UE516 - Language in the visual modality

Intervenant·e·s

• Carlo Geraci [référent·e]   chargé de recherche, CNRS / Institut Jean-Nicod (IJN)

The aim of the course is to address the significance of sign languages in discovering the properties of human ability for language. The course provides a deep understanding of the main issues of sign language linguistics at various levels. A selection of phenomena that are important for understanding the structure of sign languages and their relation to spoken languages is presented and discussed.

1. Introduction to language in the visual modality 
   1. Brief outline of the relevance of studying sign language and of their status
   2. Some general psycholinguistic and neurolinguistics arguments about sign language
   3. Some general sociolinguistic arguments about sign language
2. Sign Language phonology 
   1. Introduction to SL phonology: the phonemic system
   2. The syllabic system of SL
   3. SL phonological processes
   4. Formal analyses of SL phonology
3. Sign Language Morphology
   1. The lexicon of sign language
   2. Inflectional morphology
   3. Derivational morphology
   4. Compounds in sign language
4. Sign Language and Data collection
   1. A Deaf informant comes to class and students are asked to elicit SL material
   2. Students are asked to analyse the data they collect
5. Sign Language Syntax
   1. Syntax in the visual modality: Typological variation & order flexibility
   2. Sentence structure in SL
   3. Non-manual markers & agreement; Non-manual markers & movement;
   4. Recursivity, relative clauses and complex structures
6. Sign Language Semantics
   1. The logical structure of language in visual modality
   2. Role-shift and indexicals
   3. Degrees in comparative and temporal constructions
   4. Pluractionality & other aspects of event structure
7. Sign Language Acquisition and Psycholinguistics
   1. Bi-lingual / bimodal children
   2. Lexical & phonological access to sign
   3. Sign language processing
   4. Visuo-spatial modality and spatial perspective