Wendy Sandler

Diane Lillo-Martin

This 2006 study compares sign languages with spoken languages, in order to seek their shared universal properties.

Sign Language and Linguistic Universals

Irit Meir

This English version of A Language in Space: The Story of Israeli Sign Language, which received the Bahat Award for most outstanding book for a general audience in its Hebrew edition, is an introduction to sign language using Israeli Sign Language (ISL) as a model. Authors Irit Meir and Wendy Sandler offer a glimpse into a number of fascinating descriptions of the ISL community to which linguists and other researchers may not have access. An underlying premise of the book is that language is a mental system with universal properties, and that language lives through people. A clear and engaging read, A Language in Space addresses relevant aspects of sign language, including the most abstract questions and matters related to society and community. Divided into three parts, the book covers: the linguistic structure of Israeli Sign Language; the language and its community; and a broad depiction of ISL and the contribution of sign language research to linguistic theory. This book is intended for linguists (with or without a background in sign language), psychologists, sociologists, educators, students, and anyone with an interest in the human capacity for language.

The Story of Israeli Sign Language

A Language in Space

Carol Padden

Marianne Gullberg

Traditionally, research on human language has taken speech and written language as the only domains of investigation. However, there is now a wealth of empirical studies documenting visual aspects of language, ranging from rich studies of sign languages, which are self-contained visual language systems, to the field of gesture studies, which examines speech-associated gestures, facial expressions, and other bodily movements related to communicative expressions. But despite this large body of work, sign language and gestures are rarely treated together in theoretical discussions. This volume aims to remedy that by considering both types of visual language jointly in order to transcend (artificial) theoretical divides, and to arrive at a comprehensive account of the human language faculty. This collection seeks to pave the way for an inherently multimodal view of language, in which visible actions of the body play a crucial role. The 19 papers in this volume address four broad and overlapping topics: (1) the multimodal nature of language; (2) multimodal representation of meaning; (3) multimodal and multichannel prosody; and (4) acquisition and development of visual language in children and adults.

Wendy Sandler

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