From Separate Modalities to Multimodality: A Changing View of Human Languages

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Photo of Dr. Padden – white skinned female with glasses and brunette hair wearing a striped shirt with black sweater in a fuzzy outdoor background.

Office of the Associate Dean of Research is offering a special PI Prime Time* presentation via Zoom Webinar for the entire RIT community:

From Separate Modalities to Multimodality: A Changing View of Human Languages
Presented by Carol Padden, Ph.D.

The project of sign language research has always been about studying the relationship between modality and language. Because sign languages use a different channel than speech, they have offered insights about language emergence, acquisition and structure. A number of claims were made in the early years of ASL research which we now understand to be wrong or incomplete. A large influence on our changing ideas about modality and language come from work on small sign languages around the world, with few signers and involving villages and families. This work looks more closely at community factors and studies the contexts for language learning and use. In an interesting way, this work has influenced how we now describe the grammatical structures of large, national sign languages like ASL.

Dr. Padden is the Sanford I. Berman Endowed Professor of Communication and Dean of Social Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. She has published on language emergence, culture and genes, comparative sign language structure, and reading in deaf children. With Tom Humphries, she is the co-author of four books on culture and community of deaf people in the United States. In recent years, she and her research team have been studying new sign languages in Israel and Turkey and documenting the spontaneous emergence of language in small communities.

*PI Prime Time, an NTID Office of the Associate Dean of Research program, is an unique professional development program for Principal Investigators (PIs) who want to apply for grants and learn best practices for managing their funded awards. The program also addresses other topics that relate to sponsored research activities. We also offer sessions that cultivate soft skills and leadership qualities.

Please click here to register for Zoom webinar: https://rit.zoom.us/j/98876811626


Contact
Nancy Starr
Event Snapshot
When and Where
September 25, 2020
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Room/Location: Other
Who

Open to the Public

Interpreter Requested?

Yes