initiative 3 -- Interlanguage Mapping, Bilingualism, and Literacy
Many deaf individuals are, of necessity, bilingual; they use a visual language such as ASL and spoken/written one such as English. In this respect they are not different from other bilinguals (Spanish/English, French/German, and so on.) But there is a key way in which they are different: their languages are in different modes. ASL is visual; spoken English is aural. Signing deaf individuals must be, therefore, bimodal as well as bilingual. To put it more precisely: Even though they may not have full access to speech, they must still manipulate representations of both spoken and signed languages. Their bimodalism opens up a unique opportunity to study (a) how languages in different modes are learned, (b) how they influence each other’s grammar, and (c) how they are represented in the brain. Among other goals, we seek to enrich existing models of bimodal bilingualism, to test claims that cross-modal universals exist for signed and spoken languages, and to compare the functional neuroanatomies of reading, signing, fingerspelling and cued speech. Ultimately, we hope to understand how the acquisition, representation and processing of multiple languages unfolds in visual learners.
The is material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number SBE-0541953. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
