Within the domains of morphosyntax and syntax, sign languages have been shown to share many interesting properties with spoken languages. At the same time, it has been demonstrated that sign languages are not a homogeneous group. Rather, they differ from each other structurally and, what is more, the attested differences often align with typological patterns that have been identified based on the study of spoken languages. In this chapter, we offer a discussion of selected syntactic phenomena that have been studied from a cross-modal perspective, drawing data from a wide variety of sign languages. We address linearization issues (e.g., constituent order), wh-questions, and various types of complex sentences, and for each of these topics we evaluate to what extent it is shaped by the affordances of the visual-spatial modality. The general picture that emerges is that sign languages – notwithstanding certain modality-specific characteristics – generally exhibit structural complexity and variation fully on a par with spoken languages. This, in turn, strongly suggests that formal models developed for spoken languages can and should be applied to sign languages.

Describe the challenges children face in learning language; understand key features of child language development; explain the strategies children use to learn sounds, words, and grammar.

This chapter provides a tour of several additional forms of human language communication apart from spoken language. Visual speech (which also contributes to audiovisual speech) requires not only visual cortex, but regions such as posterior temporal sulcus which may help integrate signals across modality. Nonverbal communication, including productions such as crying or laughter, relate to activity in the superior temporal lobes but also in other regions including the cingulate cortex and insula. Reading and the ability to decode written language highlights portions of the visual system, including the ventral occipitotemporal cortex (often referred to as the visual word form area, or VWFA). Learning to read is a complex process that involves written language, knowledge of speech sounds, and motivation. Co-speech gestures are present in children’s language development and can convey semantic information alongside spoken language; integration of such semantic gestures involves left inferior frontal gyrus and premotor cortex.

We present an overview of constructional approaches to signed languages, beginning with a brief history and the pioneering work of William C. Stokoe. We then discuss construction morphology as an alternative to prior analyses of sign structure that posited a set of non-compositional lexical signs and a distinct set of classifier signs. Instead, signs are seen as composed of morphological schemas containing both specific and schematic aspects of form and meaning. Grammatical construction approaches are reviewed next, including the marking of argument structure on verbs in American Sign Language (ASL). Constructional approaches have been applied to the issue of the relation between sign and gesture across a variety of expressions. This work often concludes that signs and gesture interact in complex ways. In the final section, we present an extended discussion of several grammatical and discourse phenomena using a constructional analysis based on Cognitive Grammar. The data come from Argentine Sign Language (LSA) and includes pointing constructions, agreement constructions, antecedent-anaphor relations, and constructions presenting point of view in reported narrative.

In this chapter we consider aspects of phonology for bimodal bilinguals, whose languages span distinct modalities (spoken/signed/written). As for other bilinguals, the primary issues concern the representation of the phonology for each language individually, ways that the phonological representations interact with each other (in grammar and in processing), and the development of the two phonologies, for children developing as simultaneous bilinguals or for learners of a second language in a second modality. Research on these topics has been sparse, and some have hardly been explored at all. Findings so far indicate that despite the modality difference between their two languages, phonological interactions still occur for bimodal bilinguals, providing crucial data for linguistic theories about the locus and mechanisms for such interactions, and important practical implications for language learners.

The history, and parameters, of specialized dictionaries are of necessity somewhat vague, as they invite examination of the role and content of a dictionary. This chapter looks at works ranging from hard word dictionaries to treatises on communicating via naval flags and telegraphic code books, all of which might be categorized as specialized dictionaries.

Even though the word has been around for over one thousand years, bitch has proven that an old dog can be taught new tricks. Over the centuries, bitch has become a linguistic chameleon with many different meanings and uses. Bitch has become a shape-shifter too, morphing into modern slang spellings like biatch, biznatch, and betch. Bitch is a versatile word. It can behave like a noun, an adjective, a verb, or an interjection, while it also makes a cameo appearance in lots of idioms. Bitch can be a bitch of a word. Calling someone a bitch once seemed to be a pretty straightforward insult, but today – after so many variations, reinventions, and attempts to reclaim the word – it’s not always clear what bitch really means. Nowadays, the word appears in numerous other languages too, from Arabic and Japanese to Spanish and Zulu. This chapter takes a look at bitch in the present day, and beyond.

Phonology has generally been neglected as a nexus of philosophical interest despite certain debates within the field both inviting and needing philosophical reflection. Yet, the few who have attempted such inquiry have noted something special about the field and its target. On the one hand, it shares formal and structural aspects with syntax. On the other, it seems to require more literal interpretation in terms of components such as hierarchy and sequential ordering. In this chapter, the nature of the phoneme, the theoretical centrepiece of traditional phonology, comes under scrutiny. The notion, as well as the field itself, is extended to other modalities, such as sign, in accordance with the contemporary trajectory of the field. This extension, and the connections with language and gesture in general, open up the possibility of a philosophical action theory with phonology as its basis. Motor and action theory have been proffered recently in connection with syntax, with little success. However, it’s argued that phonology serves as a better point of comparison. The chapter discusses a range of issues from autosegmental phonology, feature grammar, and sign language, to gestural grammar, motor cognition, and recent 4E approaches to cognition.

Recurrent gestures are stabilized forms that embody a practical knowledge of dealing with different communicative, interactional, cognitive, and affective tasks. They are often derived from practical actions and engage in semantic and pragmatic meaning-making. They occupy a place between spontaneous (singular) gestures and emblems on a continuum of increasing stabilization. The chapter reconstructs the beginnings of research on recurrent gestures and illuminates different disciplinary perspectives that have explored processes of their emergence and stabilization, as well as facets of their communicative potential. The early days of recurrent-gesture research focused on the identification of single specimens and on the refinement of descriptive methods. In recent years, their role in self-individuation, their social role, and their relationship to signs of sign language have become a focus of interest. The chapter explores the individual, the linguistic, and the cultural side of recurrent gestures. Recurrent gestures are introduced as sedimented individual and social practices, as revealing the linguistic potential of gestures, and as a type that forms culturally shared repertoires.

The classical approach to gesture and sign language analysis focuses on the forms and locations of the hands. This constitutes an external point of view on the gesturing subject. The kinesiological approach presented in this chapter looks at gesture from the inside out, at how it is produced, taking a first-person perspective. This involves a physiological description of the parts of the body that are moving (the segments) and the joints at which they can move (providing the degrees of freedom of movement). This type of analysis allows for such distinctions of proper movement of segments from displacement caused by movement of another segment. Movement is distinguished according to muscular properties such as flexion versus extension, abduction versus adduction, exterior versus interior rotation, and supination versus pronation. The propagation of movement in the body is considered in terms of its flow across connected segments of the body, from more proximal to more distal segments or vice versa. These distinctions distinguish different functions of gestures (e.g. showing that you don’t care vs. expressing negation) and different meanings of signs in a sign language.

Gestures associated with negation have become a well-defined area for gesture studies research. The chapter offers an overview of this area, identifies distinct empirical lines of enquiry, and highlights their contribution to aspects of linguistic and embodiment theory. After relating a surge of interest in this topic to the notion of recurrent gestures (but not restricted to it), the chapter offers a visualization of the widespread geographical coverage of studies of gestures associated with negation, then distils a set of common observations concerning the form, organizational properties, and functions of such gestures. This area of research is then further thematized by exploring distinct chains of studies that have adopted linguistic, cognitive-semantic, functional, psycholinguistic, comparative, and cultural perspectives to analyze the gestural expression of negation. Studies of gestures associated with negation are shown to have played a vital role in shaping understandings of the multimodality of grammar, the embodiment of cognition, and the relations between gestures and sign.