Wayne A. Danielson Award Presentation and Lecture – Professor Karen Emmorey

Sign languages and the deaf and hearing people who use them have taught us a tremendous amount about the neurobiology of language. Only by studying sign languages can we understand what is universal to all human languages and what properties depend on the auditory-vocal or visual-manual modalities. Further, some questions are best answered with sign languages, such as whether iconicity (motivated form-meaning mappings) impacts neural representation or processing. Bimodal bilinguals (those who know a spoken and a signed language) offer unique insights into language representation and control because their two languages do not share phonological features or an orthography. Deaf bilinguals also provide insights into the neurobiology of reading because they reveal alternative paths to skilled reading. This talk highlights some of what we have learned about language through sign language research and what exciting questions remain.