German Sign Language and
Communication of the Deaf
Photo: UHH/Denstorf
22 July 2021, by Pamela Sundhausen
Photo: IDGS
From 1st to 4th of June 2021 the ninth “Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory” (FEAST) conference took place at the Centre for Sign Language Linguistics and Deaf Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Over a period of four days during the second online format of FEAST, top-class lectures and a wide range of international research were presented, in which both experienced and junior scientists provided interesting insights into their current research. The organizers in Hong Kong showed a high level of commitment and organization. Their disciplined moderation style allowed for an accessible exchange in HKSL, ASL, IS and English between the participants of the conference. We at the IDGS were represented with two posters, one presented by members of the DGS-Korpus project and one by the Experimental Sign Language Laboratory. Our doctoral students Elena Jahn and Janika Thies were each lead authors.
Elena Jahn presented work on the meaning of different variants of the sign DONE at the end of a sentence together with her colleagues Cornelia Loos and Gabriele Langer from the DGS-Korpus project. They discussed their first results on the poster “Are we done yet? A corpus-based analysis of DONE as a clause-boundary diagnostic in DGS“.
In the poster by Janika Thies, Anne Wienholz and Annika Herrmann with the title: “The influence of palm orientation modification on spatial processing of lexicalized signs - an eye-tracking study on DGS”, the results of an experimental eye-tracking study on the processing of different palm orientations were presented.
For both doctoral students it was the first online poster presentation in which they discussed their work in live Q&A sessions with researchers from all over the world. They met the challenge head on and gathered valuable feedback and ideas for future research from many good questions and helpful comments.