Joan L. Bybee - US grants

9410597 Wilcox ABSTRACT The investigation of signed languages is not only crucial to the understanding of the world's visual/gestural languages, but it is essential to the understanding of the biological foundations of human language. The linguistic exploration of signed languages has acquired considerable interest in recent years. Yet it is uncommon to witness large numbers of deaf linguists and deaf graduate students attending or presenting at major linguistics conferences. The main reason for this discrepancy is the extreme difficulty of accessing linguistic material of almost any nature through signed language interpreters who are unable to accurately render the conceptual content of the message. The goal of the organizers of the Linguistic Society of America's 1995 Linguistic Institute is to ensure full accessibility to the exchange of ideas and the linguistic "cultural" milieu-both inside and outside of the classroom-which are a significant part of the linguist's professional development. This project is intended to provide linguistic training to seasoned American Sign Language interpreters who will be employed during the Institute. Two graduate linguistics students will work 10 months to prepare a manual to be used for teaching purposes. A group of distinguished deaf language consultants, hearing linguists, and expert interpreters will gather for three days to prepare a structured lexicon of introductory linguistic concepts and ASL usage related to linguistic terminology. The manual will eventually be edited for the development of a videotape to be produced by Sign Media, Inc. The dissemination of this videotape will provide experienced interpreters, as well as students in interpreter education programs across the nation, broader access to accurate interpretations of a core lexicon for the complex linguistic sciences. The lexicon and the videotape will form the basis for training interpreters from a cross the nation who will be employed to interpret at the Institute, thus providing the national deaf clientele that the Institute plans to attract with interpreters who possess broader expertise than the typical local referral center may be able to provide. An additional long term benefit will be the expansion of the pool of interpreters competent to interpret linguistics lectures. The provision of the resulting videotape will have significant impact on the study of ASL by native users across the country. Ultimately, the goal of this proposal is to set a precedent for other sciences to open their doors to deaf scientists by providing adequately trained interpreters. ***

9411172 This grant will support a working conference entitled "Specific Language Impairment and Williams' Syndrome: A Double Dissociation of Language and Cognition?", that will bring together linguists, neurolinguists, and clinicians for an intensive week-long working session. The conference is to be held in conjunction with the Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, which will be held at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, during July 1995. The Working Conference on "Specific Language Impairment and Williams' Syndrome: A Double Dissociation of Language and Cognition?", will focus on the theoretical implications and clinical realities of two sharply contrasting developmental disorders, Williams' Syndrome and Specific Language Impairment. It is designed to present current results on these disorders to a much wider audience of linguists, and to bring those linguists into contact with the first-hand knowledge of clinical researchers.

This proposal requests support for a working conference, 'New Methods in Comparative Aphasiology,' which will bring together linguists, neurolinguists, and clinicians for an intensive week-long working session, to be held in conjunction with the Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America at the University of New Mexico during July 1995. 'New Methods in Comparative Aphasiology' is designed to bring together three groups of people; (1) a group of productive researchers in the comparative cross-linguistic study of aphasic speech and their current students, (2) linguistics interested in comparative aphasiology, (3) clinicians with multilingual/multicultural practices and students in speech-language pathology who wish to train to work in such practices. The goals of the conference are: (1) To enable a large group of linguists to appreciate the findings, issues, and theoretical implications of comparative aphasiology, and to involve them in the further development of research tools which will be likely to give rise to linguistically revealing results; (2) To share recent results and elicitation tools among the researchers; (3) To share the findings and their clinical implications with clinicians, and to obtain feedback from clinicians about the actural applicability of this work. The proposed working conference will be an essential part of the overall Institute cross-linguistic/cognitive agenda, since the present conference will focus on methods of cross-linguistic comparison of aphasic morphosyntax (including ASL aphasia). The Institute setting will provide an opportunity to attract a much larger audience of linguistics and linguistics students than usually attend neurolinguistics events. In order to also be attractive to clinicians, AHS continuing education units will be granted fro many of the Institute courses and conferences and additional clinical training events are planned. The Institute emphasis on ASL, American Southwest Hispanic, and Native American languages is expected to attract linguistics who do research on these languages and clinicians whose clients use them. Minority travel funds are being requested with the special goal of promoting an understanding by Hispanics and Native Americans of clinical reseach in comparative aphasiology and its implications for the multilingual clinic.

9411208 A research Workshop on The Interaction of Morphosyntax and Lexicon in the Acquisition of Narrative Discourse will be held at the 1995 LSA Linguistic Institute at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The objectives of the workshop are: (I) to bring together experienced researchers who have done cross-linguistic work on the development of the functions of morphosyntax in narrative in order to compare findings across languages and methodology across studies; (2) to enable less-experienced researchers and students to work with these experts, to become familiar with the current issues, learn the state-of-the-art analysis techniques, and carry out summer-long collaborative projects; (3) to facilitate the formation of new interdisciplinary research collaborations which will extend beyond the summer. In summary, the workshop will provide a seminar setting for leaders, less-experienced researchers, and students to compare their analyses across languages, with the goal of testing and improving current theories of the acquisition of lexical and grammatical devices used in narrative discourse. The workshop will be led by Ruth Berman and Dan Slobin, and will focus on children's gradual mastery of the uses of the morphosyntax of their languages to convey complex narrative information, primarily utilizing the 'frog story' elicitation paradigm. The workshop will be open to all institute faculty, affiliates and students; those interested in the cross-language comparison of morphosyntax in aphasia and in developmental language disorders will especially be encouraged to participate.