Linguists have long recognized the descriptive limitations of Stokoe notation, currently the most commonly used system for phonetic or phonological transcription, but continue using it because of its widespread influence (e.g., Siedlecki and Bonvillian, 2000). With the emergence of newer notation systems, the field will benefit from a discussion…

This study, which is part of a larger longitudinal ethnographic study of young deaf children, reports on deaf children's use of fingerspelling. The children observed were early signers using Swedish Sign Language (SSL) in communication with teachers and peers. This study centres on the functions of fingerspelling in the children's everyday…

Twenty-five second generation deaf signers (6-16 years old) participated in three experiments measuring their ability to classify fingerspelled and signed words and attend to the individual handshapes within fingerspelled words. Results revealed that Ss could discriminate fingerspelled words and decompose fingerspelling into the handshapes that…

Presents study designed to determine whether interruption in the use of the manual encoding modality would retard learning in prelingually deaf subjects. One group of students used finger spelling and finger numeration in learning eight pairs of number-word combinations while the other group used no manual encoding. Results show groups using…

In 1967 the Florida School for the Deaf adopted the Rochester Method (using fingerspelling as a more visible supplement to speech and lipreading). (LS)

The reference manual of preferred sign language signs represents an effort by a special South Carolina task force to develop a single, systematized approach for signing in instructional settings throughout the state. The manual, which contains illustrations and instructions for formation of approximately 2,500 signs, was developed by establishing…

This paper focuses upon the deaf as an American Sign Language-using community, out of the English-using mainstream. (RC)

In this paper the author takes a positive not a negative view of sign language. It is the center of attention, not as an object of interest to the specialist in language, but as the central feature in the complex sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic system that makes the deaf person part of general American culture and at the same time part of a…

Among British deaf adults there are at least two varieties of Sign Language in use. The structure and functions of sign language in the deaf community at Reading are examined to consider whether the British deaf community might be diglossic. The process used is described and references are included. (AMH)

Recent research in sociolinguistics has demonstrated the need for looking at language in a dynamic framework, that is, for not imposing the traditional synchronic-diachronic dichotomy on linguistic studies. Support for the dynamic framework has been given from various oral languages. This paper attempts to test variation theory with historically…

An investigation of the confusion resulting from reliance on visual perceptual teachers in the identification of dactylemes (handshapes) in the American Manual Alphabet (MA) is reported. A hierarchy of errors varying with subjects' degree of expertness in the MA is established. This can help manual communication teachers develop techniques for…

Three reasons given by advocates of fingerspelled English or visible English (VE) that their method of communication is superior to total communication (TC) were investigated with an observational study of 11 teachers in two VE schools and 15 teachers in two TC schools. (Author/IM)

Twenty-eight deaf adolescents enrolled in a day-class program for the hearing impaired were administered a battery of four short factual stories using oral, manual, simultaneous, and interpreted modalities of communication. (Author/PHR)