FY 2008 Annual Report of Achievements - Gallaudet University

It Takes a Village
See English.
A-70
Library
Mrs. Sigourney in Deaf Hartford
Status: Ongoing Begin date: 2004 End date: No set date
Principal Investigator(s):
Gates, Diana – Library
Sayers, Edna Edith – English
Description:
This project is a book reprinting of Lydia Sigourney’s poems and sketches about Deaf
people and the American Asylum in Hartford, including poems about Alice Cogswell, Mason Fitch
Cogswell, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Julia Brace, and Laura Bridgman. An introduction places
Sigourney and her work in antebellum American literature.
Linguistics
Assimilation Patterns in Fingerspelling
Status: Ongoing Begin date: September 2006 End date: May 2009
Principal Investigator(s):
Fuller, Jennifer (student) – Linguistics
Description:
This project examines the interaction between the fingerspelled signs P, G, and H and all
other signs in the manual alphabet with regard to palm orientation. Several possible constraints are
considered in the analysis (including tenodesis, the theory of ease of articulation), as well as deaf
signers’ use of orthographic structure in reading. Data is currently being collected from prerecorded
narratives of deaf signers from the TV series Deaf Mosaic. Approximately 200 words have been
coded. Data was also recently collected from videotapes of 14 Deaf signers asked to complete a
series of elicitation tasks which included the following: discussing several everyday topics, which
normally include fingerspelled words, such as TV shows, movies, and cars; retelling 12 comic strip
stories with words that included P, G, and H in the initial, medial, and final position of words; and
fingerspelling the target signs P, G, and H in isolation from individual note cards. It is hoped that
the findings of this study will be used to identify specific patterns in fingerspelling that will ultimately
improve curricula for fingerspelling courses, interpreter training, and sign language recognition
software.