Sign Language & Linguistics - Online First

Demonstratives are essential for coordinating joint attention during discourse. In contrast to spoken languages that typically distribute the work of establishing and maintaining joint attention across two or more demonstratives such as this and that in English, American Sign Language (ASL) does not have contrasting forms. ASL relies almost exclusively on pointing signs for the grammatical functions of demonstratives. This study investigates whether exophoric demonstrative points are modulated with nonmanual markers (NMMs) in response to different contexts of use. 455 demonstrative points were elicited in a puzzle completion task completed by ten ASL signers. Conditional inference trees were used to evaluate the effects of distance, intersubjective alignment and referent specificity on the NMMs produced with the demonstrative points. The results indicate that signers signal increasing distance from their body with an arc movement of the hand, as well as head and body leans, whereas NMMs on the face were associated with intersubjective functions. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found no NMMs associated with the need for greater specificity of demonstrative points when multiple potential referents were in the field of view.

This article traces the early history and formation of Czech Sign Language in the broader European context of deaf education. Drawing on nineteenth-century pedagogical texts, dictionaries, and archival records, it examines how sign language developed within the Prague Institute for the Deaf and Dumb, founded in 1786, and how it was shaped by contact with other sign traditions. Particular attention is paid to the influence of the Viennese Institute, which mediated elements of the French manual method while integrating German educational practices. Through comparison of early Czech and Austrian sources with French materials, the study identifies overlapping but distinct sign repertoires and shows that Czech Sign Language emerged as an independent linguistic system within the Austrian milieu. The findings highlight the interplay of institutional, linguistic, and cultural factors underlying the genesis of Central European sign languages and contribute to diachronic sign language linguistics through the application of sign language archaeology.

This study investigates the role of action bias in the acquisition of classifier constructions by deaf children acquiring Turkish Sign Language (TİD). While classifier handshapes are morphologically complex and iconic, deaf children (aged 7–9) were found to prefer handling classifiers (reflecting the actions performed by agents) more than signing adults, even in contexts requiring entity classifiers (reflecting the visual properties of their referents). The findings reveal that children’s frequent use of action-based lexical signs for nouns influenced their classifier preferences, suggesting a cognitive bias toward motoric representations. Furthermore, our results suggest the use of handling classifiers in intransitive contexts — even by adult signers — thus indicating a new type of variability in classifier use, which has not been reported for other sign languages before. These results provide new insights into how iconicity and lexical context shape the developmental trajectory of classifier constructions in sign language acquisition.