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The videocassettes illustrate dialogues for the text it accompanies, and also provides ASL stories, poems and dramatic prose for classroom use. Each dialogue is presented three times to allow the student to "converse with" each signer. Also demonstrates the grammar and structure of sign language. The teacher's text on grammar and culture focuses on the use of three basic types of sentences, four verb inflections, locative relationships and pronouns, etc. by using sign language. The teacher's text on curriculum and methods gives guidelines on teaching American Sign Language and Structured activities for classroom use.

Landmark study on the role of gestures in relation to speech and thought.

The best survey of cognitive linguistics available, this Handbook provides a thorough explanation of its rich methodology, key results, and interdisciplinary context. With in-depth coverage of the research questions, basic concepts, and various theoretical approaches, the Handbook addresses newly emerging subfields and shows their contribution to the discipline. The Handbook introduces fields of study that have become central to cognitive linguistics, such as conceptual mappings and construction grammar. It explains all the main areas of linguistic analysis traditionally expected in a full linguistics framework, and includes fields of study such as language acquisition, sociolinguistics, diachronic studies, and corpus linguistics. Setting linguistic facts within the context of many other disciplines, the Handbook will be welcomed by researchers and students in a broad range of disciplines, including linguistics, cognitive science, neuroscience, gesture studies, computational linguistics, and multimodal studies.

Surveys key findings and ideas in sign language phonology, exploring the crucial areas in phonology to which sign language studies has contributed.

This book proposes a radical alternative to dominant views of the evolution of language, in particular the origins of syntax. The authors draw on evidence from areas such as primatology, anthropology, and linguistics to present a groundbreaking account of the notion that language emerged through visible bodily action. Written in a clear and accessible style, Gesture and the Nature of Language will be indispensable reading for all those interested in the origins of language.

This book focuses on how sign language ideologies influence, manifest in, and are challenged by communicative practices. Sign languages are minority languages using the visual-gestural and tactile modalities, whose affordances are very different from those of spoken languages using the auditory-oral modality.

Sign languages are of great interest to linguists, because while they are the product of the same brain, their physical transmission differs greatly from that of spoken languages. In this pioneering and original study, Wendy Sandler and Diane Lillo-Martin compare sign languages with spoken languages, in order to seek the universal properties they share. Drawing on general linguistic theory, they describe and analyze sign language structure, showing linguistic universals in the phonology, morphology, and syntax of sign language, while also revealing non-universal aspects of its structure that must be attributed to its physical transmission system. No prior background in sign language linguistics is assumed, and numerous pictures are provided to make descriptions of signs and facial expressions accessible to readers. Engaging and informative, Sign Language and Linguistic Universals will be invaluable to linguists, psychologists, and all those interested in sign languages, linguistic theory and the universal properties of human languages.

Organizes 1,600-plus ASL signs by 40 basic hand shapes rather than in alphabetical word order. This format allows users to search for a sign that they recognize but whose meaning they have forgotten or for the meaning of a new sign they have seen for the first time. The entries include descriptions of how to form each sign to represent the varying terms they might mean. Index of English glosses only. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR