Welcome to our new SignWriting List members!

[Claudia S. Bianchini]

Hello All!
so... my presentation...
I'm Claudia S. Bianchini and I 'm a PhD Student in 3 differents institutions: 
University of Paris 8 (with Prof. Christian Cuxac), University of Perugia (with 
Prof. Margherita Castelli) and ISTC-CNR's SignLab (with Dott. Elena Pizzuto, 
RIP). I'm hearing and I've started to learn Italian Sign Language 6 years ago 
then, 3 years ago, I started learing SignWriting.
I'm finishing (I hope to discuss in December 2011) a PhD in Linguistics, with a 
special focus on Signs representation and SignWriting.
The aim of my work is to analyze very deeply SignWriting's structure, 
searching why it's so easy to learn it even if it's a very complex system. In 
Italian we say "non c'è rosa senza spine" (= there is no rose without thorns), 
so I also search for "bugs" in SW. In the meantime, with my colleague Fabrizio 
Borgia, an Informatics' Phd student (at Univ. Roma "La Sapienza" - with Prof. 
Marilena De Marsico - and Univ. of Toulouse - Prof. Patrice Dalle) we are 
creating a new software to write in SignWriting (something radically different 
from Valerie's Puddle). Fabrizio is in his first year of PhD so the software, for 
the moment, is only a prototype and we have to test it before presenting it to 
you. The first time we publish something about it I'll tell you, promised!!
Another aim of my thesis is to analyze the capacity of deaf SW experts (Paolo 
Rossini and others members of our SignLab) to make methalinguistics 
reflections based on SignWriting's production. Maybe I've to explain it better: 
when you look at a video, you fiscally don't have the time to reflect on the 
language used to produce the message... writing signed languages (with SW, 
but not only!) allows Deaf People to think about the way they use their own 
language. So I collect informations about how Deaf People "feel" they are 
using their language. I don't know if I explained it well, but English for me is 
harder than Italian or French... I know I'm not obliged to write in English, but 
it's a great exercise to force myself :-P !
So, this is my thesis!
What more... I work on the Italian version of the SignWriting manual with 
Elena Pizzuto's team, and sometimes I teach SignWriting to small groups of 
interested persons: I realy like this part of my job :-) !

I put here a little bit of references of written works.

· Gianfreda G., Petitta G., Bianchini C.S., Di Renzo A., Rossini P., Lucioli T., 
Pennacchi B. & Lamano L. (2009). Dalla modalità faccia‑a‑faccia ad una lingua 
scritta emergente: nuove prospettive su trascrizione e scrittura della Lingua 
dei Segni Italiana (LIS). In Consani C., Furiassi C., Guazzelli F. & Perta C., Atti 
del 9° Congresso dell'Associazione di Linguistica Applicata. Oralità / Scrittura: 
in memoria di Giorgio Raimondo Cardona (Pescara, 19‑20/02/2009), pp. 
413‑438. Perugia : Edizioni Guerra.

· Antinoro Pizzuto E., Bianchini C.S., Capuano D., Gianfreda G. & Rossini P. 
(2010). Language resources and visual communication in a deaf centered 
multimodal e learning environment: issues to be addressed. In Proceeding of 
the VII International Conference LREC - Workshop “Supporting e learning with 
language resources and semantic data” (La Valletta, 22‑23/05/2010), pp. 
18‑23.

· Bianchini C.S., Gianfreda G., Di Renzo A., Lucioli T., Petitta G., Pennacchi B., 
Lamano L. & Rossini P. (2011). Ecrire une langue sans forme écrite: réflexions 
sur l’écriture et la transcription de la Langue des Signes Italienne (LIS). In 
Travaux Linguisiques  du CerLiCO, pp. 71‑89. Rennes : Editions PUR.

· Bianchini C.S., Di Renzo A., Lucioli T., Rossini P. & Antinoro Pizzuto E. (in 
press). Unità lessematiche e Strutture di Grande Iconicità nella Lingua dei 
Segni Italiana (LIS): nuovi dati e nuove metodologie di analisi. In [waiting to 
know], [waiting to know], pp. [waiting to know]. Roma : Edizioni Bulzini.

And in the next months, we (me or a colleague of the the SignLab) will be at 
those conferences:

· Orléans (France), 27‑28/may/2011.
Bianchini C.S., Borgia F. & Castelli M. (prevista 2011). Le “bidouillage”: 
comment les locuteurs de Langue des Signes Italienne (LIS) s’approprient et 
modifient le SignWriting pour le rendre plus adapté à leurs exigences. 
Comunicazione presentata a 25ème Colloque International du Cercle de 
Linguistique du Centre-Ouest (CerLiCo) “Transcrire, écrire, formaliser ‑ 2” .

· Venezia (Italy), 20‑22/june/2011.
Bianchini C.S., Di Renzo A., Lucioli T., Borgia F., Gianfreda G. & Rossini P. 
(prevista 2011). Lexematic units and highly iconic structures in Italian Sign 
Language: new methods of analysis aided by ah hoc software. Comunicazione 
presentata a Convegno FEAST.

· Durban (SouthAfrica) 18‑24/july/2011.
Di Renzo A., Bianchini C.S., Gianfreda G., Lucioli T., Rossini P., Pennacchi B. & 
Antinoro Pizzuto E. (prevista 2011). Representing Signed Languages in written 
form: questions, insights, proposals from research on Italian Sign Language 
(LIS). Comunicazione presentata a XVI Word Federation of Deaf Congress.

·  Aosta/Bard/Torino (Italy), 26‑28/septembre/2011.
Di Renzo A., Petitta G., Lucioli T., Bianchini C.S., Gulli T. & Rossini P. (in attesa 
di accettazione). L’inno di Mameli tradotto in Lingua dei Segni Italiana (LIS): 
un’analisi linguistica. Comunicazione presentata a XLV Congresso 
Internazionale della Società di Linguistica Italiana (SLI) "Coesistenze 
linguistiche nell'Italia pre‑ e postunitaria".

I've done a "divina commedia" (the Dante's Divine Comedy... in Italy it means 
that I've written too much :-P !)
If you have any question, suggestions, ect... I'm here!

Ciao Ciao
Claudia