classifiers and the brain

[dcogill at une.edu.au]

Hi Petra,

I don't know how comprehensively you want to cover the literature here,
but the obvious place to start is Karen Emmorey's  (2002) book, Language,
Cognition and the Brain: Insights from Sign Language Research, published
by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, New Jersey; this has a section
dedicated to your topic here.

There have been quite a number of new studies since then, however, as Adam
flags in his post. These include studies not only of clinical results and
brain imaging, but now too of signed classifier acquisition/ use under
cognitive deficits of specific kinds — so there are now three lines of
research underway in exploring the way classifiers are processed in the
brain.  Most recently there's been another come out this year in Lingua;
Morgan, G., Smith, N., Tsimpli, I.M. & Woll, B. (2007). Classifier
learning and modality in a polyglot savant. Lingua, 117, 7, 1339-1353. It
should give you a good entree to tracking down the post-2002 stuff.

I have an old paper (2002) that also summarises most of the brain stuff to
that date, and a new chapter in prep that integrates everything written on
classifiers in the brain since approximately the time of Plato (save for
the latest from Morgan et al). If your interest exceeds the merely
serious, to border on the fanatical (:-))  I can zap you those as well.

Regards,

Dorothea.






> Here's one on BSL:
>
> MacSweeney,M., Woll,B., Campbell,R., Calvert,G.A., McGuire,P.K.,
> David,A.S., Simmons,A., Brammer,M.J. (2002). Neural correlates of
> British sign language comprehension: spatial processing demands of
> topographic language. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 14(7),
> 1064-1075.
>
> Adam
>
> --
> Adam C Schembri, PhD
> Senior Research Fellow
> Deafness, Cognition and Language (DCAL) Research Centre
> University College London
> 49 Gordon Square
> London WC1H 0PD
> United Kingdom
> Tel: +44 20 7679 8680
> http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dcal
>
>
>
> On 4 Nov 2007, at 05:09, Clifton Langdon-Grigg wrote:
>
>> I saw this poster a while back so my memory is a bit fuzzy on this
>> one, but I believe it compares fMRI scans for pantomime, nonsense
>> signs, and verbs (I think verbs=classifiers in this case, but I'm not
>> sure.)
>> Below is what I wrote down for that poster, hope it helps you Petra.
>> --Clifton
>>
>> Title: Perception of Pantomime, American Sign Language verbs &
>> nonsense signs by deaf signers & hearing non-signers.
>> Authors: Karen Emmorey, Jiang Xu (NIDCD, NIH), Patrick Gannon (Mount
>> Sinai Medical Center), Susan Goldin-Meadow (University of Chicago),
>> Allen Braun (NIDCD, NIH).
>> References: Corina, D., Chiu, Y-S., Knapp, H., Greenwald, R., San
>> Jose-Robertson, L. & Braun, A. (in press). Neural correlates of human
>> action perception in deaf & hearing subjects.
>>
>>
>> On 11/3/07, Petra Eccarius Brylow <eccarius at purdue.edu> wrote:
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> Does anybody know of any brain studies--imaging, lesion effects, or
>>> otherwise--that have been done involving classifiers*  in sign
>>> languages?
>> _______________________________________________
>> SLLING-L mailing list
>> SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>> http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> SLLING-L mailing list
> SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
>



_______________________________________________
SLLING-L mailing list
SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l