Adam Schembri
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View article: Deconstructing notions of morphological ‘complexity’: Lessons from creoles and sign languages
Deconstructing notions of morphological ‘complexity’: Lessons from creoles and sign languages Open
Ideas about morphological complexity have been used to classify languages and to link complexity to language age and social structure. Creoles and sign languages are often framed as younger and structurally simpler than other languages. Co…
View article: Sign language for all? Profile and retention of students in a beginner sign language program
Sign language for all? Profile and retention of students in a beginner sign language program Open
Around the globe, beginner sign language programs have seen surging enrolments in recent years. Yet relatively few learners progress to higher‐level sign language study. In this article, we explore factors shaping retention and attrition a…
View article: BSL signers combine different semiotic strategies to negate clauses
BSL signers combine different semiotic strategies to negate clauses Open
Signers of Deaf community signed languages negate clauses via manual negating signs and/or non-manual movements such as headshakes. Several claims about the dominance of manual versus non-manual negation across signed languages have been m…
View article: Sign duration and signing rate in British Sign Language, Dutch Sign Language and Swedish Sign Language
Sign duration and signing rate in British Sign Language, Dutch Sign Language and Swedish Sign Language Open
In this article, we look at sign duration and signing rate in corpora of three sign languages – British Sign Language (BSL), Dutch Sign Language (NGT), and Swedish Sign Language (STS). We investigate whether token frequency and sociolingui…
View article: Deconstructing notions of morphological “complexity”: Lessons from creoles and sign languages
Deconstructing notions of morphological “complexity”: Lessons from creoles and sign languages Open
Morphological complexity has been used as a measure to classify languages into types that are more and less complex and to link language age and social structure. For example, creoles and sign languages are often framed as young and struct…
View article: The social structure of signing communities and lexical variation: A cross-linguistic comparison of three unrelated sign languages
The social structure of signing communities and lexical variation: A cross-linguistic comparison of three unrelated sign languages Open
Claims have been made about the relationship between the degree of lexical variation and the social structure of a sign language community (e.g., population size), but to date there exist no large-scale cross-linguistic comparisons to addr…
View article: Constituent order in Serbian Sign Language declarative clauses
Constituent order in Serbian Sign Language declarative clauses Open
Constituent order can encode grammatical relations in a language. The visual-spatial modality imbues sign languages with characteristics such as simultaneity or the use of space which raise the question of the appropriate unit of analysis …
View article: Indicating verbs as typologically unique constructions: Reconsidering verb ‘agreement’ in sign languages
Indicating verbs as typologically unique constructions: Reconsidering verb ‘agreement’ in sign languages Open
In this paper, we present arguments for an analysis of indicating verbs, building on Liddell (2000), as a typologically unique, unimodal fusion of signs and pointing gestures used for reference tracking. This contrasts with many formalist …
View article: Sociolinguistic Typology and Sign Languages
Sociolinguistic Typology and Sign Languages Open
This paper examines the possible relationship between proposed social determinants of morphological 'complexity' and how this contributes to linguistic diversity, specifically via the typological nature of the sign languages of deaf commun…
View article: Modification of indicating verbs in British Sign Language: A corpus-based study
Modification of indicating verbs in British Sign Language: A corpus-based study Open
Indicating verbs can be directed toward locations in space associated with their arguments. The primary debate about these verbs is whether this directionality is akin to grammatical agreement or whether it represents a fusion of both morp…