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book: Functions of Head and Body Movements in Austrian Sign Language
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Functions of Head and Body Movements in Austrian Sign Language

  • Andrea Lackner
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2018
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About this book

Research on nonmanual elements – or ‘nonmanuals’ – in sign languages has focused on both the possible functions and the occurrence (frequency and form) of these elements in recent years. As a matter of fact, research on nonmanuals is still a quite uncharted territory in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS) today, which has also initiated the study given.

In order to identify head and body movements in ÖGS, these nonmanuals were determined and analyzed functionally via a new user-oriented methodology. Getting feedback of multiple native signers was a main part of this method. Accordingly, you will find the findings of this study in this volume: various functions such as negation, assertion, interrogativity, conditionality, and many more can be expressed nonmanually. Brand new insights into sign language research are given, as well as astonishing results: even (epistemic) modality can be expressed by particular head and body movements.

Author / Editor information

Andrea Lackner, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Austria

Reviews

"This book will be of interest to any sign language, corpus linguistics, or gesture researcher for its comprehensive overview of non-manuals, its novel methodology, and its insights into the nuances of the grammatical function of head and body movements in communication." Benjamin Anible in: Sign Language & Linguistics 22:2, 2019, 298-302

Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
December 4, 2017
eBook ISBN:
9781501507779
Hardcover published on:
December 4, 2017
Hardcover ISBN:
9781501516337
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Front matter:
24
Main content:
261
Illustrations:
80
Tables:
5
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