The ESF is the European association of national funding organisations of basic research. Established in 1974, the Foundation currently has 62 Member Organisations from 21 countries. Although its member Organisations are funded mainly by governments, the ESF itself is a non-governmental organisation. It maintains close associations with other international bodies with interests in scientific research, particularly the Commission of the European Union. The ESF works with its Member organisations in the joint study of science policy issues of strategic importance in Europe. The Foundation also brings European scientists together to work on topics of common concern, to coordinate the use of expensive facilities, and to discover and define new endeavours that will benefit from a cooperative approach. The scientific work sponsored by ESF includes basic research in the medical sciences, the life and environmental sciences, the physical and engineering sciences, the humanities and social sciences. These aspects of ESF's activities are conducted through five Standing Committees covering the main fields of science.
The mission of the Foundation is to promote all branches of basic science in Europe, in particular it aims:
The Committee consists of representatives of ESF member research councils and academies, with subject specialists to fill disciplinary gaps in its ordinary membership. The Committee has a policy of encouraging interdisciplinary work and sees as its main task the independent evaluation of collaborative research proposals emanating from the scholarly community. The Committee also has a proactive function in the identification of priority research areas. ESF programmes in the Humanities include those on Language Typology (ended 1995 and now publishing), Concepts and Symbols in the 18th Century and Intersign: Sign Linguistics and Data Exchange.
Intersign: Sign Linguistics and Data Exchange
The focus of this network is the scientific study of sign languages of the deaf. Sign languages are natural, full-fledged languages with a grammatical structure that is comparable to that of spoken languages; research into their structure in Europe is still a recent development, of about the last 20 years, although their study has started even more recently in many countries. Studying sign languages is comparable to studying spoken languages, but it also calls for many special methods and techniques related to the representation of language data and data exchange. This network aims at developing standards and guidelines for the study of (European) sign languages at all levels of language description, including the way these languages are acquired. The planned activities are four workshops with the topics: lexical databases (dictionaries), the representation and coding of the visual form of signs (phonetics/phonology), text corpora and grammatical coding, and language acquisition. A fifth concluding workshop will collect and discuss the results of the network activities. The general goal is to establish coherence and cooperation in an emerging field that is about to experience a growth spurt as a result of two developments. Firstly, in the field of linguistics there has been recent recognition that sign languages will broaden and deepen our understanding of the nature and structure of human language. Secondly, increasingly more sign languages are being officially recognized as minority languages of the Deaf populations of European countries.
There is no doubt today that sign languages of the Deaf are fully fledged, natural languages (Fromkin & Rodman 1988). There is a widespread misunderstanding that deaf people across the world use one and the same sign language. This is however not the case. Where there is a deaf community, there is usually a sign language which came into being spontaneously, just as spoken languages do. Thus, for example, in the United Kingdom we find British Sign Language in England, Wales and Scotland, in Northern Ireland we find both British Sign Language in the Protestant community and Irish Sign Language among the Catholic community (McDonnell 1997). As will be clear from these examples, a sign language is not derived from or closely linked to a spoken language. Since linguistic research is typically based on the comparative study of different languages, Europe provides an ideal setting for the linguistic study of sign languages, there being at least 25 such languages in a relatively small geographical area. The study of these distinct languages is of great importance for the field of (sign)linguistics, as well of course for the Deaf linguistic minorities who use these languages (Kyle & Woll 1985).
Sign languages are produced and perceived in a different physical modality, that is a visual-gestural modality, whereas spoken languages are in the vocal-auditory modality. Until recently the emphasis in linguistic research has been on spoken languages and, in fact, on rather a limited number of these. The proposals that have been made about candidate universal properties of language have, therefore, been based on a rather small subset of human languages. Recent research on languages other than English, especially on languages other than the Indo-European family, have often challenged the postulated universals, suggesting modifications or complete reconsideration. This in itself illustrates the importance of the study of languages other than those usually focused on in linguistic research.
In this respect sign languages form a very important testing ground for candidate language universals, and for isolating those universals from the effects of modality of production and perception. By studying the structure of sign languages, linguistic analysis moves beyond the modality-specific and potentially separates those aspects of linguistic hypotheses that are modality-specific from those that are valid for all languages. Establishing modality specific properties (of both sign and spoken languages) is in itself an important objective. The description of universal cognitive modality-free properties of languages is, however, at least as important an objective, and some might say that it is the essential goal of research into the linguistic ability of the human species. The way to this goal requires consideration of the broadest possible range of language types.
The study of sign languages has its beginnings in the 1950's in both Europe and the United States (Tervoort 1953, Stokoe 1960). Although considerable work has been done in the areas of phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon (e.g. Bergman 1982, 1995, Bergman & Dahl 1994, Bos 1994, Pizzuto & Corazza 1996, Pizzuto & Volterra 1996, van der Hulst 1996), the tradition is a very young one compared to that of the study of spoken languages. The bulk of the work has been done on one sign language: American Sign Language (e.g. Klima & Bellugi 1979). Gradually in Europe the existing centres for the study of sign language are accumulating results on their individual sign languages. These data from these different languages will make it possible to explore the crosslinguistic variation found between sign languages. Like spoken languages sign languages differ in the way their lexicons are built up, that is signs with comparable meanings have widely different forms; at the level of word formation and sentence structure sign languages have different grammatical rules. These properties and differences must be described in detail in order to arrive at language specific grammars but also to deduce the universal properties of sign languages mentioned above. On the basis of these universals it will be possible to deepen our understanding of the nature of language in whatever modality.
It is important to realize that the study of sign languages, as well as raising sign-specific issues, also raises most of the issues related to spoken languages. This is true not only for the methods of linguistic analysis but also with regard to the necessity for basing the analysis on large corpora that are enriched with linguistic coding.
In the last decade a great deal of attention and funding has been given to the creation of such large corpora and data-bases for spoken languages such as the British National Corpus of 100 million words of written and spoken English. As the example reflects, there are two types of corpora, one based on written texts, the other based on recorded speech. Today, both types draw heavily on modern computer data-base technology, even more so in the case of the speech corpus since the actual acoustic signal has to be linked to the transcription. The Dutch and Belgian governments are just about to invest a large amount of money for the establishment of such a data-base following the example of several European countries. The modern developments in the creation of such data-bases have been stimulated by new methods of information-sharing on a world-wide basis. These new methods have enhanced the importance of standardization for the transcription of language data, the meta-linguistic coding of the data, the format of data-storage and their accessibility. This need for standardization in the case of spoken language corpora has led to European projects such as the EAGLES project which is about to report its results (EAGLES 1997).
Sign language data-bases and corpora are a pre-requisite for cross-linguistic work as mentioned above. However, since there is no commonly used writing system for any sign language, sign languages have no written form and so a sign language data-base cannot be based on written forms of the language such as books or newspapers. The language used in face-to-face interaction is necessarily the basis of the data-base whereby the transcription of this language is crucial for having access to the data. A standard format for the written transcriptions is essential for comparative analysis. The written transcriptions can be the base of the data-base but, like data-bases for speech, the transcription is ideally linked to the digitized video-signal of the taped sign language data. Through modern technology techniques for efficient storage and coding of such complex data have been developed and are continually evolving (syncWRITER, Papaspyrou & Zienert 1990; Signstream, MacLaughlin, 1995; Signbase 1996; Boyes-Braem 1995). Other technological aspects involve compression techniques facilitating storage and transmission of video-material.
With regard to transcription of sign languages the modality difference means that sign language researchers cannot automatically draw on the traditions of spoken language research. Sign languages have their own particular requirements in terms of transcription but also analysis. For example, many elements of sign languages are simultaneous such as hand and face movements and these need to be represented accurately in time.
Summarizing, we have sketched the subject of sign linguistics indicating the current state of research. We have made clear that the study of sign languages is comparable to the study of spoken languages both in terms of the issues that arise in describing these languages and in terms of the prerequisites for such descriptions. The study of spoken languages has, however, the advantage of many more years of research and takes place on a broad international scale. The study of sign languages, on the other hand, began only recently and sign language researchers have had much less oppurtunity to cooperate. The work on a few individual sign languages in Europe is reasonably advanced; the study of other languages has just begun. The new technology that is becoming available can be of great help in pushing this work further, but it is important that the following phase of research takes place in an international context.
In this section we will specify the goals that substantiate the need for a network and the planned organizational structure. The coordinating group consists of the following scientists:
As indicated above, research into sign languages in Europe began in a few locations some twenty years ago but the interest in and demand for research has drastically increased in this decade. Europe is the only place in the world where several different sign languages are being studied within a relatively small area, which offers an excellent oppurtunity for exchange of insights and crosslinguistic exploration.
The recognition of the national sign language as an official minority language (recommended by the European Parliament) is being discussed in various countries. This process requires a substantial basis of knowledge about these languages, i.e. extensive linguistic research based on lexical and sentence level corpora. Modern technology is an essential part of this research. The techniques for recording, analyzing and storing visual data are developing continually and have to be adapted to the needs of sign language research. It is essential that all the relevant research (at the theoretical, empirical and technical level), be shared to allow for a fast and efficient development of the field. The biennial international conferences specifically for sign languages are too infrequent and too diverse to allow for this exchange to take place effectively. The form of smaller, highly focused workshops within a Network will make this possible. Baker and Van der Hulst organized a focused workshop on phonology and morphology in 1993 (cf. van der Hulst & Baker 1996); this meeting was judged so useful that the plan to look for a continuation in the form of an ESF network arose already at that time. Strengthening the organizational structure of the field Coherence and cooperation is in many scientific fields strongly supported by the existence of international associations or foundations that provide organizational structure and continuity for conferences, international projects and journals. The field of sign linguistics at present does not have such an organization which functions at this level. A Network will undoubtedly lead to the (re)instalment of an international foundation.
Joint research calls for the possibility of exchanging information and results. We have indicated that various research groups are working on the representation of sign language data in computerized form, building individual systems with largely similar goals. With a common basis for transcription, data analysis and storage it will be possible to exchange data necessary for comparative research, also using the modern techniques of data transfer. It is therefore necessary to discuss and compare in great detail all systems that are under development in order to strive for a degree of standardization. This aspect of the network requires the involvement of computer scientists, specialized in database technology, data exchange formats and hardware. The Hamburg group will set up a website for depositing and retrieving videomaterial as a first step toward exchanging information of this type.
We have argued that comparing languages is an essential aspect of theoretical linguistic work; the importance of such comparative work for spoken languages can be seen in the ESF project EUROTYP. A similar comparison of European sign languages (in collaboration with linguists specializing in spoken languages) is expected to lead to important new insights in language typology in relation to the main components of grammar: lexicon, phonology, morphology and syntax. A prerequisite for such comparative work is a common approach to transcription and analysis making data exchange possible, as stated above.
Some European countries are at the beginning of their sign language work; often the resources for this work are very limited. Clearly, researchers in these countries must be advised and helped to work efficiently by making available information and experience from other sign language research groups. A network will be highly instrumental in gathering such information and in sharing it with groups in the initial phases of sign language research.
It is evident that existing Deaf researchers be involved in the network activities. In many countries, however, it is difficult for Deaf people to participate in the work on their own language, because only few countries facilitate academic training for Deaf people. The network activities will stimulate such training in general and specifically aim at involving Deaf native signers in sign linguistics as part of future activities.
Deaf people have always existed in our societies - ancient Greek philosophers made observations of sign languages and deaf people were mentioned in the various legal systems of ancient times. The emphasis in the education of deaf people has been however on spoken languages, leading even in the past hundred years to a suppression of the use of sign languages (Tellings 1995). In the late 1970's educators, along with psychologists, sociologists and linguists, began to signal the underachievement of deaf school pupils and to rediscover the importance of sign languages. In 1988 the European Parliament passed a recommendation that the countries of Europe should recognize their national sign language as an official language for deaf people. At the present time this has been achieved in a few European countries; other countries are in the middle of this process, others are poised to begin. The European Commission has recently funded a large project under the supervision of the European Union of the Deaf which aims to promote the recognition of sign languages in all member states. In this context national sign language committees have been established in each member state; these committees can certainly benefit from the results of this Network. The recognition of a sign language in an national context is also usually combined with the introduction of bilingual education for deaf children, that is the national sign language is used together with the national spoken language as a medium for education. These developments are an important and welcome impulse to the study of the European sign languages and it would clearly be desirable for such researchers to share experiences with respect to the recognition process and the consequences for both the Deaf and the hearing community.
We propose to divide the activities over 5 workshops to be held over a period of three years. The first three workshops will be devoted to specific themes according to the main linguistic areas: lexicon, phonology, grammar (morphology and syntax). A fourth theme will be language acquisition and the fifth meeting will aim at collecting the results of the entire network. Each workshop will be organized by one or two members of the coordinating group and be attended by the other members of this group plus 6 or 7 specialists in sign language research or related disciplines. In the description of each workshop suggestions are made as to potential participants either on the basis of their individual expertise or as representatives of a group. The first three workshops focus on the major levels of data organization from a linguistic point of view: the lexical, phonological and grammatical levels. The ordering of the themes reflects the path that the description of languages usually takes. The topic of language acquisition is also dealt with since there is great need for research in this area in connection with education of deaf children; acquisition data also has specific problems related to data collection, transcription and analysis (cf. international database for spoken acquisition data CHILDES, MacWhinney 1995). The workshops will primarily approach the themes in terms of discussing database systems that have been developed (or must be developed) for each of these areas. In our experience such an approach combines the need to address all the relevant theoretical issues with the need to arrive at practical systems that will make the study of specific languages and comparative research possible. In all cases each workshop aims at comparing and clarifying the current activities with respect to the theme. As we write this proposal, we know where the relevant activities take place and what stages research groups are in. Each workshop organizer will gather detailed information on the current state beforehand and distribute this among the workshop participants. The workshop meeting will focus on in-depth discussions of the differences in approaches aiming at recommendations or guidelines for standardization. These will be made available as working papers to a wider circle of sign language researchers, especially those who are in the beginning phase. The theme organizer (supported by members of the coordination group) will develop these recommendations on the basis of responses from the field and eventually present a final report at the fifth meeting. Working papers and elaborations of the guidelines, combined with specific case studies, will be published in one or more volumes.
Each member of the coordinating group is involved in national projects; here the information is limited to international activities. Inter-sign - Human Capital and Mobility Network This Network involving institutions in the UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands formally finished in 1996 but the publication from the Network meeting on sign language acquisition is still in preparation, that is a manual for doing sign language acquisition research in which guidelines are proposed for the field (Baker et al. 1997). This publication can form the basis for the acquisition workshop. SIGN - Project MARTIS, ALFA Network After a preparatory meeting in Barcelona in 1996 a proposal has been submitted for colloboration between European sign language groups and some South American groups on multilingual assessment, resource and training in sign. This project will have input for the ESF Network in the areas of lexical data-bases and acquisition. Signbase - TIDE Project 1282 This collaborative project between the Dutch Foundation or the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Child, the computer firm Bright Side of Life and the University of Durham has developed software for a lexical database which has been implemented to produce a small CD-rom dictionary. This project can give useful input to the lexical database workshop. European Sign Language Assessment Group (ESLAG) This group recently formed by researchers from the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany aims at sharing expertise in the development of assessment instruments for sign languages. These instruments are crucial in bilingual education programmes. This group can benefit from the work of the workshops but can also give input to the acquisition workshop.
The network activities will be made public in the usual ways:
The study of language and language use is not only the domain of linguists; there are important interactions with the field of cognitive and developmental psychology and sociology, education. The coordinating committee will devote special attention to distributing the Network results to that wider circle of sign researchers using the known (electronic) mailing lists. Since the network will produce guidelines for fundamental aspects of sign language research, it is the aim to make this knowledge available through training workshops. These can be organized within a European context, possibly within summer schools or within a programme comparable to the current TMR programme from the European Commission. Such workshops would necessarily fall in the last year of or after the Network (see 5.3.2) Any further information about the ESF Network: INTERSIGN can be obtained from:
Ingeborg van Gijn (secr.)Baker A. E., Bogaerde B. van den, Coerts J.A. & Rooijmans C. 1997 Sign Language Acquisition Research: a Manual Amsterdam Series in Child Language Development (in prep.)
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Bergman B. & Dahl O. 1994 Ideophones in Sign Language. The place of reduplication in the tense aspect system of Swedish Sign Language. In C. Bache, H. Basboll & C.E. Lindberg (eds.) Tense, Aspect and Action: empirical and theoretical contributions to language typolo-gy. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp.397-422.
Bergman B. 1995 Manual and non-manual expression of negation in Swedish Sign Lan-guage. In H. Bos & T. Schermer (eds) Sign Language Research 1994: International Studies on Sign Language and Communication of the Deaf, Vol. 29. Hamburg, Signum Verlag, pp.85-103
Bos H. 1994 Pronoun copy in Sign Langauge of the Netherlands In H. Bos & T. Schermer (eds) Sign Language Research 1994: International Studies on Sign Language and Communication of the Deaf, Vol. 29. Hamburg, Signum Verlag, pp.121-148
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Fromkin V. & Rodman R. 1988 An Introduction to Language Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York
Hulst H. van der 1995 Units in the analysis of sign. Phonology 10/2, 209-241. Hulst H. van der 1995 Head-dependency relations in the representation of signs. In: H. Bos & T. Schermer (eds.), Sign Language Research 1994. Proceedings of the 4th European congress on Sign Language Research. Munich 1-3 September 1994. Hamburg: Signum Press.
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MacWhinney, B. 1995 The CHILDES Project: tools for analyzing talk. Erlbaum, New Jersey.
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Papaspyrou C. & Zienert H. 1990 The SyncWRITER Computerprogramme. In S. Prillwitz & T. Vollhaber (eds) Sign Language Research and Application, International Studies on Sign Langua-ge and Commu-nication with the Deaf Vol. 13, Signum, Hamburg, pp.275-294
Pizzuto E. & Corazza S. 1996 Noun Morphology in Italian Sign Language In H. v.d. Hulst & A. Baker (eds) Lingua, Vol.98, pp.169-196
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Tellings A. 1995 The two hundred years' war in deaf education Ph.D. thesis, Nijmegen University, The Netherlands.
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