When we talk about a character's spatial relationships in a story, we sometimes build a space in front of our body so that the listeners will develop an image of the narrative world. In this study, I observe the way space and viewpoint are used in Japanese signed narrative discourse. For analysis, I used published data on signed narratives. I had three focuses when analyzing the data: (1) how the narrators introduce characters in a signed narrative space, (2) how they keep the space, and (3) how they managed the viewpoint to represent character's relationship during the narration. I analyzed gaze behavior and body direction in the data using gesture studies and conversation analysis perspective, viewpoint of speaker and activity involvement. From detailed case study, I found that the signers had their own ways of maintaining this space and keeping the imagined world in the signer's mind. The narrators maintained the space consistently, and all of the signs were designed in relation to this space. For example, when the speaker shifted to another character's perspective, to represent his or her utterances, he or she kept the spatial relationship in the narrative space. While using the space, the narrators directed their gaze and body to two main places: the narrative space and the listener's face. When they looked at the narrative space, they could draw the listener's attention to that space, and when they looked at the listener's face, they could monitor his or her reactions. In conclusion, I found that the signer's gaze behavior and body direction served not only as a grammatical element in sign language but also to regulate signed conversation.

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We develop an electronic JSL (Japanese Sign Language)-Japanese dictionary. There are some dictionaries regarding JSL available in bookstores, but none of them is a type of dictionary where you can look up a JSL word and find the meaning corresponding to Japanese. Our dictionary is a phoneme-based JSL-Japanese dictionary. You search a target word of JSL by phonemes that constitute a JSL word, i.e., handshape, location, and movement. To develop a phoneme-based electronic JSL-Japanese dictionary, we first develop a database in which a JSL word is analyzed into phonemes, and then develop a system to narrow down candidates for a target JSL word that we would like to find, display the picture, and return the meaning. We also devise an interface that facilitates word search for the user.

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The purpose of this paper is to propound an argument of turn-taking mechanism in Japanese Sign Language (or JSL) conversation. A great deal of effort has been made on clarifying the fact of JSL. Previous studies have focused on quantitative profile of signals (e.g., form, type or function). However, in order to understand features of signals, we should make more detailed and qualitative clarification about how signals are related to conversational sequence. In this paper, using videotaped and scripted data, I illustrate an interactive relationship between gaze-shifting, handholding and adjacency pair (Schegloff and Sacks 1973) in JSL conversation. As a result of analysis, I found several features of gaze-shifting and hand-holding. (1) Gaze-shift is functioned as a prior rule of turn-taking in JSL conversations rather than the signal. (2) Hand-holding has a positive function which projects the 3rd turn. These features can be understood as a property of sign language which components are displayed visually. To make these arguments more cogent, we should like to analyze more data and should like to approach sequential organization of JSL from other view point.

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In the present paper, we examined the error tendency among Japanese Sign Language (JSL) learners when they produced sentences including agreeing verbs. In this study, short sentences written in Japanese were presented to the subjects, and they were asked to grasp the meaning of the sentences. A few minutes later, they were further asked to express the contents in JSL. Their signed expressions were recorded on the video tape. These were analyzed from the viewpoint of “doer's position” and “direction of the verb.” Adult deaf signers participated in the analysis. The result showed the following four characteristics in errors: (1) error in doer's position, (2) change of the starting point, (3) undifferentiated directions, and (4) inadequate planning of contexts in sign production. Moreover, the result also suggested the following five points: (1) setting of doer's position, (2) change of the starting point of the verb, (3) differentiation of the direction of the verb, (4) classification of verb types, and (5) planning of contexts in sign production.

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Previous studies suggested that emphasis or emotion causes changes in the hand movements of people using Japanese Sign Language. There has not been enough research on the change in signing speed (lower or higher), and there has been only a little research on the duration of sign components (words, transitions, and pauses). In this study, we analyzed the arm movement variation in relationship to the signing speed. The arm movements used to sign 20 sentences were recorded at three speeds (high, normal, and low) using a motion tracking system. We analyzed the relationship between the signing speed and the size of the gestures or the speed of the arms. We found that a change in signing speed caused mainly a change in the size of the gestures and that when the gesture was constrained by the location of the arm, the arm speed changed.

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This paper presents an analysis in Matsuoka (1997) of three seemingly unrelated constructions in American Sign Language (ASL): verb final, verb sandwich, and object shift. It is argued here that the three constructions are all derived via verb raising targeting the Asp head, which is assumed to be head-final in ASL. It is also shown that the Copy Theory of Movement (Chomsky 1995) relates the verb final and the verb sandwich constructions. The syntactic analyses in the previous work are presented in a recent framework in the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995). Written for the audience who might not be familiar with Minimalist Syntax, the paper includes an introduction of the derivation of sentences in spoken English and French. Braze's (2003) amendment of Matsuoka's model is also presented. In the discussion of the object shift construction, the paper shows that spoken and sign languages both exhibit the abstract syntactic property regarding the availability of verb raising and object shift. Particularly, it is noteworthy that Holmberg's Generalization can be observed in the object shift construction in both spoken Icelandic and ASL. The analysis presented in this paper strongly indicates the possibility that verb raising and its relationship to the availability of object shift are a part of the universal aspects of Human Language.

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Japanese–Japanese Sign Language Dictionary, issued by Japanese Federation of the Deaf, is assumed as one of the best-organized corpus for sign language researchers as well as sign language learners. The authors also utilized the dictionary to obtain new coordinate system for better sign animations via natural language processing technique as reported in previous paper [2]. On the course of the analysis, the authors are forced to digitize the dictionary to obtain notations of each sign words (denoted as sign illustration in the dictionary) written in Japanese. The very basic language operation applied to restoring recognition errors of optical character reader revealed unexpected features of the dictionary. 630 illustrations out of 3235 illustrations used in the dictionary are expressed in two or more different sentences. Although the unevenness is mostly caused by simple variation of Japanese expressions, some of the variations are caused by inflections of sign expressions themselves depend on contexts. As the unevenness may be caused by nature of sign language itself, researchers to tackle cognition mechanisms of sign language via sign notations need to take the feature account.

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I visited Taiwan on June 6-7, 2008 to present a paper on bilingual and bicultural education for deaf children in Japan at a seminar held at Tunghai University, Taichung. On that occasion, I had a chance to visit a school for the deaf in Taichung and an association of hearing impaired persons and their families. It was an excellent opportunity to observe the use of Taiwan Sign Language (TSL). Some salient characteristics of TSL are summarized below through comparisons with the situation in Japan. • At the National Taichung Special Education School for the Hearing Impaired, the signs used in classroom are Signed Standard Chinese, not the local natural sign • Certification of sign language interpreters started two years ago, and there is no professional association of sign language interpreters yet. • There is one sign language in Taiwan, with regional variations. Among the regional variations, the Taipei dialect is the most preferred. • The extended middle finger, which is more difficult to articulate, is used more frequently in TSL than in Japanese Sign Language (JSL). TSL also retains the use Comparative studies of the two sign languages would be interesting from a historical point of view in establishing that older forms tend to be retained on the periphery. language, that is, Taiwan Sign Language. The use of Signed Standard Chinese is encouraged to reflect the Chinese grammar more accurately and is viewed as a more acceptable “standard.” of the ring finger, as in /SISTER/, which is now articulated with the pinky in JSL. It seems that the shift is toward easier handshapes. In TSL the handshapes using the middle finger seem to be still productive, while they are fading from use in JSL. I visited Taiwan on June 6-7, 2008 to present a paper on bilingual and bicultural education for deaf children in Japan at a seminar held at Tunghai University, Taichung. On that occasion, I had a chance to visit a school for the deaf in Taichung and an association of hearing impaired persons and their families. It was an excellent opportunity to observe the use of Taiwan Sign Language (TSL). Some salient characteristics of TSL are summarized below through comparisons with the situation in Japan. • At the National Taichung Special Education School for the Hearing Impaired, the signs used in classroom are Signed Standard Chinese, not the local natural sign • Certification of sign language interpreters started two years ago, and there is no professional association of sign language interpreters yet. • There is one sign language in Taiwan, with regional variations. Among the regional variations, the Taipei dialect is the most preferred. • The extended middle finger, which is more difficult to articulate, is used more frequently in TSL than in Japanese Sign Language (JSL). TSL also retains the use Comparative studies of the two sign languages would be interesting from a historical point of view in establishing that older forms tend to be retained on the periphery. language, that is, Taiwan Sign Language. The use of Signed Standard Chinese is encouraged to reflect the Chinese grammar more accurately and is viewed as a more acceptable “standard.” of the ring finger, as in /SISTER/, which is now articulated with the pinky in JSL. It seems that the shift is toward easier handshapes. In TSL the handshapes using the middle finger seem to be still productive, while they are fading from use in JSL.Comparative studies of the two sign languages would be interesting from a historical point of view in establishing that older forms tend to be retained on the periphery.

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This paper represents ａ preliminary treatment of the ethnography of African Deaf communities, focusing on the Deaf community in the Republic of Cameroon. Ethnographic data on the population, organizations, sign languages, education, history, vocations and sign language interpreters within this Deaf community are presented. Certain anecdotes originating from Deaf churches and Deaf schools are also presented. The historical and cultural characteristics of African societies underscore the following research interests: (a) the multilingual situation of spoken languages and of sign languages; (b) the presence of foreign sign languages and the attitudes of Deaf people; and (c) the " unintentional results " Deaf Africans of low levels of development. In addition, two ideas to promote cultural anthropological research based on the fieldwork conducted within Deaf cultures are suggested: (a) the construction of databases on African Deaf communities and cultures; and (b) the training of Deaf and hearing fieldworkers who can conduct research in sign languages.

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