THEORETICAL ISSUES IN SIGN LANGUAGE RESEARCH

对手语的研究对我们理解手语是至关重要的 人类语言的生物学基础，以及我们的 对耳聋的认识和政策的设计与实施 以及为聋人设计的节目。到目前为止，还没有一个现有的论坛带来 来自不同领域的调查人员，他们对 耳聋和手语。这里没有任何社团或组织 支持这种大型跨学科会议的美国 语言研究。因此，这次会议将提供一个必要的论坛。 让聋人和听力研究人员介绍和讨论新的发展 关于手语的结构，它们的习得，以及 手语和耳聋的神经心理学。观众将包括 来自几个不同领域的研究人员和学生：语言学、社会学 科学，心理学，聋人研究，言语科学，神经科学， 教育和认知科学。因此，会议将 促进跨学科研究，鼓励协作 研究人员之间的合作，否则他们可能不会工作 在一起。 会议的结构将是创新的，将有各种 不同的讨论格式，以及邀请和提交的论文 将被包括在内。该计划将包括广泛的主题，以及 论文将专门针对每个主题领域进行征集。参与者 将会接触到我们对 聋儿语言发展与语音、形态的关系 手语的结构及其神经心理机制 潜在的语言功能，手语在聋人文化中的作用 扫盲，以及对聋人教育和政策采取双语/双文化办法。 几位杰出的研究人员对 会议的每个专题领域都被邀请发言(和 已被接受)，每个人都将介绍他们目前的研究和 参加小组讨论。此外，已经做出了许多努力 使学生能够访问和负担得起会议。这个 来自这次会议的论文将被包括在由 协调员将提供会议的永久记录。一 这次会议的重要成果将是提高对 手语研究对我们理解语言的意义， 耳聋和人类认知。

The investigation of signed languages is crucial to our understanding of the biological foundations of human language, as well as to our understanding of deafness and the designing and implementation of policies and programs for the deaf. To date, there is no existing forum that brings together investigators from different fields who have specific interests in deafness and sign language. There are no societies or organizations within the U.S. which support this kind of large interdisciplinary meeting on sign language research. Therefore, this conference will provide a needed forum for deaf and hearing researchers to present and discuss new developments concerning the structure of signed languages, their acquisition, and the neuropsychology of sign language and deafness. The audience will include researchers and students from several diverse fields: linguistics, social science, psychology, deaf studies, speech sciences, neuroscience, education, and cognitive science. Consequently, the conference will stimulate cross-disciplinary studies and encourage collaborative enterprises between researchers who might not otherwise have worked together. The structure of the meeting will be innovative with a variety of different formats for discussion, and both invited and submitted papers will be included. The program will include a broad range of topics, and papers will be solicited specifically for each topic area. Participants will be exposed to the most recent advances in our understanding of language development in deaf children, the phonological and morphological structure of sign"' d languages, the neural and psychological mechanisms underlying language function, the role of sign language in deaf culture and literacy, and bilingual/bicultural approaches to deaf education and policy. Several distinguished researchers who have contributed significantly to each of the topic areas of the conference have been invited to speak (and have accepted), and each will present their current research and participate in group discussions. Additionally, many efforts have been made to make the conference accessible and affordable to students. The papers from this conference will be included in a volume edited by the co-ordinators which will provide a permanent record of the conference. One important result of this meeting will be an increased awareness of the significance of sign language research to our understanding of language, deafness, and human cognition.