquisition and functor recall, speech and sign training was superior to speech training. Type of functor trained was also important, with prepositions faring better than pronouns. (Author/CL)

A review of linguistic research on the nonmanual components of American Sign Language shows that the signer's face, head, torso, and eyegaze have important linguistic roles. The author's study illustrates how different combinations of facial and head movements signal different kinds of questions: yes-no, wh-, and rhetorical. (Author/CL)

Describes in detail the conventions of polite language of deaf Americans using American Sign Language and examines how it differs from the conversational patterns of English-speaking hearing Americans. (EKN)

Four developmentally disordered, speech deficient children (11-16 years old), who were being taught sign language as an alternative to speech, were taught to use manual signs as mediators in a delayed auditory-picture matching-to-sample task. (Author/CL)

The gap between oral and manual production of the 159 profoundly deaf children in total communication programs indicated that spoken English did not develop simultaneously with manually coded English and that Ss educated in programs using manually coded English did not develop competence with early developing English syntax faster than those not…