Sign Code Research Articles

Neither Easy to Understand Nor Pleasing to See

RESUMEN Nifácil aprender ni complaciente ver: El desarrollo de côdigos manuales de serial como lengua planeando actividad Este articulo discute el desarrollo de côdigos manuales de serial para uso en la instruction de ninos sordos como un ejemplo de una actividad para planear el lenguaje. Una vision de conjunto de la naturaleza de lenguas de serial se presenta, seguido por una description de la creation y propositos de côdigos manuales de señal y un anâlisis de côdigos tales como lengua planeando. Es sugerido que el desarrollo de côdigos manuales de senal se puede ver como un esfuerzo descarriado que desconoce ambos las bases lingüísticas de lenguas naturales de senal y los derechos de lengua de la sorda como una comunidad cultural y lingüística. RESUMO Nek facile komprenebla, nek agrabla vidajo: la evoluo de gestolingvo kiel lingvoplanado La artikolo diskutas la evoluon de gestolingvoj uzotaj en la edukado de surdaj infanoj kiel ekzemplon de lingvoplanado. La aŭtoro donas superrigardon pri la specoj de gestolingvoj kaj priskribas la kreadon kaj la celojn de gestolingvoj kaj analizas ilin kiel formon de lingvoplanado. Li tezas, ke la evoluigo de gestolingvoj povas esti konsiderata erara klopodo, kiu ignoras kaj la lingvan bazon de naturaj signolingvoj kaj la lingvajn rajtojn de la surduloj kiel kultura kaj lingva komunumo.

Parents' Use of Signing Exact English

Parental use of simultaneous communication is advocated by many programs serving hearing-impaired students. The purpose of the present study was to describe in detail the input characteristics of five hearing parents, who were attempting to use one such system, Signing Exact English or SEE 2 (Gustason, Pfetzing, & Zawolkow, 1980). The parents were intermediate-level signers, motivated to use SEE 2. Voiced and signed segments from videotaped language samples were transcribed and coded for equivalence and other features of interest. Results were that parents' signed mean lengths of utterance (MLUs) were lower than those of their children although the majority of their sign utterances were syntactically intact. Structures categorized as complex in the Developmental Sentence Scoring procedure (Lee, 1974) and considered abstract in a semantic coding scheme (Lahey, 1988) were seldom used by the parents. Parents provided a narrow range of lexical items in their sign code. Results are discussed in terms of the type of input the parents are providing and the procedures used to identify priorties for parent education.

SIGNED INPUT OF HEARING MOTHERS TO DEAF CHILDREN

Hearing parents of deaf children are often encouraged to learn a signed code for English and to sign and speak simultaneously with them. The present study sought to determine how consistently a sample of mothers using simultaneous communication signed what they said. Though only one of the mothers had a spoken M LU of more than four morphemes, there were deletions of a mean 69 morphemes per 100‐utterance sample.* A mean 40.5 utterances per sample were signed fully. The majority of elements deleted were functors, and a set of 13 of these was examined to investigate possible variability of deletion rates within the category. Prepositions and noncontracted forms of the verb to be were signed most consistently, and bound morphemes as a group were signed about 50% of the time. Suggested factors affecting deletion rates are categorized as characteristics of (1) the sign codes, (2) the mothers, (3) the linguistic and communicative situation, and (4) the child. The results are discussed with respect to simplification and foreigner talk.

Use of retroreflectors in the improvement of nighttime highway visibility

AbstractA half‐century ago retroreflective glass buttons were formally approved to improve the nighttime visibility of highway signs. The development of flexible retroreflective sheetings dates from the late 1930s, and these unique materials permitted the uniform color coding of warning, regulatory, and informational signs. Color coding has contributed to more rapid comprehension and the transmission of fairly complex information. The success of the signing system at night depends on sign brightness, size, and on the natural background against which the driver must see the sign. Research on signing materials is providing improved brightness, while greater understanding of our dependence on the nighttime environment is leading to attempts at characterizing this important variable. The subsequent adjustment of sign luminance will provide traffic signs that more satisfactorily match driver needs.

The significance of silence: On the dialectical evolution of human communication

The most general context within which the evolution of language occurred is sound itself, and the one characteristic of gestural systems of communication which has not been elaborated upon is the antithesis of sound, i.e., silence. Gestural communication is aphonic, and in view of the evidence discussed above and in other essays on the gestural origins of speech, it would appear that the gestural phase in humanity's communicational history lies between the use of involuntary calls and the inherited capacity for speech. The aphonic stage has both sonic antecedents and consequences and so may be understood to represent a dialectical episode of evolution wherein a synthesis has arisen out of two antithetical contexts — sound and silence. The evolution of language may constitute an elaboration of communicational capacities through the process of a species readapting to conditions where the production of sound was possible, useful, and ultimately adaptive. Many authors have suggested that language arose in concert with tool making 1. Rather than tool making being reliant on speech, the same activity could have been pursued through gestural communication 2. Tool making is after all a manipulative behavior which might be easily facilitated by observational learning, demonstration, and behavioral mimicry. Moreover, silence is a characteristic of successful hunting as the widespread utilization of sign languages by contemporary hunters and recent hunting societies well illustrates 3. Whether such sign languages are back formations from speech or are much older is not really relevant here. The significance of sign codes is the hunting context in which they are utilized. I would suggest that the increased success in hunting eventually led to a use of the phonic medium and speech through, among other things, a reduction in predator populations around long term encampments.

Sign codes and sign language: Two orders of communication

Deaf children, like all children, are born with a capacity for language; i.e. the symbolization and expression of cognitive functioning. Until the age at which hearing children are talking, deaf children communicate well with others, using their sight, touch, and other actions—the common gestures in the culture of their caretakers. The chief problem in communication arises when hearers reject the deaf child's gestural symbolization of his developing language knowledge. The problem is aggravated by insistence that the child use speech as do those who hear. Linguistic, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems may then follow, because of the attitude and actions of the hearing. All these problems can be resolved by early recognizing that the deaf person has a language and by honestly trying to learn and use it. This language is not a set of signs standing for spoken words but a complete language with its own rules for making sense in signed sentences.

Two faces of sign: iconic and abstract.

In this paper, we show that the total range of the communication system of the deaf is considerably enriched but at the same time rendered more difficult to analyze, because pantomime and other spontaneous nonsign representations occur in the same mode as regular ASL signs in deaf discourse. We note that the rarification of what was originally nonsign depiction is clearly an important source of regular ASL signs. We show that criteria can be established that would distinguish the clear cases of pantomime from the regular ASL signs. Nonetheless, there remain a sizable number of regular ASL signs which, although they are neither pantomimic nor otherwise freely mimetic, still appear to retain an iconic cast. We show that very few ASL signs are actually transparent; that is, a nonsigner cannot guess the meaning of a sign in the absence of further information. On the other hand, many signs are iconic in the sence that nonsigners, when given the sign and its meaning, show considerable agreement in how the two are related. More important in terms of language and its users is the significance of iconicity for deaf signers themselves. This paper shows that while in special circumstances the deaf do play on iconic elements of certain signs for special effects, iconicity plays no observable role in the coding of signs in short-term memory. The abstract formational parameters definitely dominate. We further note that it is the abstract system and not purely iconic aspects that have determined observed historical changes in the form of ASL signs. We interpret this as indicating the deeper structural significance of the abstract formational level. Finally, we show that very widespread and productive grammatical processes, especially suited for a visual-gestural language, override the iconic aspects of signs also at the synchronic structural level.

Verbal coding strategies used by hearing-impaired individuals.

A paired-associate verbal learning task was used to determine the type of perceptual coding strategies hearing-impaired persons use in auditory perceptual processing of language. Four lists of word pairs were devised, whereby the word pairs in each list were characterized as sharing either similar sign-similar meaning, dissimilar sign-similar meaning, similar sign-dissimilar meaning, or dissimilar sign-dissimilar meaning. Severely hearing-impaired subjects were required to replace the missing word associated with the word pairs. The results showed that, while the subjects were able to code the verbal material on both a sign basis and a semantic basis, the semantic coding strategy appeared to be more efficient than the sign coding strategy. The findings are related to earlier investigations and are explained according to a theoretical model of perception.

Third-order Feedback Control Systems—Their Sign Patterns and Controllability†

ABSTRACT A new approach to finding all possible responses of a linear third-order control system subjected to step input commands is suggested in the present paper. Two terms sign pattern and sign code of the state variables of the system dynamics are introduced. A simple method of control by signal processing for lightly damped third-order systems is discussed and the method is illustrated by an example.