LINGUIST List 6.414

Wed 22 Mar 1995

Qs: Lg of deaf, Book by Gerdts, Fake lg of children, Fieldwork

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1. Gaberel Drachman, lang and the deaf
2. Alexis Manaster Ramer, Q: A forthcoming book on grammatical relations
3. Rachel Lagunoff, Re: 6.385 Sum: Speaking in tongues
4. , Writing non-fiction account of fieldwork

A team at the Dept of Linguistics, University of Salzburg Austria, is
working on linguistic aspects of language in deaf persons. Hot topics are 1.
language acquisition in born-deaf children after cochlear implantation, 2.
lip reading (better called 'visible phonology', and 3. gap tests for
temporal resolution.
We would welcome contact with linguists working in these fields.
Please Email drachmancosy.sbg.ac.at

Does anybody know anything about a forthcoming book
on grammatical relations ed. by Donna Gerdts and containing
inter alia papers by Keenan and Law on Malagasy? I have
not been able to get a hold of any of these people, and
what I need is as complete a reference as possible.

Alexis MR

Message 3: Re: 6.385 Sum: Speaking in tongues

The summary of the phenomenon of speaking in tongues reminded me of a perhaps
analogous linguistic activity I engaged in as a pre-adolescent: pretending to
speak a foreign language. Sometimes while riding the bus, a friend and I would
engage in long conversations in this fake language, making up sounds, and using
intonational cues to respond to each other. We knew the nonsense we were
interacting in had no meaning, but we hoped the people around us would be
fooled.

Has anyone else experienced this or studied it?

Rachel Lagunoff

I would like to hear from anyone who is planning to be doing linguistic
fieldwork this summer. I want to write a non-fiction account of such a
situation. Please tell me where you're going and what you'll be doing researc
on, and I'll send the details of my project.

Michael Erard
University of Texas at Austin