Dictionnaire de la langue des signes francaise d�autrefois
Introduced by Yves Delaporte
Advances in the Sign Language Development of Deaf Children
Edited by Brenda Schick, Marc Marschark, and Patricia Spencer
The Distribution of Signs in New Zealand
Sign Language
Until now, teachers and learners of NZSL have not had access to information on
the most frequently used signs in the Deaf community. This article describes the
first study of the distribution of signs in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). We
hope that it will help teachers of NZSL make decisions about which signs to
teach first and suggest questions for investigation into other signed languages
using a corpus analysis approach.
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�The Undesirability of Admitting Deaf
Mutes: U.S. Immigration Policy and Deaf Immigrants, 1882-1924�
When the federal government began in the 1880s to regulate immigration, the
exclusion of what were termed �defectives� was one of the primary aims. Deaf
people were among the thousands of disabled immigrants turned back each year at
U.S. ports as �undesirables.� Stereotyped as economically dependent and as
carriers of potentially defective genes, deaf immigrants were seen as a threat
to the nation. The advent of immigration restriction was one aspect of a
pervasive and intensified stigmatization of disability during this period, which
also saw the widespread incarceration of mentally disabled people in
institutions, the sterilization of the �unfit� under state eugenic laws, the
suppression of sign language, and a growing tendency to exclude disabled people
from social and cultural life.
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Why Don�t You See What I Mean? Prospects
and Limitations of Current Automatic Sign Recognition Research
This article presents an overview of current automatic sign recognition
research. A review of recent studies, as well as on our own research, has
identified several problem areas that hamper successful sign recognition by a
computer. Some of these problems are shared with automatic speech recognition,
whereas others seem to be unique to automatic sign recognition. These latter
difficulties include context dependency, determination of the basic units of
modeling, the ability to distinguish between signs and gestures, movement
epenthesis, and repetition within signs. As a possible solution to these
problems, bottom-up processing should perhaps be supplemented with top-down
processing.
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Launching International Collaboration for
Interpretation Research
The expansion of interpretation research projects across national boundaries
contributes to improved personal, professional, and intellectual outcomes for
researchers and practitioners. Establishing and maintaining these collaborative
teams may be especially beneficial to strengthening the research agenda of new
researchers. Conducting international studies requires intercultural sensitivity
in all stages of a project (Deaf culture as well as ethnicity-related cultures)
and has the potential to combine culture-specific perspectives and expertise for
a more comprehensive application of results. The project design, supported by
literature on international joint ventures, was a process of organizing stable
international research collaboration that incorporated interdisciplinary
expertise at three universities (University of Arkansas�Little Rock, University
of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and the Karl-Franzens-University of Graz, Austria). This
article follows the project through its conceptualization and initial study
(2002), expansion beyond the initial research project (2004), data collection,
analysis, and dissemination (2005). It presents potential options for data
analysis and a description of the sample (n = 1,546). Topics of
discussion include applying international joint venture stability research to
establishing and maintaining research alliances, improving communication and
collaborative skills, identifying mutually beneficial research topics with
international universities, and applying results to the participating programs.
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