[lingtalks] FW: Karen Emmorey to speak at USC on April 21st at 3:00pm

[Karma Dolma]

The Colloquium Committee of the Linguistics Department at USC proudly
presents: 


Speaking versus signing: 
How the biology of linguistic expression affects language processing

Karen Emmorey
San Diego State University

Monday, April 21st 2008
3:00pm
Followed by a departmental dinner



Abstract
Sign languages provide a powerful tool for investigating the neurobiology
and
cognitive architecture of human language. The value of signed languages lies
in
their modality. For perception, these languages depend upon shape-based
object
recognition, biological motion analysis, and attention to spatial locations
and
positions. For production, they require cognitive control of two large
articulators
(the hands), coordination of facial articulations with manual output, and
the
representation of a language-related body schema. Currently, very little is
known
about the psycholinguistic mechanisms that translate thoughts into
linguistic
expression for signers, and it is unclear whether models of speech
production can
simply be appropriated for sign language. However, the discovery that sign
languages have a phonology (traditionally defined as the sound patterns of
language) indicates that there may be important parallels between sign and
speech
production systems that can inform us about the nature of human language
processing. The studies I will present examine the phonological and lexical
processes involved in the production of American Sign Language (ASL). My
research program utilizes various psycholinguistic techniques (e.g., "tip of
the
fingers" effects, slips of the hand, and monitoring paradigms) to
investigate unique
aspects of the visual-manual modality that lead to disparities between sign
and
speech, such as differences in motoric timing, error detection,
syllabification
processes, and the nature of auditory vs. visual feedback. The results
inform
theories of speech production by identifying those properties that arise due
to the
nature of speech and those properties that are universal to all human
languages.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://pidgin.ucsd.edu/pipermail/lingtalks/attachments/20080415/6a8fc1b2/attachment.htm