Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T14:34:30.021Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language is shaped by the body

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

Mark Aronoff ,
Irit Meir ,
Carol Padden  and
Wendy Sandler
Mark Aronoff
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11979-4376mark.aronoff@stonybrook.eduhttp://www.linguistics.stonybrook.edu/faculty/mark.aronoff
Irit Meir
Affiliation:
Department of Hebrew Language, Department of Disorders, and Sign Language Research Laboratory, University of Haifa, 31905 Haifa, Israelimeir@univ.haifa.ac.ilhttp://sandlersignlab.haifa.ac.il/html/html_eng/irit.htm
Carol Padden
Affiliation:
Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0503cpadden@ucsd.eduhttp://communication.ucsd.edu/people/f_padden.html
Wendy Sandler
Affiliation:
Department of English Language and Literature, and Sign Language Research Laboratory, University of Haifa, 31905 Haifa, Israelwsandler@research.haifa.ac.ilhttp://sandlersignlab.haifa.ac.il/wendy.htm
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Sign languages provide direct evidence for the relation between human languages and the body that engenders them. We discuss the use of the hands to create symbols and the role of the body in sign language verb systems, especially in two quite recently developed sign languages, Israeli Sign Language and Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 31 , Issue 5 , October 2008 , pp. 509 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aronoff, M., Meir, I., Padden, C. & Sandler, W. (2008) The roots of linguistic organization in a new language. Interaction Studies: A Special Issue on Holophrasis vs. Compositionality in the Emergence of Protolanguage 9(1):133–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aronoff, M., Meir, I. & Sandler, W. (2005) The paradox of sign language morphology. Language 81(2):301–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Call, J. & Tomasello, M. (2007) The gestural communication of apes and monkeys. Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Deacon, T. W. (1997) The symbolic species: The co-evolution of language and the brain. W. W. Norton/Penguin.Google Scholar
Meir, I. (2002) A cross-modality perspective on verb agreement. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20(2):413–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meir, I., Padden, C., Aronoff, M. & Sandler, W. (2007) Body as subject. Journal of Linguistics 43:531–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meir, I. & Sandler, W. (2008) A language in space: The story of Israeli Sign Language. Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Padden, C. (1988) Interaction of morphology and syntax in American Sign Language. Garland Press.Google Scholar
Padden, C., Meir, I., Sandler, W. & Aronoff, M. (in press) Against all expectations: The encoding of subject and object in a new language. In: Hypothesis A/Hypothesis B: Linguistic explorations in honor of David M. Perlmutter, ed. Gerdts, D., Moore, J. & Polinsky, M.. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sandler, W. (in press) Symbiotic symbolization of hand and mouth in sign language. Semiotica.Google Scholar
Sandler, W., Meir, I., Padden, C. & Aronoff, M. (2005) The emergence of grammar: Systematic structure in a new language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 102(7):2661–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, M. (2002) Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 9:625–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed