We are happy to invite you to the lecture by
Prof. Wendy Sandler
Director, Sign Language Research Lab
University of Haifa
Date: Wednesday, May 4, at 11:00
Venue: Room 52 Main Building, Egyetem tér 1
University of Debrecen
The Emergence of Prosody in Sign Language
Abstract:
All humans in every culture use gestures of the hands, face, and body to accompany and augment the linguistic stream. In sign languages of deaf communities, these signals are organized and conventionalized to form the substance of language itself. The focus of this talk is the way in which this occurs in the prosodic system of sign languages, especially the temporal delineation of prosodic constituents and the intonation of the face. While the presence of such a system in sign languages points to prosody as a universal property of human language, research on a new sign language in an insular Bedouin community shows that even universals do not arise overnight.
Everyone welcome.
HuComTech Research Group
University of Debrecen