Table of Contents

1. Introduction Diane Brentari; Part I. History and Transmission: 2. Transmission of sign languages in northern Europe Penny Boyes Braem and Christian Rathmann; 3. Transmission of sign languages in Latin America Claire Ramsey and David Quinto-Pozos; 4. Transmission of sign languages in the Nordic countries Brita Bergman and Elisabeth Engberg Pedersen; 5. Transmission of sign languages in Mediterranean Europe Josep Quer, Galini Sapountzaki and Laura Mazzoni; 6. Transmission of sign languages in Africa Dorothy Lule and Lars Wallin; 7. Transmission of Polish sign systems Piotr Wojda; Part II. Shared Crosslinguistic Characteristics: 8. Notation systems Harry van der Hulst and Rachel Channon; 9. Verb agreement in sign language morphology Gaurav Mathur and Christian Rathmann; 10. Functional markers in sign languages Sandro Zucchi, Carol Neidle, Carlo Geraci, Quinn Duffy and Carlo Cecchetto; 11. Clause structure Ronice Müller de Quadros and Diane Lillo-Martin; 12. Factors that form classifier signs Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen; 13. Handshape contrasts in sign language phonology Diane Brentari and Petra Eccarius; 14. Syllable structure in sign language phonology Tommi Jantunen and Ritva Takkinen; 15. Grammaticalization in sign languages Sherman Wilcox, Paolo Rossini and Elena Pizzuto; 16. The semantics-phonology interface Ronnie Wilbur; 17. Nonmanuals: their prosodic and grammatical roles Roland Pfau and Josep Quer; Part III. Variation and Change: 18. Sign language varieties in West Africa Victoria Nyst; 19. Sign languages in the Arab world Kinda Al-Fityani and Carol Padden; 20. Variation in American sign language Ceil Lucas and Robert Bayley; 21. Sociolinguistic variation in British, Australian, and New Zealand sign language Adam Schembri, Kearsy Cormier, Trevor Johnston, David McKee, Rachel McKee and Bencie Woll; 22. Variation in East Asian sign language structures Susan Fischer and Qunhu Gong; 23. Crosslinguistic variation in prosodic cues Gladys Tang, Diane Brentari, Carolina González and Felix Sze; 24. Deixis in an emerging sign language Marie Coppola and Anne Senghas; 25. The grammar of space in two new sign languages Carol Padden, Irit Meir, Mark Aronoff and Wendy Sandler.

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This thematic and geographic overview examines more than forty sign languages from around the world.

About the Author

Diane Brentari is Professor of Linguistics and Director of the ASL Program at Purdue University. She is the author of A Prosodic Model of Sign Language Phonology (1998) and has published widely in the area of sign language phonology and morphology. Her current research involves the crosslinguistic analyses of sign languages.

Reviews

'… an extremely helpful snapshot of where Sign Language research finds itself and should prove to be a route map for future research into as yet unchartered territory.' Debra Aarons, School of Language Studies and Linguistics, University of New South Wales

'Diane Brentari has gathered an immense wealth of linguistic and anthropological information on signed languages around the world. It represents the most up-to-date knowledge we have in this important, growing field. Each chapter is well worth reading on its own, but altogether the work is a superb, insightful picture of the complexities of signed languages and the breadth of current signed language research.' Terry Janzen, University of Manitoba