From iconic handshapes to grammatical contrasts: Longitudinal evidence from a child homesigner [PDF]
Frontiers in Psychology, 2014 Many sign languages display crosslinguistic consistencies in the use of two iconic aspects of handshape, handshape type and finger group complexity.
Marie eCoppola, Diane eBrentari
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Conventionalization of Iconic Handshape Preferences in Family Homesign Systems [PDF]
Languages, 2022 Variation in the linguistic use of handshapes exists across sign languages, but it is unclear how these iconic handshape preferences arise and become conventionalized.
Madeline Quam +2 more
doaj +8 more sources
The relevance of words and the language/communication divide [PDF]
Frontiers in Psychology, 2023 First, the wide applicability of the relevance-theoretic pragmatic account of how new (ad hoc) senses of words and new (ad hoc) words arise spontaneously in communication/comprehension is demonstrated.
Robyn Carston
doaj +2 more sources
Cognitive pragmatics: Insights from homesign conversations [PDF]
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2023 Homesign is a visual-gestural form of communication that emerges between deaf individuals and their hearing interlocutors in the absence of a conventional sign language. I argue here that homesign conversations form a perfect testcase to study the extent
Vos, Connie de
core +3 more sources
Emergent Morphology in Child Homesign: Evidence from Number Language. [PDF]
Lang Learn Dev, 2022 Human languages, signed and spoken, can be characterized by the structural patterns they use to associate communicative forms with meanings. One such pattern is paradigmatic morphology, where complex words are built from the systematic use and re-use of sub-lexical units.
Abner N +3 more
europepmc +4 more sources
The organization of verb meaning in Lengua de Señas Nicaragüense (LSN): Sequential or simultaneous structures? [PDF]
GlossaOne structural dimension that varies across languages is the simultaneous or sequential expression of meaning. Complex predicates can layer meanings together simultaneously in a single-verb predicate (SVP) or distribute them sequentially in a multiple ...
Ann Senghas +4 more
doaj +3 more sources
Forging a morphological system out of two dimensions: Agentivity and number [PDF]
Open Linguistics, 2015 Languages have diverse strategies for marking agentivity and number. These strategies are negotiated to create combinatorial systems. We consider the emergence of these strategies by studying features of movement in a young sign language in Nicaragua ...
Horton L. +4 more
doaj +2 more sources
The development of iconicity in children's co-speech gesture and homesign. [PDF]
LIA, 2017 AbstractGesture can illustrate objects and events in the world by iconically reproducing elements of those objects and events. Children do not begin to express ideas iconically, however, until after they have begun to use conventional forms. In this paper, we investigate how children’s use of iconic resources in gesture relates to the developing ...
Cartmill EA +3 more
europepmc +5 more sources
Modeling the emergence of lexicons in homesign systems. [PDF]
Top Cogn Sci, 2014 AbstractIt is largely acknowledged that natural languages emerge not just from human brains but also from rich communities of interacting human brains (Senghas, 2005). Yet the precise role of such communities and such interaction in the emergence of core properties of language has largely gone uninvestigated in naturally emerging systems, leaving the ...
Richie R, Yang C, Coppola M.
europepmc +5 more sources
The communicative importance of agent-backgrounding: Evidence from homesign and Nicaraguan Sign Language. [PDF]
Cognition, 2020 Some concepts are more essential for human communication than others. In this paper, we investigate whether the concept of agent-backgrounding is sufficiently important for communication that linguistic structures for encoding this concept are present in young sign languages. Agent-backgrounding constructions serve to reduce the prominence of the agent
Rissman L +6 more
europepmc +4 more sources