No description available.

Speakers of American Sign Language use surrogates and tokens throughout their discourse. Surrogates allow signers to shift roles (or perspectives) and “become” a character or other entity in their discourse. Tokens allow them to miniaturize entities and bring them into a smaller signing space. Scott Liddell claims that surrogates and tokens cannot interact or converse with one another. He states that because surrogates are in the “here and now” and tokens are not, they are unable to interact with each other. He also claims that surrogates and tokens are unable to enter each other’s signing spaces. In this research project, I explore examples that show otherwise. I have found examples where surrogates and tokens would be able to converse with one another, should the need arise. I have also found examples of tokens entering surrogate space, giving them the “here and now” feature Liddell says they do not possess. / May 2016

Thesis ( Ph. D.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2008. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 22)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed October 16, 2006). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Predicates KNOW, WANT, LIKE, HAVE, and GOOD have been reported to differ from other predicates in American Sign Language (ASL) in that they are typically negated by reversing the orientation of hand[s] in a twisting outward/downward movement. This phenomenon has been termed "negative incorporation." In this study, I examine semantic properties of negative-incorporation predicates. Specifically, I investigate whether these predicates also allow other negation strategies available in ASL and what the meanings conveyed by using these strategies are. I provide a detailed description of negative incorporation and demonstrate that it has a different status for the verbal predicates WANT, LIKE, and KNOW versus the adjectival predicate BAD. Using the data from a structured data collection procedure in the form of a production task and the elicitation of acceptability judgments, I identify various possibilities and preferred strategies for the investigated predicates, show that most signers do not accept negative incorporation with HAVE in contemporary ASL, demonstrate that nonmanual negation when a negative headshake is the only indicator of negation cannot be used with the verbal negative-incorporation predicates, and point out that there is variation among signers with respect to the preferred strategy of negation for LIKE that can be explained by historical change in progress. / text

The expressive language tasks of the Test of Narrative Language (Gillam & Pearson, 2004) were administered to eleven deaf, native signers and fifteen English-speaking hearing children who were between the ages of six and ten years old. These tasks were administered to determine the appropriateness of this measure for use with special populations and bring to light new information about children's narrative development and the differences in the language modalities of these two groups. Also, the application of this information on future testing of deaf populations is examined. The eleven native signers came from a single residential school for the deaf, and all had deaf parents. The fifteen hearing children were recruited from a private school and through associates of the primary investigator. The tasks were administered according to the TNL manual's protocol and script, with the primary investigator speaking English for the hearing children and a native signer using American Sign Language for the deaf children. Their narratives in these tasks were coded according to the standards of the test and examined: factual story comprehension, story retell abilities (and inclusion of target terms), story generation from a picture sequence, and story generation from a single picture scene. This study found that though the hearing group outperformed the deaf group on each task's raw score, the specific subcategories of "Grammar" and "Story" from the picture sequence-based story generation task, and the "Characters" and "Vocabulary and Grammar" coding of the single picture-based generation task showed ASL users as having stronger narrative skills as a whole. Specific target items from the story retell also proved differentially problematic for the ASL group and should be altered in future utilization of the TNL with deaf children. In the future, the need for appropriate and representative testing of deaf children's narrative skills should take a higher priority, and greater understanding of the differences between ASL and English will be desired for both test creators and those testing deaf children. / text

Not available / text

Thesis (M.S)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-83).