The National Science Foundation will support a special session on sign language to be held in conjunction with the thirty-fifth annual meeting of the North Eastern Linguistic Society, hosted by the Department of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, from October 22nd to 24th, 2004. The annual conference provides an international forum for the dissemination of current research and exchange of ideas in generative linguistic theory. The special session will bring researchers on sign languages together with theoreticians whose empirical basis has largely been data from spoken languages. The main goal of the conference is to offer a venue for cross-pollination among groups of researchers who might not typically be exposed to each other's research results.
Studies of sign languages provide an important perspective on the study of the human capacity for language. It is now established that these languages have the formal properties (such as syntax and the formal elements characteristic of phonology) of other natural languages, as opposed to other communicative systems, such as gesture. Research into sign languages thus provides not only an additional range of data for testing the hypotheses of linguistic theories, but in particular permits investigation of the degree (if any) of the modality-dependent character of linguistic principles. In addition to the research interactions that conferences provide, this conference will contribute to promoting an understanding of the nature of American Sign Language, and sign language more broadly.
