Language, whether spoken or signed, is arguably Homo sapiens’ greatest achievement. Although most children seemingly acquire language without effort, for others the acquisition task is more challenging.
In this lecture, Chloë Marshall will argue that studying these challenges and finding out how learners overcome them informs us about the cognitive processes involved in language acquisition and also informs us about how we can support language acquisition in all learners.
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7/3/2023
Meet Kearsy Cormier, the Director of the Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL), as she warmly welcomes you to the world of DCAL’s innovative research. DCAL boasts a multidisciplinary team of experts from fields such as linguistics, psychology, and neuroscience. They are committed to investigating how deaf individuals engage with, comprehend, and learn languages, as well as understanding the cognitive processes unique to deaf people. The research conducted at DCAL has been groundbreaking, shedding light on language processing in the brain, the influence of language variation on sign language structure, and how language is processed by both deaf children and adults. These insights are not only integral for advancing the scientific knowledge in this domain but are also invaluable in informing educational practices and clinical interventions tailored for the deaf community. Explore DCAL's website to learn more about their mission and groundbreaking discoveries.
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6/8/2023
Sign Language Linguistics Research
This year we had several publications in sign linguistics, including a paper on sociolinguistic variation in mouthing in the BSL Corpus, and a chapter on the future of sign language corpora in a new edited volume on sign language corpora from Gallaudet University Press. We have continued work on several sign linguistics projects including writing up papers on sign sentence types, questions, and negation in BSL, and collecting data for a project on sign order for an ESRC funded project on language evolution. In sign language technology, we published a conference paper on tools for automatically identifying sign boundaries. With colleagues from University of Surrey and Oxford, we organised a workshop on Sign Language Recognition Translation and Production. We also continue to work on EASIER, a large EU project on automatic translation processes for European sign languages with partners around Europe including the European Union of the Deaf.
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12/2/2022
Resources for research and for the community
We have a range of resources from all of our research projects and findings. The DCAL Research Data Archive is a publicly available data archive of our studies of language, communication and cognition. Browse the data from our unique projects here and learn more about our findings!
The British Sign Language (BSL) Corpus is a publicly accessible, on-line record of BSL used by Deaf people in the UK. It’s a collection of video clips showing Deaf people using BSL. You can also explore BSL SignBank, which has approximately 2500 BSL signs developed from the BSL Corpus. In other words, BSL signs directly from the deaf community!
For qualified professionals and researchers working with deaf children and adults, the DCAL Assessment Portal hosts eight language and cognition assessments. These assessments can be used to assess language abilities and language development in deaf adults and children and assess deaf signers where there are concerns ab
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12/2/2022
DCAL has an exciting new PhD funding opportunity, here at UCL. Project topics could include for example, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, language development relating to sign language or deaf communication and cognition in general.
Funding is available for 4 years, combining both a PhD also a DCAL Science Communication Officer role, the latter for roughly half a day every week.
You must be able to sign BSL minimum level 2.
We strongly encourage applications from deaf, disabled and ethnic minority backgrounds. For more info, please click the link.
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10/24/2022
DCAL_D-List_Participation_Video
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5/12/2022
The British Sign Language (BSL) Corpus is a publicly accessible, on-line record of BSL used by Deaf people in the UK. It’s a collection of video clips showing Deaf people using BSL, together with background information about the signers and written descriptions of the signing in ELAN. You can also explore BSL SignBank, a wonderful website with approximately 2500 BSL signs developed from the BSL Corpus. In other words, BSL signs directly from the deaf community!
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12/8/2021
The current pandemic has changed the ways in which we communicate and work, in many cases with more profound effects for deaf and hard of hearing people. Throughout the pandemic, members of DCAL developed a range of strategies and guidelines to adapt to these new challenges. These include:
• Remote working guidelines to ensure that deaf people could maximise their online participation in virtual meetings and events, and reduce visual demands and fatigue.
• COVID-19 BSL e-books for children, in collaboration with Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children. These e-books provide deaf children who use BSL with direct access to crucial information about coronavirus and its impact on everyday life.
• Information about the impact of face masks on communication. We wrote a statement explaining communication issues due to face coverings, where we highlight the main challenges and also explain some possible adaptations.
• How to caption videos. As part of our commitment to provide accessible info
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12/8/2021