Browsing by Subject "American Sign Language"
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Item Contact between Mexican sign language and American sign language in two Texas border areas(2002) Quinto-Pozos, David Gilbert; Meier, Richard P.Item Evaluating the utility of the test of narrative language for use with deaf children via American Sign Language(2013-05) Cravens, Elizabeth Laura; Bernstein, Mark E.; Mann, Wolfgang (Lecturer)The expressive language tasks of the Test of Narrative Language (Gillam & Pearson, 2004) were administered to eleven deaf, native signers and fifteen English-speaking hearing children who were between the ages of six and ten years old. These tasks were administered to determine the appropriateness of this measure for use with special populations and bring to light new information about children's narrative development and the differences in the language modalities of these two groups. Also, the application of this information on future testing of deaf populations is examined. The eleven native signers came from a single residential school for the deaf, and all had deaf parents. The fifteen hearing children were recruited from a private school and through associates of the primary investigator. The tasks were administered according to the TNL manual's protocol and script, with the primary investigator speaking English for the hearing children and a native signer using American Sign Language for the deaf children. Their narratives in these tasks were coded according to the standards of the test and examined: factual story comprehension, story retell abilities (and inclusion of target terms), story generation from a picture sequence, and story generation from a single picture scene. This study found that though the hearing group outperformed the deaf group on each task's raw score, the specific subcategories of "Grammar" and "Story" from the picture sequence-based story generation task, and the "Characters" and "Vocabulary and Grammar" coding of the single picture-based generation task showed ASL users as having stronger narrative skills as a whole. Specific target items from the story retell also proved differentially problematic for the ASL group and should be altered in future utilization of the TNL with deaf children. In the future, the need for appropriate and representative testing of deaf children's narrative skills should take a higher priority, and greater understanding of the differences between ASL and English will be desired for both test creators and those testing deaf children.Item Joint usage in sign language acquisition : a pedagogical model(2013-12) Wynne, Michael Francis, Jr.; Meier, Richard P.This paper utilizes prior studies attempting to explain different possible phonological production errors among adults who learn American Sign Language (ASL) as a second language (L2). These studies have offered theoretical grounding to such production errors. One area of study in particular is further explored in this paper and that is how specific joints of the arm and hand are used in the production of signs (Mirus, et al., 2001, Meier, et al 2008). L2 learners of ASL are essentially learning a new language using a different modality and this new modality requires that they relearn how to use specific motor skills needed in order to produce sign vocabulary. To address this, an exploratory teaching module is proposed with the need for further action research to discuss its effectiveness.Item Negation of know, want, like, have, and good in American Sign Language(2012-12) Liskova, Elena Igorevna; Meier, Richard P.; Quinto-Pozos, DavidPredicates KNOW, WANT, LIKE, HAVE, and GOOD have been reported to differ from other predicates in American Sign Language (ASL) in that they are typically negated by reversing the orientation of hand[s] in a twisting outward/downward movement. This phenomenon has been termed "negative incorporation." In this study, I examine semantic properties of negative-incorporation predicates. Specifically, I investigate whether these predicates also allow other negation strategies available in ASL and what the meanings conveyed by using these strategies are. I provide a detailed description of negative incorporation and demonstrate that it has a different status for the verbal predicates WANT, LIKE, and KNOW versus the adjectival predicate BAD. Using the data from a structured data collection procedure in the form of a production task and the elicitation of acceptability judgments, I identify various possibilities and preferred strategies for the investigated predicates, show that most signers do not accept negative incorporation with HAVE in contemporary ASL, demonstrate that nonmanual negation when a negative headshake is the only indicator of negation cannot be used with the verbal negative-incorporation predicates, and point out that there is variation among signers with respect to the preferred strategy of negation for LIKE that can be explained by historical change in progress.Item The signing of deaf children with autism : lexical phonology and perspective-taking in the visual-spatial modality(2010-05) Shield, Aaron Michael; Meier, Richard P.; Cohen, Leslie B.; Beaver, David; Neal-Beevers, A. Rebecca; Quinto-Pozos, DavidThis dissertation represents the first systematic study of the sign language of deaf children with autism. The signing of such children is of particular interest because of the unique ways that some of the known impairments of autism are likely to interact with sign language. In particular, the visual-spatial modality of sign requires signers to understand the visual perspectives of others, a skill which may require theory of mind, which is thought to be delayed in autism (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985). It is hypothesized that an impairment in visual perspective-taking could lead to phonological errors in American Sign Language (ASL), specifically in the parameters of palm orientation, movement, and location. Twenty-five deaf children and adolescents with autism (10 deaf-of-deaf and 15 deaf-of-hearing) between the ages of 4;7 and 20;3 as well as a control group of 13 typically-developing deaf-of-deaf children between the ages of 2;7 and 6;9 were observed in a series of studies, including naturalistic observation, lexical elicitation, fingerspelling, imitation of nonsense gestures, two visual perspective-taking tasks, and a novel sign learning task. The imitation task was also performed on a control group of 24 hearing, non-signing college students. Finally, four deaf mothers of deaf autistic children were interviewed about their children’s signing. Results showed that young deaf-of-deaf autistic children under the age of 10 are prone to making phonological errors involving the palm orientation parameter, substituting an inward palm for an outward palm and vice versa. There is very little evidence that such errors occur in the typical acquisition of ASL or any other sign language. These results indicate that deaf children with autism are impaired from an early age in a cognitive mechanism involved in the acquisition of sign language phonology, though it remains unclear which mechanism(s) might be responsible. This research demonstrates the importance of sign language research for a more complete understanding of autism, as well as the need for research into atypical populations for a better understanding of sign language linguistics.Item Strict vs. flexible accomplishment predicates(2014-05) Wright, Tony Allen; Meier, Richard P.; Beaver, David I., 1966-; Beavers, John; Kamp, Johann; Quinto-Pozos, David; Russi, CinziaThe central issue of this study is how predicates in English and ASL represent the completeness of events. The standard view is that predicates which are composed of dynamic verbs with quantized arguments denote the reaching of a natural endpoint (Vendler (1957), Dowty (1979), Smith (1991), Verkuyl (1993), Krifka (1998)). A consequence of this view is that sentences with dynamic verbs and quantized arguments are false when they refer to non-completed events. For example, if John ate only half of a sandwich, the sentence John ate a sandwich is false as it applies to this event. Some researchers have questioned whether this standard view matches native speaker intuitions (Lin (2004), Smollett (2005)). It is my hypothesis that the lexical aspectual category of accomplishments (those which have an obligatory preparatory phase and a natural endpoint) can be subdivided into strict accomplishments, those that require event completion (endpoint inclusion) in their truth conditions and flexible accomplishments, those which do not. This study addresses the following questions. (1) Do dynamic verb/quantized argument predicates entail endpoint inclusion? (2) Is there an inference, as opposed to an entailment, of endpoint-inclusion in English and ASL? If so what is the nature of this inference? (3) Is there a conceptual property that underlies the membership of predicates in the hypothesized class of flexible accomplishments? Three experiments were conducted in the course of this study to address these questions. The data gathered were analyzed in the light of the standard aspectuality literature. The following conclusions were reached: (1) The endpoint-inclusion inference in English is a conversational implicature, not an entailment. (2) Events which consist of iterated “minimal events” (Rothstein, 2004) are flexible accomplishments; however, not all flexible accomplishments consist of iterated minimal events. (4) ASL dynamic verb/quantized argument predicates lack the endpoint-inclusion inference due to their explicit iconic reference to minimal events. (5) The endpoint-inclusion inference of flexible accomplishments in English is due to a basic inference that the action of the verb in dynamic verb/quantized argument predicates covers/affects the whole extent of an object/path/scale, but specific world knowledge in the form of stereotypicality features outranks this inference.Item Substance abuse screening with deaf clients: development of a culturally sensitive scale(2005) Alexander, Tara Lynn; DiNitto, Diana M.; Springer, David W.Item Undershoot in two modalities: evidence from fast speech and fast signing(2003) Mauk, Claude Edward; Meier, Richard P.This study seeks to extend methodologies previously used to analyze target undershoot in vowels to the analysis of English stop consonants. The same methods are used to elicit variation in the location and handshape parameters of a signed language, specifically American Sign Language (ASL). Research has shown that variation in the F2 values of vowels can be related to speaking rate such that shorter vowels are less likely to achieve the expected target value for that vowel. Further, this kind of target undershoot is dependent on the phonetic environment in which the vowel is placed. Previous research on consonant articulations is mixed. While variation has been shown in most cases, some results conflict. The previous research on variation in signing is less extensive. Studies indicate that variation in signed languages can be linked to aspects of the phonetic environment. A few studies also indicate that some variation is related to signing rate or style. Three experiments were conducted to confirm the existence of rate dependence on English F2 onsets and on the location and handshape parameters of ASL. Speakers and signers were asked to produce short utterances at differing rates of production ranging from normal, relaxed utterances to articulations that were as fast as possible. Rate and context dependence were also shown to fit expectations about phonetic undershoot based on the earlier research on vowel undershoot. Multiple linear regression analyses were used to quantify the effects of speaking or signing rate and phonetic environment on English F2 onsets, and on ASL locations and handshapes. The articulators used for the production of speech sounds and those used for the production of ASL signs are radically different in physical form. Despite the differences between the two systems, there may be important similarities in the motor control of these systems. As a result, constraints on language production in one modality may be quite similar to constraints on production in the other modality. This dissertation shows that undershoot phenomena are similar across the two modalities providing support for the validity of transferring methodologies for the analysis of speech to the study of signed languages.