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This study explored the sign language learning experiences and contexts of a hearing family who decided to learn and use American Sign Language (ASL) with their young deaf child. Multiple informants, including family members and professional participants, and multiple methods of data collection and analysis provided accounts of experiences that were examined within the frameworks of family ecology (Bronfenbrenner, 1986) and Vygotskian theory (Vygotsky; 1962, 1978) about language learning in the zone of proximal development. Previous research regarding sign language learning has looked at language learning within the deaf child, but has not investigated the language learning context of family members who are hearing. This study identified a densely connected network of formal and informal service providers that both facilitated and constrained the sign language learning of the child and her family. Even these motivated parents encountered a system of service delivery that essentially ignored the profoundly social process of language learning for both the deaf child who was learning a first language and the family members who were trying to learn a second one. Most of the child’s communication-related care in the first year was focused on her hearing loss. Despite the mobilization of effort in response to the child’s profound hearing loss, very little of the advice given by most professionals concerned the child’s language learning, and even less advice concerned how the family should and could learn sign language. The persons most influential in helping the family decide how to communicate with the child included the hearing daughter of deaf parents whom the family met through their church, a speech-language pathologist who provided early intervention services in the home, and a preschool teacher for hearing impaired children. While the child’s parents, an aunt, and her grandparents have taken a sign language class, other family members rely on the child’s mother to provide them with the language needed for communication with the child during their infrequent visits. Strategies for improving family sign language learning, including applications from second language learning research and immersion programs, are discussed. / Ph. D.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(医学) / 甲第25184号 / 医博第5070号 / 京都大学大学院医学研究科医学専攻 / (主査)教授 中山 健夫, 教授 石見 拓, 教授 大鶴 繁 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Medical Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

Studien undersöker dövkompetensens betydelse (kunskap om döva, teckenspråk och deras kultur) för döva i mötet med rättsväsendet. Syftet är att visa vilka konsekvenser som avsaknaden av dövkompetensen kan få. För att få svar på studiens frågor valde jag en kvalitativ och explorativt forskningsansats för att undersöka respondenternas uppfattning och upplevelse av mötet med rättsväsendet. Kvalitativ intervjustudie med döva med teckenspråk som sitt första språk. Som har varit i behov av samhällsstöd och upplevt avsaknad av dövkompetens. Åtta personer intervjuades och därefter gjordes en analys för att tolka och förstå döva som upplevt denna avsaknad av dövkompetens. Som analysredskap har jag valt vardagsrasism och audism som teoretiska utgångspunkter. De slutsatser jag har fått fram av respondenterna är att bemötandet de fått i mötet med rättsväsendet egentligen inte är enskilda handlingar, eftersom dessa enskilda handlingar upprepas av olika enskilda personer. Till följd av avsaknaden av dövkompetens har konsekvenserna oftast blivit allvarliga och till och med förödande för några av respondenterna. / The study investigates the meaning of deaf competence (knowledge of deaf, sign language and their culture) when deaf people encounter the justice system. The intention is to outline the consequences of the lack of deaf competence. I´ve chosen a qualitative and explorative research approach in order to reach the answers of the study, to examine the respondents’ perception and experience in the encounter with the justice system. Qualitative interviewstudy with deaf people who´s first language is sign language and who´s been in need of support from the society and experienced the lack of deaf competence. Eight people were interviewed and then an analysis was made to interpreted and understand deaf people who´s experienced the lack of deaf competence. As tools during analysis I use everyday racism and audism theoretical smarting points. The conclusion I´ve reached from the respondents is that the treatment they’ve received from the justice system actually isn´t individual actions, due to these individual actions being repeated by various individual people. The lack of deaf competence as a result of the consequences are often become serious and even devastating for some of the respondents.

The study is using a method called close reading through adaptation theory, invented by Linda Hutcheon. Through this method we are comparing the book The laugning policeman from 1968 written by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö with the movie Beck- The invasion from 2015. The movie is based on the book in the sense that it has many so called Sign elements that appears both in the book and in the movie.   The study is focusing on a comparison between the book and the movie regarding the Other, that is people who as characters in the book and the movie respectively are foreign, both as a citizen as well as the person acts.   The results show that descriptions of some persons go under the definition the Other, but the movie and the book is heavily different concerning in what areas the Other has its qualities from. It also differs from which place the Other has in the story. In the book, the Others role is a side trail, while in the movie they are the central theme of the story.   Key words: Adaptation, The Other, Exoticism, Positioning, Essential, Sign Elements Nyckelord: Adaption, Den Andre, Exotism, Positionering, Essentiell, Sign Elements

Previous studies on children’s acquisition of depicting verbs in signed languages have chiefly studied the use of classifiers in verbs of motion and location, particularly the order in which the different classes of handshape are acquired. The age of the children in these studies have ranged from age three to thirteen, and an important finding has been that classifier constructions are not fully acquired until early adolescence. Most of these studies have used an elicitation tool to investigate the production and comprehension of classifiers, but have not provided any adult target norms of the test items when scoring children’s achievement. The present dissertation provides a detailed description of both adults’ and children’s verb constructions in descriptions of cutting and breaking events in Swedish Sign Language (SSL), specifically focusing on the number of hands used in signing, handshape category and hand activity, which has not been previously described for any sign language. As part of this study, 14 deaf adults (ages 20–72) and 11 deaf children (2;1–6;6) of deaf parents, all native-users of SSL, performed a task that involved describing 53 video clips of cutting and breaking events. The clips show an event in which an actor separates material, either with the aid of a tool or without. Additionally, some clips show an entity separating by itself without an actor being involved. The adults described the events with depicting verb constructions that are produced with two hands. The analysis of the handshapes produced three categories: substitutor, manipulator and descriptor. The most frequent construction in the description of events without a tool was two acting manipulators (depicting a hand handling an object), whereas in descriptions of events with a tool the combinations were acting substitutor or manipulator with a non-acting manipulator. The acting hand referred to the tool and the non-acting manipulator to the affected entity. In descriptions of events without an actor, either two substitutors or two manipulators were used. In addition to depicting verb constructions, the descriptions also contained resultative complements, i.e. signs carrying information about the result of the activity being carried out. The complements were either lexical signs or some form of depicting verb construction. Similar observations have not been noted for any other signed language. In the manner of the adults, the children used depicting verb constructions in descriptions of cutting and breaking events (681 tokens), but they also used pointing and lexical signs (64 tokens). Nearly half of the verb constructions that were used by the children corresponded to the adult target forms. The majority of the constructions describing events without a tool corresponded to the adult target forms using two acting manipulators, even among the youngest informants. In events with a tool, only a third of the constructions corresponded to the adult target forms (emerging at 4;8 – 5;0); the remaining two-thirds were deviating constructions in terms of number of hands, handshape category and hand activity. Resultative complement are sparsely used by children (57 tokens), the most chosen type of complement being lexical signs. Pervasive features of children’s constructions were the addition of contact between the hands and a preference for substitutors, something not found in adults’ constructions. These features were elucidated within the framework of Real Space blending theory, with the study showing that children first use visible blended entities and that invisible blended entities do not emerge until 4;8–5;0. / <p>Disputationen teckenspråkstolkas</p>

O Teste de Nomeação de Sinais por Escolha de palavras escritas (TNS-Escolha) é parte de uma bateria de 11 testes de desenvolvimento da linguagem de sinais e de competência de leitura e escrita, desenvolvida pela equipe de Capovilla na Universidade de São Paulo especialmente para a população escolar surda brasileira, e validada e normatizada com uma amostra de 5.365 escolares surdos. O TNS-Escolha avalia o desenvolvimento conjunto de compreensão de sinais da Libras e de leitura de palavras em Português, e analisa a participação de processos quirêmicos, ortográficos e semânticos envolvidos na escolha de palavras escritas para denominar sinais da Libras. O TNS-Escolha faz uso da estratégia de indução de erros de leitura (i.e., paralexias) por palavras escritas distraidoras quirêmicas, ortográficas e semânticas como alternativas de escolha, com vistas a permitir caracterizar a natureza do processamento cognitivo subjacente à leitura e escrita em Português. A presença de paralexias quirêmicas sugere que o acesso semântico na leitura envolve a mediação por sinalização interna, como tende a ocorrer no surdo sinalizador com perda profunda pré-lingual ou perilingual. A presença de paralexias ortográficas sugere que a leitura é baseada na tentativa de reconhecimento visual global da palavra, com dificuldade de fazer uso da estratégia alfabética de decodificação grafêmica serial (i.e., processamento serial da seqüência ortográfica), como tende a ocorrer na leitura fundamentalmente ideográfica de surdo com perda profunda pré-lingual e perilingual. A presença de paralexias semânticas sugere que o leitor tenta obter acesso ao léxico semântico, mas esse acesso é dificultado por insuficiência de conceitos, vocabulário, ou habilidade de leitura. Esta dissertação apresenta duas versões reordenadas, o TNS1.3-Escolha e o TNS2.3-Escolha, bem como dados de sua normatização com uma amostra de mais de 5.000 surdos de 14 estados brasileiros. Foram avaliados 5.365 estudantes surdos de 14 estados brasileiros (AC, AM, BA, CE, DF, ES, MA, MG, MS, PA, PR, RJ, RS, SP). A escolaridade média desses estudantes, em termos de número de anos no Ensino Fundamental, era de 4,9 anos (DP = 2,8), ou seja, quase 5a. série, com mínimo de 1 ano e máximo de 12 anos de escolaridade, ou seja, Ensino Superior. A idade variou de 5 a 59 anos, com média de 17,7 anos (DP = 6,9). Para viabilizar a análise da grande massa de dados foram selecionadas as séries 1a, 5a, 8a, 10a e 13a. Os resultados do TNS1.3-Escolha e do TNS2.3-Escolha indicaram que, ao longo das séries 1a, 5a, 8a, 10a e 13a, a porcentagem de acerto cresceu sistematicamente, ao passo que o total de paralexias diminuiu sistematicamente. Considerando a distribuição dos três tipos de paralexias (ortográfica, semântica e quirêmica) desse total decrescente de paralexias, observou-se que, ao longo das cinco séries escolares, as porcentagens de paralexias ortográficas e semânticas diminuíram sistematicamente, ao passo que a porcentagem de paralexias quirêmicas aumentou sistematicamente. Assim, ao longo da escolarização, na nomeação de sinais por escolha de palavras escritas, os surdos tendem a cometer cada vez menos erros, e esses erros tendem a concentrar-se cada vez mais em processamento quirêmico. Isso sugere que, ao longo da escolarização, o crescente léxico de leitura do surdo depende cada vez mais das propriedades formais dos sinais como indexadoras das formas ortográficas das palavras para resgate lexical. Esta dissertação é parte de um estudo maior (Capovilla e colaboradores, no prelo). Dos estudantes da amostra, 5.072 foram avaliados no Teste de Nomeação de Sinais por Escolha, versão 1.3 (TNS1.3-Escolha), e 4.854 foram avaliados no Teste de Nomeação de Sinais por Escolha, versão 2.3(TNS2.3-Escolha). Dos 5.072 estudantes avaliados no TNS1.3-Escolha, 4.930 tiveram seus dados avaliados item a item para fins de análise de fidedignidade e de reordenação do teste. Foram conduzidas duas análises de fidedignidade, gerando dois tipos de coeficiente, o coeficiente Alfa de Cronbach, e o coeficiente de Spearman- Brown para análise split-half. A análise de itens revelou coeficiente Alfa de Cronbach = 0,9004, o que pode ser considerado muito bom. Assim, o TNS1.3-Escolha mostrou-se bastante fidedigno, produzindo dados bastante confiáveis e estáveis. Como o TNS1.3-Escolha inclui alguns sinais que ainda não haviam sido testados anteriormente, o presente estudo gerou, como fruto adicional, a versão aperfeiçoada TNS1.4-Escolha em que os 36 itens que compõem o TNS1.3-Escolha foram reordenados por grau de dificuldade crescente. Dos 4.854 estudantes avaliados pelo TNS2.3-Escolha, 4.840 tiveram seus dados avaliados item a item para fins de análise de fidedignidade e de reordenação do teste. Foram conduzidas duas análises de fidedignidade, gerando dois tipos de coeficiente, o coeficiente Alfa de Cronbach, e o coeficiente de Spearman-Brown para análise split-half. A análise de itens revelou coeficiente Alfa de Cronbach = 0,8728, o que pode ser considerado muito bom. Assim, o TNS2.3-Escolha mostrou-se bastante fidedigno, produzindo dados bastante confiáveis e estáveis. Como o TNS2.3-Escolha inclui alguns sinais que ainda não haviam sido testados anteriormente, o presente estudo gerou, como fruto adicional, a versão aperfeiçoada TNS2.4-Escolha em que os 36 itens que compõem o TNS2.3-Escolha foram reordenados por grau de dificuldade crescente. / The Word Matching Sign Naming Test (WMSNT) assesses the skill of matching alternative Portuguese printed words to sample Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) signs. WMSNT is part of a battery of 11 language development tests for assessing reading, spelling and Libras sign comprehension. Capovilla and coworkers at the University of Sao Paulo developed, standardized and validated the battery with a sample of 5,365 Brazilian deaf students. WMSNT assesses the joint development of sign comprehension and Portuguese reading. It analyzes the participation of cheremic, orthographic and semantic processes involved in matching print alternatives to Libras signs. On each trial there are four printed word alternatives, one being the target word, and the remaining three being cheremic, orthographic, and semantic distracter words. WMSNT is elaborated so as to have distracter-printed words as choice alternatives induce cheremic, orthographic, and semantic paralexias. By analyzing the relative prevalence of cheremic, orthographic, and semantic paralexias that occur when the deaf is to match print to pictures and signs, WMSNT allows characterizing cognitive processes underlying Portuguese reading by Brazilian deaf students. The prevalence of cheremic paralexias suggests that reading comprehension (i.e., the access to semantic lexicon while reading) involves the mediation of some internal signing processes. That is usually the case with the congenitally deaf who are fluent signers. The prevalence of orthographic paralexias suggests that reading is based on the strategy of attempting to make some visual recognition of the global crude form of a word, with difficulty of using the alphabetical serial graphemic decoding (i.e., the serial parsing of the orthographic sequence). That is usually the case with the congenitally deaf who are not capable of fluent signing and linguistic parsing, tend to rely on a primarily ideographic reading style. The prevalence of semantic paralexias suggests that reading comprehension is hindered by the insufficient development of concepts, vocabulary, and/or reading skill. This dissertation presents two reordered versions of WMSNT: WMSNT 1.3 and WMSNT 2.3 as well as standardization data with a sample of 5,365 5-59 year old deaf students with 1-12 years of schooling coming from 14 Brazilian states (AC, AM, BA, CE, DF, ES, MA, MG, MS, PA, PR, RJ, RS, SP). The preliminary analysis of such a large data basis was limited to the following grades: 1st, 5th, 8th, 10th and 13th. Results from both WMSNT 1.3 and WMSNT 2.3 indicated that the percentage of correct naming increased systematically, whereas the percentage of total paralexias decreased systematically. Considering the distribution of all three types of paralexia, it was found that, over the course of the five school series, the percentages of orthographic and semantic paralexias diminished systematically, whereas the percentage of cheremic paralexias increased systematically. Thus, over the course of schooling, when having to name signs by matching their corresponding printed words counterparts, deaf students tended to commit progressively less errors, and that those errors tended to concentrate progressively more on cheremic processes. According to Capovilla, such a finding suggests that, over the course of schooling, in order to be able to retrieve lexical items from an increasingly large reading lexicon, the deaf reader tends to rely more and more on indexing sublexical word components (at both levels of word graphemes and word morphemes) to their corresponding sublexical sign components (at both levels of sign cheremes and sign morphemes). This dissertation is part of a broader study (Capovilla et al, in print). Out of the sample, 5,072 students were assessed using WMSNT 1.3 and 4,854 were assessed using WMSNT 2.3. Out of the sample of 5,072 students tested with WMSNT 1.3, in order to assess test reliability and to arrange test items in increasing order of difficulty, the data of 4,930 students were subjected to item analysis. Two reliability analyses were conducted, which generated two coefficients: Cronbach Alpha coefficient and Spearman-Brown coefficient from split-half analysis. Item analysis revealed Cronbach Alpha coefficient = 0,9004, which may be considered quite good. Therefore, WMSNT 1.3 was found to be a quite reliable test. In addition this study generated WMSNT 1.4, in which WMSNT 1.3 items are arranged in increasing difficulty order. Out of the sample of 4,854 students tested with WMSNT 2.3, in order to assess test reliability and to arrange test items in increasing order of difficulty, the data of 4,840 students were subjected to item analysis. Two reliability analyses were conducted, which generated two coefficients: Cronbach Alpha coefficient and Spearman-Brown coefficient from split-half analysis. Item analysis revealed Cronbach Alpha coefficient = 0,8728, which may be considered good. Therefore, WMSNT 2.3 was found to be a quite reliable test. In addition this study generated WMSNT 2.4, in which WMSNT 2.3 items are arranged in increasing difficulty order.

O Reconhecimento das Expressões Faciais tem atraído bastante a atenção dos pesquisadores nas últimas décadas, principalmente devido às suas ponteciais aplicações. Nas Línguas de Sinais, por serem línguas de modalidade visual-espacial e não contarem com o suporte sonoro da entonação, as Expressões Faciais ganham uma importância ainda maior, pois colaboram também para formar a estrutura gramatical da língua. Tais expressões são chamadas Expressões Faciais Gramaticais e estão presentes nos níveis morfológico e sintático das Línguas de Sinais, elas ganham destaque no processo de reconhecimento automático das Línguas de Sinais, pois colaboram para retirada de ambiguidades entre sinais que possuem parâmetros semelhantes, como configuração de mãos e ponto de articulação, além de colaborarem na composição do sentido semântico das sentenças. Assim, este projeto de pesquisa em nível de mestrado tem por objetivo desenvolver um conjunto de modelos de reconhecimento de padrões capazes de resolver o problema de intepretação automática de Expressões Faciais Gramaticais, usadas no contexto da Língua de Sinais Brasileira (Libras), considerando-as em Nível Sintático. / The facial expression recognition has attracted most of the researchers attention over the last years, because of that it can be very useful in many applications. The Sign Language is a spatio-visual language and it does not have the speech intonation support, so Facial Expression gain relative importance to convey grammatical information in a signed sentence and they contributed to morphological and/or syntactic level to a Sign Language. Those expressions are called Grammatical Facial Expression and they cooperate to solve the ambiguity between signs and give meaning to sentences. Thus, this research project aims to develop models that make possible to recognize automatically Grammatical Facial Expressions from Brazilian Sign Language (Libras)

Sin Yee Prudence, Lau. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter 1: --- Introduction Page / Chapter 1.1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1.1 --- Causativity and causative constructions --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1.2 --- A Typology of causative alternations --- p.4 / Chapter 1.2 --- Research focus: Causative alternation in Hong Kong Sign Language --- p.9 / Chapter 1.3 --- Thesis Outline --- p.9 / Chapter 1.4 --- A brief note on the transcription convention --- p.11 / Chapter 1.5 --- Linguistic research on Hong Kong Sign Language --- p.13 / Chapter Chapter 2: --- Argument Structure approach to causative alternation / Chapter 2.0 --- Introduction --- p.16 / Chapter 2.1 --- Various approaches to causative alternations --- p.16 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- The Unaccusativity Hypothesis and Burzio´ةs Generalizations --- p.16 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Various approaches to causative alternations --- p.17 / Chapter 2.2 --- The concept of argument structure --- p.22 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- A semantic approach --- p.23 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- A syntactic approach --- p.27 / Chapter 2.3 --- The semantics of causative alternation --- p.33 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Causative alternation in English --- p.33 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Causative alternation in Chinese --- p.40 / Chapter 2.4 --- Causative alternation in signed languages --- p.44 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- Classifiers in signed languages --- p.44 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- Causative alternation in American Sign Language (ASL) --- p.50 / Chapter Chapter 3: --- Causative alternation in Hong Kong Sign Language / Chapter 3.0 --- Introduction --- p.55 / Chapter 3.1 --- Experiment: picture-description task --- p.55 / Chapter 3.2 --- Results: --- p.58 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Volitional agents as external arguments --- p.58 / Chapter 3.2.1.1 --- Lexical causative variants with unaccusative counterparts --- p.60 / Chapter 3.2.1.2 --- Unaccusative variants without lexical causative counterparts --- p.71 / Chapter 3.2.1.3 --- Lexical causative variants without unaccusative counterparts --- p.85 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Natural forces and instruments as external arguments --- p.92 / Chapter 3.2.2.1 --- Unaccusative variants without lexical causative counterparts --- p.92 / Chapter 3.3 --- More evidence on lexical causative constructions --- p.99 / Chapter 3.4 --- Interim discussion --- p.109 / Chapter 3.5 --- Chapter summary --- p.118 / Chapter Chapter 4: --- The syntax of causative alternation in HKSL / Chapter 4.0 --- Introduction --- p.119 / Chapter 4.1 --- The X-bar theory --- p.120 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- The checking theory --- p.125 / Chapter 4.2 --- The derivation pattern of causative/unaccusative pairs in HKSL --- p.128 / Chapter 4.3 --- The abstract causative morpheme and feature checking --- p.135 / Chapter 4.4 --- Verbal classifiers as a functional projection --- p.140 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- Functional categories and lexical categories --- p.141 / Chapter 4.4.2 --- The functional projection - verbal classifier phrase (VCLP) --- p.148 / Chapter 4.5 --- An alternative approach --- p.157 / Chapter 4.6 --- Chapter Summary --- p.163 / Chapter Chapter 5: --- Suggestion for future research --- p.164 / Appendix I: Notational conventions / Appendix II: Verb classes for the experiment / Appendix III: Picture stimuli for the experiment / Appendix IV: Figures / References