Despite being minority languages like many others, sign languages have traditionally remained absent from the agendas of policy makers and language planning and policies. In the past two decades, though, this situation has started to change at different paces and to different degrees in several countries. In this article, the author describes the…

This paper focuses on two selected phonological patterns that appear unique to Saudi Arabian Sign Language (SASL). For both sections of this paper, the overall methodology is the same as that discussed in Stephen and Mathur (this volume), with some additional modifications tailored to the specific studies discussed here, which will be expanded…

The purpose of this article is to analyze the results of a study of the development of analogical reasoning in deaf children coming from two different linguistic environments (deaf children of deaf parents--sign language, deaf children of hearing parents--spoken language) and in hearing children, as well as to compare two groups of deaf children…

While all languages use shape to classify unfamiliar objects, some languages as diverse as Mandarin, Thai, Japanese, Mohawk, and American Sign Language lexicalize these and other types of description as noun classifiers. Classification does not develop from a fixed set of features in the object, but is discourse-sensitive and invoked when it would…

The written English vocabulary of 72 deaf elementary school students of various proficiency levels in American Sign Language (ASL) was compared with the performance of 60 hearing English-as-a-second-language (ESL) speakers and 61 hearing monolingual speakers of English, all of similar age. Students were asked to retell "The Tortoise and the Hare"…

Even though ASL isn't as easy to learn as it may seem at first, more and more students are enrolling in ASL courses at both the secondary and university levels and choosing ASL as a primary area of study. For this reason the demand for ASL teachers is increasing, and the need for ASL teacher-preparation programs (ASL TPPs) has increased.…

Events leading to the selection of Jane Fernandes as Gallaudet University's ninth president in May 2006 are described, as are protest-related activities that occurred subsequent to her selection. An explanation of these activities is offered, and some comparisons with the Deaf President Now protest of 1988 are made. (Contains 10 notes.)