Workshop: Linguistic Diversity and Linguistic Modalities: New Perspectives on Bimodal (Sign Language/Oral Language) Bilingualism

Workshop at the Annual conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) 2020
Location: University of Hamburg
Date: March 4-6, 2020

Studies on bimodal-bilingualism contribute significantly to a better understanding of linguistic diversity and its consequences for linguistic theory. Questions that have been addressed pertain to similarities and differences in the acquisition, processing and mental representation of languages that use different modalities, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to the nature and role of cross-modal language contact phenomena in different social settings. More recently, additional questions have been raised against the backdrop of the increasing heterogeneity of the linguistic profiles of bilingual signers, i.e. early or late learners of one or more sign languages with varying degrees of access to the surrounding spoken language(s). Diversity along these dimensions not only raises the question about the competences attained by the individual signers, but also about the impact on the evolution of the languages involved, be they emergent or institutionalized sign languages.

Invited presenters
Diane Lillo-Martin (University of Connecticut)
Bencie Woll (UCL/DCAL)

Organisation
Barbara Hänel-Faulhaber, University of Hamburg
Cornelia Loos, University of Goettingen
Carolina Plaza-Pust, University of Frankfurt am Main

Contact
E-mail: Barbara.Haenel-Faulhaber@uni-hamburg.de

Further information can be found on the website of the DGfS annual conference 2020