News 2019

Talk by Donna Jo Napoli
On Friday, 20th of December 2019, Donna Jo Napoli gave a talk at 4 p.m. about "Drawing shapes and what that teaches us about the lexicon". Donna Jo Napoli presented in English and two interpreters interpret her interesting talk into DGS. We would like to thank all participants!






Christmas Party 2019
Our annual Christmas party of the “Gebärdentreff” took place on 10th of December at the L’Osteria in Göttingen. We spent a lovely evening with delicious pizza and dessert, crafted hands, and pleasant conversations. We were happy to meet many of you there and are looking forward to the next “Gebärdentreff” which will take place after a short winter break on 4th of February 2020.



NDR shows a "A Christmas Carol" in DGS
In December 2018, the ThOP in Göttingen presented “A Christmas carol” by Charles Dickens in a bilingual production: German and German Sign Language were presented side by side. Hearing, deaf and hard-of-hearing people worked together in this ensemble. This project also sparked the interest of the NDR, which created a professional recording in December 2018. Since December 1st, this recording can be viewed online so everyone can enjoy the old miser Ebenezer Scrooge, the Christmas ghosts, Tiny Tim and all the other wonderful characters of the play.

Talk about Providence Island Sign Language
On Tuesday, 5th of November 2019, Rehana Omardeen gave a talk on Sign Language in Providence Island. The talk was part of our monthly sign meeting. Two interpreters translated the English talk into German Sign Language (DGS). Afterwards, we had a nice champagne reception.





SIGNopsis presentation "The life stories of deaf elderly people: How did deaf people, born between 1930 and 1950 and raised in Germany, find their work profession?"


SignTeam at TISLR13 in Hamburg
From 26th till 28th of September 2019, the 13th TISLR conference "Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research" took place in Hamburg. It was organized by the SignLab Göttingen together with the Institute for German Sign Language and Communication of the Deaf (IDGS) at the University of Hamburg and the Department of Sign Language Interpretation and Deaf Studies at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. It was a wonderful conference with a lot of interesting and inspiring talks. The SignTeam presented several posters and participated with a SIGNopsis presentation.



Liona Paulus: finished her PhD
CONGRATULATIONS! Liona as the first Deaf Phd student of our team successfully defended her dissertation in September. In her dissertation she compared German and Brasilian Sign Language and investigated, which manual and nonmanual components signers use in both languages to mark a conditional clause. The day of the defense was a huge success followed by a trolley ride through the city and the famous kiss of the Gänseliesel. We all celebrate with her!





LinG Workshop on Sign Language
On 13th of September 2019, on the occasion of the defense by Liona Paulus, the international LinG Workshop on Sign Languages took place, which was organized by the SignTeam. There were nine presentations on various topics related to sign languages. Ronice Müller de Quadros gave a talk on Constraints on Bimodal Code-Switching and -Blending. We would like to thank all of the participants for the great workshop!



Language calender for DGS
The language calendar for German Sign Language, developed by Thomas Finkbeiner and Nina-Kristin Pendzich, is now available in stores. The flyer can be found here.







In memory of Karin Kestner
The sign language interpreter and publisher Karin Kestner died after a serious illness at the age of 63 on 4th of June 2019. Her manifold work and activities for the sign language community will always be remembered. We want to express our deepest sympathy to the bereaved family.

Workshop on bimodal bilingualism
Together with colleagues from the University of Hamburg and the University of Frankfurt/Main, the Sign-Team Göttingen organizes a workshop on "Linguistic Diversity and Linguistic Modalities: New Perspectives on Bimodal (Sign Language/Oral Language) Bilingualism" at the next annual meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS). More information and call for papers here.

Fieldwork in Providence Island in the Caribbean
Rehana Omardeen spent three months in Providencia, Colombia documenting the signing systems used among deaf and hearing people in the island. She collected a range of video data from hearing and deaf signers, including lexical elicitation, narrative retelling, and conversational signing. This fieldwork was only possible with the help of many collaborators at the local/national/international level, including the mayor’s office, the Lloyd Best Institute for the West Indies, the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (video in Spanish with Spanish subtitles).


9th Deaf Academics Conference in Iceland
The 9th Deaf Academics Conference took place at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík from 11th till 13th of May. Our colleague Liona Paulus and Helena Carmo, a colleague from Portugal, organized a two-hour workshop on how to be a Deaf PhD student in a non-sign language academic environment. In exchange with other deaf PhD students from all over the world, it turned out that everyone is communicating in multilingual and multimodal ways at their universities. They use, for instance, sign language interpreters or written interpretation or communicate with pen and paper or with laptop and email. In a nutshell, deaf scientists are endowed with high and many language skills. In sum, attending this conference was a great success as the exchange with others was very fruitful and the whole conference was signed completely barrier-free in International Sign.


TISLR 13 in Hamburg - first impressions


TISLR 13 has taken a great step forward! Online registration is finally open and conference program online
We are delighted to announce that the online registration is open now! Early registration ends on 30th of June 2019. During the registration process you can register for free events such as free International Sign courses, free city tours in International Sign, the Warming Up, and the reception at the town hall. Please consider that space in some events is limited and that you should only register if you are truly sure you’re probably coming. To get an impression about the highly prestigious core topics of TISLR 13, our invited presenters Ronice Müller de Quadros, Gladys Tang, Jordan Fenlon and Karen Emmorey are giving you a personal short inside into their keynotes. More information here.

SignLab Göttingen composes the first language calender for German Sign Language
Nina-Kristin Pendzich and Thomas Finkbeiner are currently preparing the first year-round language calender for DGS. The sheet calender for 2020 will be published on July 1, 2019. In various thematic sections, the calender will daily inform about vocabulary, grammar and language as well as Deaf culture and the history of the Deaf community. In addition, the calender will regularly provide valuable and helpful tips for those who have always been interested in sign language and in communication in the visual-gestural modality. More information here (only in German).



The third newsletter of our project "The Sign Hub: Preserving, Researching and Fostering the Linguistic, Historical and Cultural Heritage of European Deaf Signing Communities with an Integral Resource" is now online.

The sign Lab develops an interactive e-learning module for teaching German Sign Language
As part of the funding program "Innovation plus", the state of Lower Saxony supports a new project of the Sign Lab Göttingen. The aim of this project is to develop, implement and evaluate a multimedia e-learning module for the introductory sign language courses DGS I to III. The module will consist of four different components: (i) a lexicon, (ii) exercises, (iii) a glossary and (iv ) grammatical descriptions. This module, which meets the standards of modern digital sign language teaching, will contribute significantly to a sustainable improvement of sign language teaching at the University of Göttingen.

TISLR 13 abstract selection completed
Altogether, we received 399 submissions for this year's TISLR conference at Hamburg University. 129 members of the program committee and 14 members of the topic committee have been involved in the selection of 25 paper presentations, 11 SIGNopsis presentations and 180 poster presentations. We would like to thank all reviewers for their effort and expertise. Thanks to their support we could compile an exciting, topically diverse, and theoretically ambitious program for TISLR 13. The program will be online soon here.

Virtual tour of the exhibition "Life stories of elderly Deaf people"