News

SignTeam at workshop on palm-up at Lund University
The Göttingen SignTeam participated in the "PALM UP in Gesture and Sign Symposium: Theoretical, Typological and Methodological Perspectives for Future Research", which was held in the beautiful city of Lund in Sweden. Researchers working on sign and spoken languages discussed challenges and methodological approaches regarding the palm-up sign/gesture. Silva gave an on stage presentation on the emerging patterns in gesture sequences, Marion presented her experimental study on the palm-gesture in free choice tasks, Kim discussed the results of a corpus study on palm-up lateral in DGS and - last but not least - Marianthi presented new elicitation data on the production of palm-up signs in DGS imperatives. We all enjoyed the inspiring workshop in Lund very much.

A comprehensive insight into the culture of deaf people
In a recent statement, the KMK Expert Commission for the evaluation of teaching and learning materials for the educational field "hearing and communication" highly recommended the book “100 Questions and Answers about German Sign Language (DGS)” by Thomas Finkbeiner (University of Göttingen), Dr. Nina-Kristin Meister (University of Göttingen) and Prof. Dr. Liona Paulus (University of Hamburg) without any reservations: “This book is a clear must for anyone who has to deal with deaf people professionally or is in a corresponding training or study program. It is also a recommendation for anyone who is interested in sign language and the culture of deaf people and would like to further their education.” It is the first volume in the new book series “German Sign Language and Deaf Communities” by Thomas Finkbeiner and Dr. Nina-Kristin Meister, which deals with various topics related to German Sign Language (DGS) and the Deaf culture. At the same time, the book series sets new standards, as it is the first bimodal bilingual book series in DGS and written German. The perspective of deaf experts will be an important contribution to all volumes of this series. You can find the KMK recommendation here (in German).

Launch of the new SIGN-HUB platform
We are very pleased to be able to announce that the new SIGN-HUB platform, coming out of the Horizon 2020 SIGN-HUB project, is ready to be launched, after having been redone from scratch. The platform is a resource hub containing sign language grammars, an atlas of sign language structures, sign language assessment tools and an archive of life stories by elderly signers. It will be presented at a launch event at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona on November 15th in the afternoon. You are all kindly invited to join us in person or online. The program of the event can be found here.

Annual meeting of ViCom in Bad Homburg
The second annual meeting of our Priority Program Visual Communication (ViCom) will take place from 12 to 15 November 2024. We are delighted that the meeting can once again take place at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften in Bad Homburg. Over the four days, the 19 projects and the many Short-Term-Collaborations will present the results of their research. An important part of the program will also be two workshops on “Preparing the Postdoc Phase” by Lisa Grow (Göttingen University) and linguistic theory building in the field of visual communication. On Wednesday evening, there will be a plenary lecture by our Mercator Fellow Susan Goldin-Meadow (Chicago University). In addition to the scientific exchange, there will also be time for social activities and informal discussions as well as for the preparation of the second phase of the Priority Program. Further information on the annual meeting can be found here.

Experimental study on response stretegies in DGS published in Language
An experimental study on response strategies in German Sign Language (DGS) conducted jointly by the SignLab Göttingen and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Cologne was published in September in the renowned international journal Language. The study investigated the manual and non-manual strategies used by deaf signers to respond to ambiguous and non-ambiguous utterances. An important point of comparison in the study was the corresponding linguistic and gestural strategies used by hearing speakers. This study on DGS is the first large-scale production study on response strategies in spoken and signed languages. You can find the article here.

SignTeam at the FEAST conference in Ann Arbor
The Göttingen SignTeam participated once again in the conference series Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory, short FEAST, which took place this year in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In their bimodal presentation, Thomas, Marianthi and Gautam presented current results on the grammaticalization of imperative markers in two unrelated sign languages. It was a very exciting and well-organized conference in the beautiful university town near Detroit. Not only did we receive interesting feedback on our presentation, but we also met many nice colleagues and were able to establish new networks.

International linguistic summer school in Göttingen
From August 12 to 23, 2023, one of the largest linguistic summer schools in the world, the Summer School of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), will take place at the University of Göttingen. The event, which is dedicated to the topic "Form Meaning Mismatches in Spoken and Visual Communication", is jointly organized by the Priority Programme 2392 "Visual Communication (ViCom)“ and the Göttingen Research Training Group 2636 "Form Meaning Mismatches". 30 leading international experts from different fields of modern linguistics will offer 24 one-week courses for advanced students and doctoral candidates and 4 two-week basic courses. The basic courses will introduce the three core areas of grammar, morphology, syntax and semantics, and the semantic foundations of visual communication. The advanced courses cover very different current topics in linguistic research such as the social relevance of meaning, the semantics of emoij, the architecture of grammar or sign language typology. In addition to several poster sessions, there will be many opportunities for academic exchange and networking. Participants will therefore not only benefit from the knowledge of experts, they will also be able to present their own research to a broad international audience at the summer school and build new networks. A total of around 230 participants from 40 countries will take part in the summer school. More information can be found on the website of the summer school.

Perceiving emotions, expressing them in sign languages and exploring them together
This was the aim of the workshop “Expressing Emotions in Sign Languages (ExEmSiLa)”. The workshop took place on July 4 and 5 at the University of Hamburg and was organised by the IDGS (Annika Herrmann and Sarah Schwarzenberg) and the SignLab Göttingen (Thomas Finkbeiner, Nina-Kristin Meister and Markus Steinbach). The three invited presenters Barbara Hager (University of Vienna, Austria), Matt Dye (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA) and Vadim Kimmelman (University of Bergen, Norway) presented exciting insights into various cultural, psychological and linguistic studies of emotions in different sign languages. Ten additional presentations, a small poster session and a discussion round resulted in a diverse and international program with plenty of room for exchange and networking. The organisers would also like to express a special thanks to all the student assistants for the active and ViCom for the financial support.

Call for papers: ViCom workshop on iconicity
The presumably larger iconic potential of sign languages has often been regarded as an exception to the prevalence of arbitrariness in form-meaning relations in natural language. More recent research on multimodal communication argues that iconicity does not only affect form-meaning relations in sign languages but also in spoken languages (e.g., ideophones and vocal gestures) and visual gestures accompanying spoken languages. It seems that iconic components clearly interact with and enter the semantic representation of (multimodal) linguistic utterances. Against this background, this workshop will focus on iconicity as a potentially general property of human language in all modalities (i.e., spoken, written and signed). More information about the workshop and the call for papers can be found here.



New - Sign Café at the University of Göttingen
We plan to meet twice a month for about an hour in the "Café Central" at the University of Göttingen for a "Gebärdencafé (Sign Café)". The "Gebärdencafé" will take place in addition to our "Gebärdentreff" and is intended to be another opportunity for all friends of DGS to exchange ideas and sign in a relaxed atmosphere. It is particularly suitable for students who have completed the DGS 3 class. As with our "Gebärdentreff", we would like to ask everyone to communicate exclusively in DGS. Anyone who has the time and inclination is welcome to drop in spontaneously. At least two people from the SignTeam will always be there and are happy to welcome anyone We will start with the first two sign cafés on July 11 and 25, 2024. During the semester break we will pause the meetings, next semester we will resume with two sign cafés per month. One week before each meeting, we will send a reminder by e-mail via our mailing list.



Joint ViCom Workshop of the SignLab Göttingen and the IDGS Hamburg
On July 4 and 5, 2024, a jointly organized workshop of the SignLab Göttingen and the Institute of German Sign Language and Communication of the Deaf (IDGS) will take place in Hamburg. The workshop aims to bring together research on the expression of emotions in sign languages from different perspectives and disciplines.The expression of emotions in languages is particularly interesting when considering sign languages, as sign languages are more expressive and iconic than spoken languages. It is therefore not surprising that affective and emotional aspects of sign languages have attracted considerable interest in recent years and in particular have driven debates about the linguistic status of different types of manual and non-manual emotional expressions on the continuum between gesture and sign. Further information can be found here.

"Gebärdentreff" of the University of Göttingen
Our next "Gebärdentreff" will take place on 20 June 2024 at 6 pm in the L'Osteria in Göttingen. Anyone who would like to have a nice signing-evening is welcome to drop by. We look forward to a lovely summer evening with lots of flying hands!


Sign Team at the North German Deaf Senior Citizens' Days in Braunschweig
On Friday, May 24, 2024, the Sign Team of the University of Göttingen gave two presentations at the North German Deaf Senior Citizens' Days in Braunschweig. Thomas Finkbeiner and Nina-Kristin Meister first presented their new bimodal book series "Deutsche Gebärdensprache und Deaf Communities" and the first volume of this series "100 Questions and Answers about German Sign Language (DGS)". Afterwards, our former colleague Jens-Michael Cramer and Markus SteinbachMarkus Steinbach then presented the research project “Life stories of elderly Deaf people”. Finally, the documentary film on the life stories “We were there ... we are here” was shown. The interesting evening ended with a stimulating exchange over a snack. We would like to thank the organizers of the Deaf Senior Citizens' Days for inviting us to this wonderful event.

Registration for the ViCom workshop "Expressing Emotions in Sign Languages" now open
The registration for the ViCom workshop "Expressing Emotions in Sign Languages", which will take place on July 4 and 5, 2024, at the University of Hamburg, is now open until May 31, 2024. Everyone who is interested in this workshop is asked to register by email (to the following address): ExEmSiLa@gmail.com. Please include the following information: (i) name, (ii) affiliation and (iii) preferred pronoun. You can also use the email to register for a guided city tour in International Sign on July 3, 2024 and the conference dinner on July 4, 2024. We hope to see all of you in Hamburg in July.

Neha Kulshreshtha finished her dissertation
CONGRATULATIONS! Neha submitted her doctoral thesis in March 2024 and successfully defended it at the end of April. In her doctoral thesis, she investigated different types of interrogative sentences in Indian Sign Language. One focus of the PhD thesis was on the rightward movement of Wh-expressions, which is a unique typological feature of sign languages. She also investigated the grammaticalization of question markers and Wh-expressions. On the day of the defense, an important Göttingen tradition was of course also observed: after the carriage ride to the Old Town Hall, Neha also successfully kissed the Gänseliesel. We are all happy for her!

Public lecture by Susan Goldin-Meadow at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften
On February 1, 2024, Susan Goldin-Meadow from the University of Chicago was invited by the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften to give a public lecture on "The Mind Hidden in Our Hands". In her presentation, Susan argued that gesture is versatile in form and function. Under certain circumstances, gesture can substitute for speech, and when it does, it embodies the properties of language that children themselves bring to language learning, and underscores the resilience of language itself. Under other circumstances, gesture can form a fully integrated system with speech. When it does, it both predicts and promotes learning, and underscores the resilience of gesture in thinking. Together, these lines of Susan's impressive research show how much of our minds is hidden in our hands. After the exciting presentation and the round of questions, everyone was invited for a reception in the foyer of the Forschungskolleg.

International summer school "Form-Meaning Mismatches in Spoken and Visual Communication"

In August 2024, a two-week summer school on Form-Meaning Mismatches in Spoken and Visual Communication will take place at the University of Göttingen. At this summer school, 28 renowned lecturers from Germany and abroad will give one-week courses on various topics from the fields of morphology and syntax, semantics and pragmatics as well as visual communication. There will also be four two-week introductory courses in the field mentioned above. The summer school is jointly organized by the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), the Research Training Group 2636 "Form-Meaning Mismatches" and the Priority Programme 2392 "Visual Communication (ViCom)". Further infdormation about the summer school and the registration can be found here.

Workshop "Clause-type Marking in the Visual Modality"
On February 28 to March 1, a workshop on "Clause-type Marking in the Visual Modality" was held at the Ruhr University Bochum as part of the 46th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS). The three-day workshop with 13 presentations was organized by the SignLab Göttingen together with the IDGS Hamburg and the SignLab Amsterdam. The bimodal workshop, mainly in International Sign and English, but also with Libras and DGS, was a complete success. We would like to thank all participants and our invited presenters Miriam Royer from Florianopolis and Pilar Prieto from Barcelona for the interesting research insights and stimulating discussions.

Promotional video for the workshop "Expressing Emotions in Sign Languages"


ViCom Workshop "Expressing Emotions in Sign Languages" - Call for Papers

The expression of emotions in languages is particularly interesting when considering sign languages, as sign languages are more expressive and iconic than spoken languages. It is therefore not surprising that affective and emotional aspects of sign languages have attracted considerable interest in recent years and in particular have driven debates about the linguistic status of different types of manual and non-manual emotional expressions on the continuum between gesture and sign. This workshop, which will take place in Hamburg on July 4 and 5,2024, aims to bring together research on the expression of emotions in sign languages from different perspectives and disciplines. Further information and the call for papers can be found here.

Invited presentation by Sarah Schwarzenberg from the IDGS Hamburg
On February 1, 2024, Sarah Schwarzenberg from the Institute for German Sign Language and Communication of the Deaf (IDGS) at Hamburg University will give a presentation on "Iconic Metaphors in German Sign Language (DGS)". In her presentation Sarah will show the first results of a corpus-based method for identifying metaphors in DGS. The results indicate that metaphors in DGS tend to be highly iconic and can have either a metaphorical and a literal meaning or a metaphorical meaning only. The study contributes to the analysis of the structure of sign language metaphors in general and in particular to the role of iconicity in sign languages. The lecture will take place from 12 to 2 pm in the Medienraum of the SDP.

Interview with Nina-Kristin Meister und Thomas Finkbeiner in Life InSight



11 new PhD positions at the RTG "Form-meaning mismatches"

The Research-Training Group 2636 "Form-meaning mismatches" at the University of Göttingen has an opening for 11 funded PhD positions (13 TV-L/65%). The positions are limited to 3 years. The graduate students will work on research projects that fit within the overall theme of the RTG. Applicants can select one of the proposed projects or choose a research topic of their own, as long as the proposal fits the RTG’s guiding idea. Every PhD student has at least two members of the RTG as their main supervisors. In addition, there is a thesis committee that oversees the overall progress. The deadline for application is February 19, 2024. For more details about the position, visit the webpage of the RTG.

Workshop on sentence types at the 46th annual meeting of the DGfS in Bochum
Part of the 46th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), which will take place at the Ruhr University Bochum from February 28 to March 1, 2024, is a workshop on "Clause-type marking in the visual modality". The three-day workshop is organized by the SignLab Göttingen in collaboration with the IDGS Hamburg and the SignLab Amsterdam. The languages of the workshop are International Sign/American Sign Language (ASL) and English. Further information on the workshop can be found on the workshop website and on the website of the annual meeting of the DGfS

Collaborative meeting of the linguistic Research Training Groups in Göttingen und Frankfurt
On February 8 and 9, 2024, a jointly organized workshop of the Göttingen Research Training Group 2636 "Form-meaning Mismatches" and the Frankfurt Research Training Group 2016 "Nominal Modification" will take place in the old observatory of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. At this workshop, the doctoral students of the two Research Training Groups will present their projects and discuss possible collaborations and new joint research projects. There will also be two plenary lectures by Merle Weiker (Frankfurt) and Guido Mensching (Göttingen). Further information on the workshop and the program can be found here.