One of the fundamental issues for a language is its capacity to express argument structure unambiguously. This study presents evidence for the emergence and the incremental development of these basic mechanisms in a newly developing language, Central Taurus Sign Language. Our analyses identify universal patterns in both the emergence and…

Slovene Sign Language (SZJ) has as yet received little attention from linguists. This article presents some basic facts about SZJ, its history, current status, and a description of the Slovene Sign Language Corpus and Pilot Grammar (SIGNOR) project, which compiled and annotated a representative corpus of SZJ. Finally, selected quantitative data…

This article focuses on the syntactic level of the grammar of Saudi Arabian Sign Language by exploring some word orders that occur in personal narratives in the language. Word order is one of the main ways in which languages indicate the main syntactic roles of subjects, verbs, and objects; others are verbal agreement and nominal case morphology.…

Discusses the paradigms in American Sign Language (ASL) resulting from a process called "numeral incorporation" and others in which numeral handshapes alternate to express different numerical values. Concludes that not only are the signs in the "decade" paradigm fixed units in ASL grammar, but so are all the other examples of numeral…

Discusses personal pronoun morphology in Providence Island Sign Language (PROVISL), specifically (1) indexing, (2) pronominalization, (3) person, (4) number, (5) gender, (6) inclusivity, and (7) case. Comparisons are made with other sign languages and spoken languages. (Author/AM)

An overview of current knowledge about Russian Sign Language (RSL) and its use in Russia today notes that linguistic study of RSL is still in the beginning stages, defines issues that need to be studied, and suggests directions for further research. (28 references) (JL)

Describes a research project intended to develop a description, within a generative model, of British Sign Language grammar, with particular focus on time expressions. (AM)

This article focuses on word order - the order of constituents in the sentence - as one way in which languages establish the relationship between a verb and its arguments. The spoken languages of the world have been classified into three, major word-order types: SVO, VSO, and SOV. Greenberg' work (1963) on language typology has been a stimulus to…

The differences between Pidgin Sign English and American Sign Language in simultaneity, or the visible presence of two or more linguistic units (manual or nonmanual) co-occurring, are demonstrated. Differences are exemplified in handshape-classifier pronouns, directional verbs, co-occurring manual signs, and nonmanual behavior. (PMJ)

Discusses arguments that support the position regarding the distribution of non-grammatical markings of negation and of "wh"-scope and emphasizes the importance of looking for deep unifying principles in cross-modal studies of American Sign Language in order to further understanding of Universal Grammar. (33 references) (Author/CK)

Presents results of research of the use of simultaneous communication in deaf schools and its accuracy in representing English grammar. (AM)

Compares the production of speech and sign: the approaches used in research, the cognitive processes involved, and the output timing mechanism. (AM)