Sherman Wilcox

The gestural origin of language

1. Grasping Language: Sign and the Evolution of Language 2. Language in the Wild: Paleontological and Primatological Evidence for Gestural Origins 3. Gesture, Sign, and Speech 4. Gesture, Sign, and Grammar: The Ritualization of Language 5. Conceptual Spaces and Embodied Actions 6. The Gesture-Language Interface 7. Invention of Visual Languages

Multimedia dictionary of American Sign Language

The Multimedia Dictionary of American Sign Language (MM-DASL) is a Macintosh application designed to function as a bilingual (ASL-English) dictionary. It presents ASL signs in full-motion digital video using Apples QuickTime technology. Major functions of the application include the capability to search for ASL signs by entering English words; the capability to search for ASL signs directly (by specifying formational features); and the capability to perform fuzzy searching (in both ASL and English search modes). For each ASL lexical entry, the dictionary contains definitions of the sign, grammatical information, usage notes, successful English translations, and other information. In addition to serving as the core engine for the MM-DASL, the application is capable of being localized to any signed language, thus allowing researchers and developers in other countries to use the MM-DASL to develop their own signed language dictionaries.

Sign language interfaces

This panel will start to build the bridge between behavioral scientists who know deaf communities worldwide, their languages and cultures, and experts in technical disciplines relating to computers and human interfaces.

The Multimedia Dictionary of American Sign Language: Learning Lessons about Language, Technology, and Business

The Multimedia Dictionary of American Sign Language (MM- DASL) was conceived in the late 1980s as a melding of the pioneering work in American Sign Language (ASL) lexicography that William C. Stokoe and his colleagues had carried out decades earlier and the newly emerging computer technologies that were integrating the use of graphical user-interface designs, rapidly searchable databases, and the display of video data. The integration of signed language lexicography and computer technology seemed to be an opportunity to make their work more widely accessible. This article reports on that undertaking.

The Enculturation of Bomee: Looking At the World Through Deaf Eyes

A cultural model of deafness is offered as an alternative to more popular pathological models. The cultural model attempts to describe the experiences of a deaf child as enculturation into a deaf world- to see the world from the deaf childs point of view. The implications of this view on social, cognitive, and linguistic development are explored through the use of rich description of one deaf child who is being raised in a multilingual, multicultural environment.

Constructing signs: Place as a symbolic structure in signed languages

Abstract This paper presents a usage-based, Cognitive Grammar analysis of Place as a symbolic structure in signed languages. We suggest that many signs are better viewed as constructions in which schematic or specific formal properties are extracted from usage events alongside specific or schematic meaning. We argue that pointing signs are complex constructions composed of a pointing device and a Place, each of which are symbolic structures having form and meaning. We extend our analysis to antecedent-anaphora constructions and directional verb constructions. Finally, we discuss how the usage-based approach suggests a new way of understanding the relationship between language and gesture.

Gesture and the Nature of Semantic Phonology

The authors explain Stokoe’s seminal concept of semantic phonology and clarify some controversies concerning its application.

Speech-gesture constructions in cognitive grammar: The case of beats and points

Abstract The current study uses principles from Cognitive Grammar to better account for the symbolic integration of gesture and speech. Drawing on data collected from language use, we examine the use of two attention-directing strategies that are expressed through gesture, beats and pointing. It has been claimed that beats convey no semantic information. We propose that beat gestures are symbolic structures. It has also been noted that beats are often overlaid on other gestures. To date, however, no detailed explanation has been offered to account for the conceptual and phonological integration of beats with other co-expressed gestures. In this paper, we explore the integration of beats and pointing gestures as complex gestural expressions. We find that simple beat gestures, as well as beat gestures co-expressed with pointing gestures, are used to direct attention to meanings in speech that are associated with salient components of stancetaking acts. Our account further reveals a symbolic motivation for the apparent “superimposing” of beats onto pointing gestures. By closely examining actual usage events, we take an initial step toward demonstrating how the symbolic elements of both beats and points are integrated in multimodal constructions.

Necessity and possibility modals in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras)

Abstract This article reports the results of a study of necessity and possibility modals in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras). The data discussed here mainly come from an interview carried out with a fluent deaf Libras signer. Our analysis suggests that the Libras modals we elicited have a lexical source with a more concrete meaning (Bybee 1994 et al.) and, in some cases, can have their origin traced back to a gesture, as has been demonstrated for ASL (Wilcox & Shaffer 2006). It also suggests, based on synchronic polysemy, that modals in Libras have developed through the same grammaticization processes observed for spoken languages. The results, coming from a language in the signed modality, contribute to our understanding of the truly typologically universal paths of grammaticization and the semantic domain of modality.

Language in motion: A framework for unifying spoken language, signed language, and gesture

In this article I describe a framework for unifying spoken language, signed language, and gesture. Called the language as motion framework, it relies on three broad theories: cognitive grammar, dynamic systems, and cognitive neuroscience. The foundational claim of the language in motion framework is that language and gesture are manifestations of a general human expressive ability which is grounded in embodied cognition and the need for mobile creatures to make sense of their environment.