Time of the signs

Emily Nordmann is a psycholinguist from the University of Aberdeen. She will tell us about her PhD work on timing of sign language production.

Presenter: Emily Nordmann
Title: Time of the signs: Investigating the temporal structure of sign language production
Date: 5th May 2010
Time: 6.30pm - 8.30pm
Venue: Godfrey Thomson Hall, Moray House School of Education, EH8 8AQ (how to get there)
BSL/English Interpreters: Kyra Pollitt, Yvonne Waddell, Annelies Klomphaar
BSL/International Sign Interpreter: Clare Canton

All welcome!

Download the poster

UPDATE: You can see some photos and video clips from the seminar at http://edsign34.blogspot.com/2010/05/video-clips-from-emily-nordmanns.html.

UPDATE: View the slides

Abstract
Psycholinguists study the cognitive processes underlying language. In her presentation, Emily will discuss current evidence about how sign and speech are represented at a cognitive level.

She will present an ongoing study into sign language production using picture - word interference. Finally, she will discuss the implications for sign psycholinguistics and the wider issue of the universality of language.

Research in spoken language production suggests that the brain accesses the semantic and grammatical aspects of a word before the phonology. Researchers have used this evidence to develop models of language production.

But can these models be applied to signed languages? The question has only recently begun to be investigated. It is claimed that signed languages do not have the same strict level of separation between meaning and form because of their higher level of iconicity. However, the findings so far support the idea that sign and speech are represented in a similar structure at a cognitive level.