Anita Slominska : The role of simultaneity and iconicity in communicative efficiency in sign languages, & Beyza Sumer : Relationship between language experience, language use and memory, MPI Pays-Bas et Université d'Amsterdam

Anita Slominska.

The role of simultaneity and iconicity in communicative efficiency in sign languages

Research on communicative efficiency, so far, has been systematically studied in spoken languages, which are characterized by their linear structure and predominantly arbitrary form (Levshina, 2022). However, sign languages are expressed entirely in the visual modality which gives rise to the modality-specific properties: simultaneity and iconicity. In this talk, I will propose a new perspective on communicative efficiency by shifting the focus from spoken to sign languages. I will present a series of recent studies, which provide experimental evidence for the central role of simultaneous and iconic constructions in communicative efficiency in Italian Sign Language (Slonimska et al., 2020, 2021, 2022). The findings of these studies show that signers take advantage of the visual modality-specific properties to be communicatively efficient and that these properties evolve in a linguistic system for this function. As such, this work proposes a new avenue for future research to broaden our understanding of communicative efficiency through a lens of a multimodal view of language.

Beyza Sumer. 

Relationship between language experience, language use and memory (voir abstract ci-joint)