Project Participants
Thomas Finkbeiner
(Principal Investigator)
University of Göttingen
thomas.finkbeiner@uni-goettingen.de
Thomas Albert Finkbeiner is deaf and grew up with German Sign Language (DGS) as his native language. He is a certified social worker / certified social pedagogue (FH), state-certified sign language lecturer and state-certified sign language interpreter for DGS and International Sign. Since 2017, he has been working at the Seminar for German Philology at the Georg-August-University Göttingen as a lecturer for DGS and Deaf Studies. He is involved in various research on sign languages as a researcher, consultant and translator. He is editing the first bimodal-bilingual book series in German Sign Language (DGS) and written German ‘Deutsche Gebärdensprache und Deaf Communities’ (Buske Verlag, with Nina-Kristin Meister) and the ‘German Sign Language Calendar’ (Buske Verlag, with Nina-Kristin Meister).
Selected publications
- Thomas Finkbeiner, Nina-Kristin Meister and Alexander Silbersdorff (in prep.): Gemeinsam auf dem Weg zur barrierefreien digitalen Hochschullehre. Mathematische Lehrvideos mit Deutscher Gebärdensprache (DGS) (in prep.). In: Neues Handbuch Hochschullehre. Berlin: DUZ Verlags- und Medienhaus.
- Thomas Finkbeiner and Nina-Kristin Meister (in prep.): Sprachkalender Deutsche Gebärdensprache 2024. Hamburg: Buske.
- Thomas Finkbeiner, Liona Paulus and Nina-Kristin Meister (in prep.): 100 Fragen und Antworten rund um die Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS). Hamburg: Buske.
- Nina-Kristin Pendzich, Jens-Michael Cramer, Thomas Finkbeiner, Annika Herrmann and Markus Steinbach (2022): How do Signers Mark Conditionals in German Sign Language? Insights from a Sentence Reproduction Task on the Use of Nonmanual and Manual Markers. In: Croatian Review of Rehabilitation Research 58 (Special Issue: Sign Language, Deaf Culture, and Bilingual Education), 206-226.
- Thomas Finkbeiner and Nina-Kristin Pendzich (2022): Sprachkalender Deutsche Gebärdensprache 2023. Hamburg: Buske.
Dr. Nina-Kristin Meister
(Principal Investigator)
University of Göttingen
ninakristin.meister@uni-goettingen.de
Nina-Kristin Meister (née Pendzich) received her PhD in German Linguistics from the Georg-August-University of Göttingen with a dissertation entitled “Lexical Nonmanuals in German Sign Language (DGS). An Empirical and Theoretical Investigation” (2018: Wilhelm von Humboldt-Preis German Linguistic Society (DGfS), 2017: Christian-Gottlob-Heyne-Preis Göttingen Graduate School of Humanities). Since 2017 she is the director of the Sign Language Lab at the Department of German Philology at the University of Göttingen and is involved in various research projects. Her research interests are in the field of theoretical and experimental sign language linguistics. She investigates the interfaces between gesture, emotion, and sign language, grammatical and lexical nonmanuals, narrative structures, various sentence types such as conditional sentences, and iconicity in sign languages. She has applied a variety of empirical methodologies and works with the Facial Action Coding System (FACS, Ekman et al. 2002, certified FACS-Coder). She is editing the first bimodal-bilingual book series in German Sign Language (DGS) and German ‘Deutsche Gebärdensprache und Deaf Communities’ (Buske Verlag, with Thomas Finkbeiner) and the journal ‘Linguistische Berichte’ (Buske Verlag, with Markus Steinbach).
Selected publications
- Nina-Kristin Pendzich, Jens-Michael Cramer, Thomas Finkbeiner, Annika Herrmann and Markus Steinbach (2022): How do Signers Mark Conditionals in German Sign Language? Insights from a Sentence Reproduction Task on the Use of Nonmanual and Manual Markers. In: Croatian Review of Rehabilitation Research 58 (Special Issue: Sign Language, Deaf Culture, and Bilingual Education), 206-226.
- Patrick C. Trettenbrein, Nina-Kristin Pendzich, Jens-Michael Cramer, Markus Steinbach and Emiliano Zaccarella (2021): Psycholinguistic Norms for more than 300 Lexical Signs in German Sign Language. In: Behavior Research Methods 53, 1817-1832. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01524-y
- Nina-Kristin Pendzich (2020): Lexical Nonmanuals in German Sign Language (DGS). Empirical Studies and Theoretical Implications. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Annika Herrmann and Nina-Kristin Pendzich (2018): Between Narrator and Protagonist in Fables of German Sign Language. In: Annika Hübl and Markus Steinbach (eds.), Linguistic Foundations of Narration in Spoken and Sign Languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 275-308.
- Annika Herrmann and Nina-Kristin Pendzich (2014): Nonmanual Gestures in Sign Languages. In: Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill and Jana Bressem (eds.), Body – Language – Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction. Volume 2. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 2149-2162.
Prof. Dr. Markus Steinbach
(Principal Investigator)
University of Göttingen
markus.steinbach@phil.uni-goettingen.de
Markus Steinbach is professor of Linguistics at the German Department of the Universität of Göttingen. He was educated at the University of Frankfurt/Main and obtained a PhD in Linguistics at the Humboldt-University of Berlin in 1997. In 2009, he became habilitated with a study on interface phenomena in German and German Sign Language (DGS) at the University of Mainz. His research is concerned with the influence of language modality (spoken or sign languages) on language structure, development, and processing. The main focus of his research is on the relation between form and meaning, experimental linguistics, grammaticalization, and the interaction between (sign) language and gesture. He has been a principal investigator at the Göttingen Research Center ‘Text Structures’, the Research Training Group ‘Understanding Social Relationships’ and the Research Training Group ‘Form-meaning Mismatches’. He is editing the introductory series ‘Kurze Einführungen in die Germanistische Linguistik (KEGLI)’ (Winter Verlag, with Jörg Meibauer), the sign language series ‘Sign Languages and Deaf Communities (SLDC)’ (Mouton de Gruyter and Ishara Press, with Annika Herrmann) and the journal ‘Linguistische Berichte’ (Buske Verlag, with Nina-Kristin Meister). In 2010, he established the experimental sign language linguistics research group at the Universität of Göttingen (Sign Lab Göttingen), which is running (collaborative) projects on theoretical, cognitive, historical and cultural aspects of sign languages and Deaf communities and since 2022 he has been coordinating the Priority Program ‘Visual Communication (ViCom)’ together with Cornelia Ebert.
Selected publications
- Pfau, Roland, Martin Salzmann and Markus Steinbach (2018): The Syntax of Sign Language Agreement. Common Ingredients but Unusual Recipe. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 3(1), 107, 1-46.
- Steinbach, Markus (2021): Role Shift – Theoretical Perspectives. In Josep Quer, Roland Pfau and Annika Herrmann (eds.), Theoretical and Experimental Sign Language Research. London: Routledge, 351-377.
- Steinbach, Markus (2022): Differential Object Marking in Sign Languages? Restrictions on (Object) Agreement in German Sign Language. In Andrew Nevins, Anita Peti-Stantic, Mark de Vos and Jana Willer-Gold (eds.), Angles of Object Agreement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 209-240.
- Steinbach, Markus and Edgar Onea (2016): A DRT-Analysis of Discourse Referents and Anaphora Resolution in Sign Language. Journal of Semantics 33, 409-448.
- Wienholz, Anne, Derya Nuhbalaoglu, Nivedita Mani, Annika Herrmann, Edgar Onea and Markus Steinbach (2018): Pointing to the Right Side? An ERP Study on Anaphora Resolution in German Sign Language. In: PLOS ONE 13(9), 1-19.
Dr. Emiliano Zaccarella
(Principal Investigator)
MPI for Human Cognitive & Brain Sciences Leipzig
zaccarella@cbs.mpg.de
Emiliano Zaccarella is an expert of visual, auditory and signed language processing. In his work, he uses brain imaging techniques (e.g., magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography, diffusion tensor imaging), behavioural methods and computational modelling to understand the general organizational principles of linguistic combinatorial abstraction in the human brain, linking ontogeny and phylogeny. He obtained his PhD in Cognitive Sciences at the University of Potsdam, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences Leipzig and the doctoral program of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain of the Humboldt University of Berlin. He is currently group leader in the department of Neuropsychology of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences Leipzig.
Selected publications
- Girard-Buttoz, C., Zaccarella, E., Bortolato, T., Friederici, A. D., Wittig R. M. & Crockford, C. (2022) Chimpanzees use numerous flexible vocal sequences with more than two vocal units: A step towards language? Communications Biology 5, 410. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-03350-8
- Trettenbrein, P. C., Papitto, G. Friederici, A. D. & Zaccarella, E. (2021) Functional neuroanatomy of language without speech, Human Brain Mapping 42 (3), 699-712. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.25254
- Trettenbrein, P. C., Pendzich, N. K., Cramer, J. M., Steinbach, M. & Zaccarella, E. (2021) Psycholinguistic norms for more than 300 lexical signs in German Sign Language (DGS), Behavior Research Methods 53, 1817–1832. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01524-y
- Trettenbrein, P. C. & Zaccarella, E. (2021) Controlling Video Stimuli in Sign Language and Gesture Research: The OpenPoseR Package for Analyzing OpenPose Motion-Tracking Data in R, Frontiers in Psychology 12, 411. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.628728
- Zaccarella, E., Papitto, G. & Friederici, A. D. (2020) Language and action in Broca’s area: Computational differentiation and cortical segregation, Brain and Cognition 147, 105651. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2020.105651
Patrick Trettenbrein
(Postdoc Researcher)
MPI for Human Cognitive & Brain Sciences Leipzig
trettenbrein@cbs.mpg.de
Patrick studied cognitive sciences (linguistics, philosophy, and psychology) in Graz and London, before moving to the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive & Brain Sciences in Leipzig for his PhD project. His main research interest is the neurobiology of language, focusing on the modality (in-)dependence of linguistic computations and representations in the brain. In other words, in his research he doesn’t ask, “How come (only) humans can speak?”—Instead, he investigates human language as a species-specific mode of cognition independent of the modality of language use (spoken, written, or signed).
Selected publications
- Trettenbrein, P. C., Papitto, G., Friederici, A. D., & Zaccarella, E. (2021). Functional neuroanatomy of language without speech: An ALE meta‐analysis of sign language. Human Brain Mapping, 42(3), 699–712. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.25254
- Zaccarella, E., & Trettenbrein, P. C. (2021). Neuroscience and syntax. In N. Allott, T. Lohndal, & G. Rey (Eds.), A Companion to Chomsky (pp. 325–347). Wiley-Blackwell.
- Trettenbrein, P. C., Pendzich, N.-K., Cramer, J.-M., Steinbach, M., & Zaccarella, E. (2021). Psycholinguistic norms for more than 300 lexical signs in German Sign Language (DGS). Behavior Research Methods, 53, 1817–1832. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01524-y
- Trettenbrein, P. C. (2016). The demise of the synapse as the locus of memory: A looming paradigm shift? Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 10(88). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2016.00088
Project Description
Linguistic typology in the past decades has questioned whether parts of speech such as nouns and verbs are universal across different languages (e.g., Haspelmath, 2001; Evans & Levinson, 2009). Similarly, there is an ongoing debate in theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics as to whether (major) categories such as noun and verb (i) constitute lexical primitives, (ii) result from a combinatorial syntactic process, or (iii) emerge only in the context of language use (Halle & Marantz, 1993; Vigliocco et al., 2011). Our project starts from the observation that word class universals like noun and verb are not always clearly distinguished in sign language. Here we take German Sign Language (DGS) as an empirical testing ground. Similar to spoken languages, e.g., English (the book vs. to book), many signs in DGS seem to be ambiguous insofar as their lexical status depends on the (syntactic) context in which they are produced. Preliminary studies on sign languages, however, have observed that sign languages exhibit a tendency to mark nouns and verbs by manual and probably also by nonmanual phonological modifications of the root (e.g., Supalla & Newport, 1978).
Our project investigates the distinction between major word classes in DGS using different linguistic and neuroscientific methods focusing on language production as well as single sign and sentence processing. Furthermore, within the analysis of the overt realisation of the noun-verb-distinction in DGS, we investigate the linguistic and cognitive relevance of parts of speech and the impact of iconicity on sign languages. Our aim is therefore threefold: (i) We want to test the supposed universality of the noun-verb-distinction, by going beyond previous work done on spoken languages. We will explore differences in the distribution of the two lexical categories in DGS, a language in the visuo-spatial modality, using linguistic, behavioral, and neuroscientific experiments. (ii) We want to provide insights into the iconic properties of DGS and how these are perceived by deaf and hearing people, thereby identifying tendencies that are not necessarily linguistic but could – due to their iconic nature – be grounded in non-linguistic cognition. This will be explored using qualitative as well as data-driven approaches that will investigate iconic properties and motivations of signs in DGS and how iconicity is linked to the overt realisation of the noun-verb-distinction. (iii) We want to match the empirical findings of our studies with recent formal and functional analyses of parts of speech as lexical or syntactic categories thereby contributing to a better theoretical understanding of parts of speech and the impact of modality on parts of speech.