Sign Languages Commons^™

Exploring Strategies For Modeling Sign Language Phonology, Lee Kezar, Riley Carlin, Tejas Srinivasan, Zed Sehyr, Naomi Caselli, Jesse Thomason

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Like speech, signs are composed of discrete, recombinable features called phonemes. Prior work shows that models which can recognize phonemes are better at sign recognition, motivating deeper exploration into strategies for modeling sign language phonemes. In this work, we learn graph convolution networks to recognize the sixteen phoneme “types” found in ASL-LEX 2.0. Specifically, we explore how learning strategies like multi-task and curriculum learning can leverage mutually useful information between phoneme types to facilitate better modeling of sign language phonemes. Results on the Sem-Lex Benchmark show that curriculum learning yields an average accuracy of 87% across all phoneme types, outperforming …

Asymmetric Event-Related Potential Priming Effects Between English Letters And American Sign Language Fingerspelling Fonts, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Katherine J. Midgley, Karen Emmory, Phillip J. Holcomb

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Letter recognition plays an important role in reading and follows different phases of processing, from early visual feature detection to the access of abstract letter representations. Deaf ASL–English bilinguals experience orthography in two forms: English letters and fingerspelling. However, the neurobiological nature of fingerspelling representations, and the relationship between the two orthographies, remains unexplored. We examined the temporal dynamics of single English letter and ASL fingerspelling font processing in an unmasked priming paradigm with centrally presented targets for 200 ms preceded by 100 ms primes. Event-related brain potentials were recorded while participants performed a probe detection task. Experiment 1 examined …

Improving Sign Recognition With Phonology, Lee Kezar, Jesse Thomason, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

We use insights from research on American Sign Language (ASL) phonology to train models for isolated sign language recognition (ISLR), a step towards automatic sign language understanding. Our key insight is to explicitly recognize the role of phonology in sign production to achieve more accurate ISLR than existing work which does not consider sign language phonology. We train ISLR models that take in pose estimations of a signer producing a single sign to predict not only the sign but additionally its phonological characteristics, such as the handshape. These auxiliary predictions lead to a nearly 9% absolute gain in sign recognition …

Stolperstein/Stumbling Stone For Holocaust Survivor Otto Heimann/Bob Hymann, Bochum/German, Toronto/Kanada Und New York, Ny, Usa, Courtney Conte, Mona Eikel-Pohen

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

The documentation tries to capture the life of Holocaust survivor Otto Heimann/Bob Hyman who spent his youth in Bochum-Langendreer, Germany, and was forced by the National Socialists to leave parents, home, and country. The documentation does not claim to give a full picture, just an insight into Otto Heimann's/Bob Hyman's life.

It will be read out on June 6, 2023 in Bochum, Germany when a Stolperstein, a stumbling stone, will be place near Alte Bahnhstraße 6 in Bochum-Langendreer, Germany, to commemorate Otto Heimann/Bob Hyman, so that we and future generations may learn from history.

Diese Dokumentation versucht, das Leben Bob …

Starved For Knowledge: The Effect Of Language Deprivation And “Mainstream” Education On Deaf Accessibility To The United States Education System, Katherine Arpino

Honors Scholar Theses

The prevalence of language deprivation in deaf and hard of hearing youth makes the United States public education system fundamentally inaccessible to that portion of the population. Previous research has demonstrated that depriving prelingually deaf children of an accessible, visual language during the critical language acquisition period has long-term effects on their reading comprehension, mental health, social development, and cognitive development (Friedman and Rusoe, 2015; Hall et al., 2019; Cheng et al., 2019; Hall, 2017). Furthermore, the lack of bilingual-bimodal education (or purely signed education) in the United States public education system sets deaf children up for failure, as they …

Signing To Success: Developing Effective Asl Curricula In Secondary Public Education, Claire Sutterer

Undergraduate Research Symposium

This study aims to investigate the history of American Sign Language (ASL) in public schools, analyze where ASL education is today, and provide potential solutions to improving the quantity and quality of ASL classes within public high schools. A significant body of research focusing on preK-2nd grade students and research with primary concentration on students who are Deaf or hard of hearing has already been developed. However, developing effective methods for teaching ASL to hearing people is a relatively new and under researched area. ASL was not officially recognized as a language until the 1950s. It wasn’t until 2011 that …

American Sign Language Club, American Sign Language Club, University Of Maine

Social Justice: Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

The purpose of American Sign Language (ASL) Club is to get club members comfortable with signing an introduction of why they are and where they come from in order to feel prepared to engage in conversation with deaf or hard of hearing people.

An Interactive Visual Database For American Sign Language Reveals How Signs Are Organized In The Mind, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Ariel Goldberg, Karen Emmory, Naomi Caselli

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

"We are four researchers who study psycholinguistics, linguistics, neuroscience and deaf education. Our team of deaf and hearing scientists worked with a group of software engineers to create the ASL-LEX database that anyone can use for free. We cataloged information on nearly 3,000 signs and built a visual, searchable and interactive database that allows scientists and linguists to work with ASL in entirely new ways."

The Asl-Lex 2.0 Project: A Database Of Lexical And Phonological Properties For 2,723 Signs In American Sign Language, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Naomi Caselli, Ariel M. Cohen-Goldberg, Karen Emmory

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

ASL-LEX is a publicly available, large-scale lexical database for American Sign Language (ASL). We report on the expanded database (ASL-LEX 2.0) that contains 2,723 ASL signs. For each sign, ASL-LEX now includes a more detailed phonological description, phonological density and complexity measures, frequency ratings (from deaf signers), iconicity ratings (from hearing non-signers and deaf signers), transparency (“guessability”) ratings (from non-signers), sign and videoclip durations, lexical class, and more. We document the steps used to create ASL-LEX 2.0 and describe the distributional characteristics for sign properties across the lexicon and examine the relationships among lexical and phonological properties of signs. Correlation …

Forward: Teanga, 11(Special Issue 11), Pp. Iii-Xiii, Irene Murtagh, Lorraine Leeson

Articles

Welcome to this special issue of TEANGA, which presents a selection of papers on the linguistics and applied linguistics of Irish Sign Language. This publication is timely, coming in the academic year that celebrates the nineteenth anniversary of the establishment of the Centre for Deaf Studies at Trinity College Dublin (est. 2001), and the year in which when Irish Sign Language Act (2017) is due to formally commence

Zoomprov. Improvisation Exercises For Language Learning In Online Classes With Zoom Or Similar Tech For Beginning And Intermediate Learners And Beyond, Mona Eikel-Pohen

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

The improv language exercises in this compilation are chosen from the experience I gathered 20 years ago, but also from the amazing work of Lauren Esposito and Scranton Improv & Comedy that have been more real than anything else to me this past summer, and from Jim Ansaldo, who taught me how to structure improv exercises online. They are organized by level, referring to the Common European Framework of References for Languages. That means, A1 exercises can be conducted at the beginners level but also at all other higher levels, but B2 exercises should not be imposed upon beginners or …

American Sign Language Interpreting For D/Deaf Individuals With Disabilities: A Qualitative Study And Practical Guide, Emily Mason

Senior Honors Theses

American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting for d/Deaf individuals with disabilities (DWD) is a complex task, and one which lacks an adequate research-base to inform best practices. Using the foundation of existing literature on closely related topics such as the field of ASL interpreting, educational interpreting, education of DWD individuals, and research about specific disabilities occurring with d/Deafness, I compiled a literature review and created a theoretical conceptual framework concerning this topic. In further investigation of this subject, I also conducted a qualitative study through online questionnaires sent out by email to ASL interpreters located through snowball sampling. The data collected …

Cross-Linguistic Metaphor Priming In Asl-English Bilinguals: Effects Of The Double Mapping Constraint, Franziska Schaller, Brittany Lee, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Lucinda O'Grady Farnady, Karen Emmorey

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Meir’s (2010) Double Mapping Constraint (DMC) states the use of iconic signs in metaphors is restricted to signs that preserve the structural correspondence between the articulators and the concrete source domain and between the concrete and metaphorical domains. We investigated ASL signers’ comprehension of English metaphors whose translations complied with the DMC (Communication collapsed during the meeting) or violated the DMC (The acid ate the metal). Metaphors were preceded by the ASL translation of the English verb, an unrelated sign, or a still video. Participants made sensibility judgments. Response times (RTs) were faster for DMC-Compliant sentences …

A Lexical Frequency Analysis Of Irish Sign Language, Robert G. Smith, Markus Hofmann

Articles

Word frequency has a significant impact on language acquisition and fluency. It is often a point of reference for the teaching and assessing of a language and indeed, as a control for psycholinguistic studies. This paper presents the results of the first objective frequency analysis of lexical tokens from the Signs of Ireland corpus. We investigate the frequency of fully lexical, partly lexical and non-lexical signs in Irish Sign Language as they are presented in the corpus. We confirm the accuracy of the lexical gloss frequency data with a supplementary corpus subset that is tagged for grammatical class and additional …

I Saw The Signs: The Role Of American Sign Language In Preventing Violence Against Deaf Youth, Tolu Ojuola

Senior Honors Theses

The American Deaf community, comprised of approximately 500,000 people, has developed into a sociolinguistic, cultural community with American Sign Language (ASL) at its center. ASL is the autonomous language of Deaf individuals in America complete with its own grammar, orthography, syntax, and morphology. ASL is capable of conveying complex emotions and abstract ideas. However, most deaf children remain unable to express their innermost feelings because they live in homes with hearing parents who do not speak their language. For many deaf children, this is their first experience with isolation, but it is one they will grow familiar with as they …

Unique N170 Signatures To Words And Faces In Deaf Asl Signers Reflect Experience-Specific Adaptations During Early Visual Processing, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Katherine J. Midgley, Phillipp J. Holcomb, Karen Emmorey, David C. Plaut, Marlene Behrmann

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Previous studies with deaf adults reported reduced N170 waveform asymmetry to visual words, a finding attributed to reduced phonological mapping in left-hemisphere temporal regions compared to hearing adults. An open question remains whether this pattern indeed results from reduced phonological processing or from general neurobiological adaptations in visual processing of deaf individuals. Deaf ASL signers and hearing nonsigners performed a same-different discrimination task with visually presented words, faces, or cars, while scalp EEG time-locked to the onset of the first item in each pair was recorded. For word recognition, the typical left-lateralized N170 in hearing participants and reduced left-sided asymmetry …

A Data-Driven Approach To The Semantics Of Iconicity In American Sign Language And English, Bill Thompson, Marcus Perlman, Gary Lupyan, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Karen Emmory

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

A growing body of research shows that both signed and spoken languages display regular patterns of iconicity in their vocabularies. We compared iconicity in the lexicons of American Sign Language (ASL) and English by combining previously collected ratings of ASL signs (Caselli, Sevcikova Sehyr, Cohen-Goldberg, & Emmorey, 2017) and English words (Winter, Perlman, Perry, & Lupyan, 2017) with the use of data-driven semantic vectors derived from English. Our analyses show that models of spoken language lexical semantics drawn from large text corpora can be useful for predicting the iconicity of signs as well as words. Compared to English, ASL has …

The Perceived Mapping Between Form And Meaning In American Sign Language Depends On Linguistic Knowledge And Task: Evidence From Iconicity And Transparency Judgments, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Karen Emmorey

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Iconicity is often defined as the resemblance between a form and a given meaning, while transparency is defined as the ability to infer a given meaning based on the form. This study examined the influence of knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL) on the perceived iconicity of signs and the relationship between iconicity, transparency (correctly guessed signs), ‘perceived transparency’ (transparency ratings of the guesses), and ‘semantic potential’ (the diversity (H index) of guesses). Experiment 1 compared iconicity ratings by deaf ASL signers and hearing non-signers for 991 signs from the ASL-LEX database. Signers and non-signers’ ratings were highly correlated; however, …

Second Language Acquisition Of American Sign Language Influences Co-Speech Gesture Production, Jill Weisberg, Shannon Casey, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Karen Emmorey

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Previous work indicates that 1) adults with native sign language experience produce more manual co-speech gestures than monolingual non-signers, and 2) one year of ASL instruction increases gesture production in adults, but not enough to differentiate them from non-signers. To elucidate these effects, we asked early ASL–English bilinguals, fluent late second language (L2) signers (≥ 10 years of experience signing), and monolingual non-signers to retell a story depicted in cartoon clips to a monolingual partner. Early and L2 signers produced manual gestures at higher rates compared to non-signers, particularly iconic gestures, and used a greater variety of handshapes. These results …

American Sign Language Interpreters And Their Influence On The Hearing World, Madison Groat

Senior Honors Theses

This honors thesis is going to discuss the hearing community’s perception of American Sign Language and by association the hearing community’s perception of the Deaf community. For most of the hearing community their only interaction with American Sign Language is through watching an interpreter perform at their job. They personally have no physical interactions with the language. Even though they have never personally used the language or attempted to interact with the Deaf community they will draw their own conclusions about sign language and the Deaf community. The conclusions that are assumed tend to be incorrect. Early on in the …

South Carolina Educational Interpreting Center Annual Report, Stephen Fitzmaurice

Publications

Clemson University and its partners at the South Carolina State Department of Education and the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind manage the South Carolina Educational Interpreting Center (SCEIC) at the University Center in Greenville, South Carolina. The SCEIC provides national performance and knowledge assessments, mentoring and educational opportunities for South Carolina Educational Interpreters. This annual report details the SCEIC outputs and outcomes for Educational Interpreters in the state for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Understanding Deaf Culture, Meghan Flanagan

Senior Honors Projects

Culture defines people and gives them a sense of identity. It provides a community for individuals with similar beliefs and values to communicate with one another using a shared language. Deaf Culture encompasses these principles, but it is unique in that it has it’s own fully developed language known as American Sign Language (ASL). ASL is a verbal language that incorporates all of the linguistic components of a spoken language such as syntax, idioms, and dialect variation. It allows the deaf community to have a distinct sense of humor along with their own traditions, literature, and theater. All of these …

Referring Strategies In American Sign Language And English (With Co-Speech Gesture): The Role Of Modality In Referring To Non-Nameable Objects, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Brenda Nicodemus, Jennifer Petrich, Karen Emmorey

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

American Sign Language (ASL) and English differ in linguistic resources available to express visual–spatial information. In a referential communication task, we examined the effect of language modality on the creation and mutual acceptance of reference to non-nameable figures. In both languages, description times reduced over iterations and references to the figures’ geometric properties (“shape-based reference”) declined over time in favor of expressions describing the figures’ resemblance to nameable objects (“analogy-based reference”). ASL signers maintained a preference for shape-based reference until the final (sixth) round, while English speakers transitioned toward analogy-based reference by Round 3. Analogy-based references were more time efficient …

Effective Instruction For English Language Learners With A Learning Disability In Higher Education In Egypt, Rania M Rafik Khalil

English Language and Literature

There is a large number of students with learning disabilities (LD) today in many private higher education institutions in Egypt. It is fair to say that their challenges although have gained some attention from academics and researchers that they are still under-studied. Many of those students also happen to be English language learners (ELLs). This complicates matters even more not just for the student with the learning disability, but for the untrained instructor in the classroom. Research indicates that ELLs with LD are less likely to engage actively in classroom tasks and are more prone to failing. Providing an inclusive …

Memory And The Realization Of The Nothingness. On A Letter Of Vittorio Sereni To Giuseppe Ungaretti, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

The problematic relationship of Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970) with Alexandria of Egypt – his city of birth – sheds light on the interplay between memory and oblivion in his poetry and prose. The shuttling back and forth between these poles marks the nature of his unfulfilled desire to recreate a lost Alexandrian atmosphere. In Ungaretti’s works, language opacity is coupled with his attempts to represent a city—as he writes—that is suffocated by the sun and whose hidden ancient port is submerged in the depth of the sea. Blinding light and the darkness of the deep waters make the understanding of Ungaretti’s …

The N170 Erp Component Differs In Laterality, Distribution, And Association With Continuous Reading Measures For Deaf And Hearing Readers, Karen Emmorey, Katherine J. Midgley, Casey B. Kohen, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Phillipp J. Holcomb

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

The temporo-occipitally distributed N170 ERP component is hypothesized to reflect print-tuning in skilled readers. This study investigated whether skilled deaf and hearing readers (matched on reading ability, but not phonological awareness) exhibit similar N170 patterns, given their distinct experiences learning to read. Thirty-two deaf and 32 hearing adults viewed words and symbol strings in a familiarity judgment task. In the N170 epoch (120–240 ms) hearing readers produced greater negativity for words than symbols at left hemisphere (LH) temporo-parietal and occipital sites, while deaf readers only showed this asymmetry at occipital sites. Linear mixed effects regression was used to examine the …

South Carolina Educational Interpreting Center Annual Report, Stephen Fitzmaurice

Publications

Clemson University has partnered with the South Carolina State Department of Education and the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind to open the South Carolina Educational Interpreting Center (SCEIC) at the University Center in Greenville, South Carolina. The SCEIC provides national performance and knowledge assessments, mentoring and educational opportunities for South Carolina Educational Interpreters. This annual report details the SCEIC outputs and outcomes for Educational Interpreters in the state for the 2016- 2017 academic year.

Implicit Co-Activation Of American Sign Language In Deaf Readers: An Erp Study, Gabriela Meade, Katherine J. Midgley, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Phillipp J. Holcomb, Karen Emmorey

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

In an implicit phonological priming paradigm, deaf bimodal bilinguals made semantic relatedness decisions for pairs of English words. Half of the semantically unrelated pairs had phonologically related translations in American Sign Language (ASL). As in previous studies with unimodal bilinguals, targets in pairs with phonologically related translations elicited smaller negativities than targets in pairs with phonologically unrelated translations within the N400 window. This suggests that the same lexicosemantic mechanism underlies implicit co-activation of a non-target language, irrespective of language modality. In contrast to unimodal bilingual studies that find no behavioral effects, we observed phonological interference, indicating that bimodal bilinguals may …

Best Practices For Educational Interpreters In South Carolina, Stephen Fitzmaurice, Karen Chamness, Diane Formhals, Terri Gross, Beth Ann Kluft, Maureen Irons, Susie Spainhour, Anita Steichen-Mcdaniel, Eric Weber, Sara J. Mckay

Publications

The purpose of this reference is to provide districts, charter schools, and state operated programs with best practices for working with educational interpreters including, but not limited to, roles and responsibilities, code of professional conduct, and suggested credentialing. It is not required by regulation but is simply the most up-to-date recommendation from the field.

Pirandello And Satire. The Imaginary Journey Of Four Authors In Search Of A Character According To Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff (1889-1930), Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Drawing on a little-known work by Scott-Moncrieff, this article investigates Luigi Pirandello’s intellectual and literary reach across genres and space, from theater to pamphlets, from Italy to the English-speaking world. A talented writer and translator, Charles K. Scott-Moncrieff published “The Strange & Striking Adventures of Four Authors in Search of a Character” by P. G. Lear & L. O in 1926. The title of the pamphlet, and the acronym of the fictional author are references to Pirandello and to his Six Characters in Search of an Author. Scott-Moncrieff had all the documents in order to write about, or in …