Laurent Ferrara
Biographic Data
| ID | 1174584 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laurent Ferrara |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laurent |
| FAMILY NAME | Ferrara |
| SIGNATURE | FERRARA L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Norwegian University of Science and Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3679-3404 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 63 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Backchannels as multimodal displays of joint understanding in signed language interaction
This study investigates how deaf signers from two historically unrelated signed languages (SLs), Norwegian SL and French Belgian SL (LSFB), signal understanding through backchannels (BCs). BCs include short vocal (e.g., mm mm) and visual cues (e.g., head nodding, facial expressions) or a combination of both. While most research on BCs examines spoken languages, little is known comparatively about BCs in signed discourse. The current study address…
Corpus research on signed languages in the Nordic countries
This semi-systematic literature review examines signed language corpus research in the Nordic countries, with a quantitative and qualitative assessment of corpus research. The article first describes some critical components and functionalities of signed language corpora. It then outlines the evolution of Nordic corpus research, highlighting Sweden’s pioneering role and subsequent developments in Finland and Norway. The findings suggest a progres…
Open research requires open mindedness
Article Open research requires open mindedness: commentary on “Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology” by Becker and Guzmán Naranjo was published on July 24, 2025 in the journal Linguistic Typology (volume 0, issue 0)
A cross-linguistic comparison of reference across five signed languages
Do signers of different signed languages establish and maintain reference the same way? Here we compare how signers of five Western deaf signed languages coordinate fully conventionalized forms with more richly improvised semiotics to identify and talk about referents of varying agency. The five languages (based on a convenience sample) are Auslan, Irish Sign Language, Finnish Sign Language, Norwegian Sign Language, and Swedish Sign Language. Usi…
When are Google Data Useful to Nowcast GDP? An Approach via Preselection and Shrinkage
Alternative datasets are widely used for macroeconomic nowcasting together with machine learning–based tools. The latter are often applied without a complete picture of their theoretical nowcasting properties. Against this background, this article proposes a theoretically grounded nowcasting methodology that allows researchers to incorporate alternative Google Search Data (GSD) among the predictors and that combines targeted preselection, Ridge r…
Les cycles économiques de la France
Cet article propose une datation trimestrielle de référence des périodes de récession et d’expansion de l’économie française depuis 1970, réalisée par le comité de datation des cycles de l’Association française de science économique. La méthodologie repose sur deux piliers : 1) des estimations économétriques pour identifier les périodes candidates et 2) une approche narrative détaillant le contexte économique de l’époque pour finaliser la datatio…
Indexing turn-beginnings in Norwegian Sign Language conversation
It is well known that signers and speakers routinely produce finger points during interaction. While the referential functions of such finger points have received great attention from researchers, they are also used to manage interactions between interlocutors. These functions are less understood and have received less research focus. The current study helps to redress this gap in the literature by investigating how finger pointing is used to ind…
Common factors of commodity prices
In this paper, we extract latent factors from a large cross‐section of commodity prices, including fuel and non‐fuel commodities. We decompose each commodity price series into a global (or common) component, block‐specific components, and a purely idiosyncratic component. We find that the bulk of the fluctuations in commodity prices are well summarized by a single global factor. This global factor is closely related to fluctuations in global econ…
Some interactional functions of finger pointing in signed language conversations
Interlocutors participating in conversation collaborate with each other to coordinate their actions and talk. Research on spoken language conversations has shown that speakers use bodily gestures, in addition to speech, to regulate their interaction. The current study expands on this research by investigating how signed language users finger point to express interactional meanings. Studies of pointing in signed languages have largely focused on r…
Spatial Vantage Points in Norwegian Sign Language
Previous studies on perspective in spatial signed language descriptions suggest a basic dichotomy between either a route or a survey perspective, which entails either the signer being conceptualized as a mobile agent within a life-sized scene or the signer in a fixed position as an external observer of a scaled-down scene. We challenge this dichotomy by investigating the particular couplings of vantage point position and mobility engaged during v…
The semiotic diversity of doing reference in a deaf signed language
This article describes how deaf signers of Auslan (a deaf signed language of Australia) coordinate fully conventionalised forms (such as lexical manual signs and English fingerspelling and/or mouthing) with more richly improvised semiotics (such as indicating verbs, pointing signs, depicting signs, visible surrogates and/or invisible surrogates) to identify and talk about referents of varying agency. Using twenty retellings of Frog, Where Are You…
International Macroeconomics in the Wake of the Global Financial Crisis
The New Fama Puzzle
We re-examine the historically common finding that ex post depreciation and the forward premium are negatively correlated, termed the forward premium puzzle. When covered interest differentials are zero, this finding is equivalent to the rejection of the joint hypothesis of uncovered interest parity (UIP) and full information rational expectations. We term this result the Fama puzzle (1984), given the difficulty in identifying a time-varying risk…
Language as Description, Indication, and Depiction
Signers and speakers coordinate a broad range of intentionally expressive actions within the spatiotemporal context of their face-to-face interactions (Parmentier, 1994; Clark, 1996; Johnston, 1996; Kendon, 2004). Varied semiotic repertoires combine in different ways, the details of which are rooted in the interactions occurring in a specific time and place (Goodwin, 2000; Kusters et al., 2017). However, intense focus in linguistics on convention…
Depicting and describing meanings with iconic signs in Norwegian Sign Language
There is growing momentum towards a theory of languaging that acknowledges the diverse semiotic repertoires people use with each other. This paper contributes to this goal by providing further evidence from signed language discourse. In particular, we examine iconic signs from Norwegian Sign Language, which can be interpreted as both “regular” lexical signs and token depictions. This dual potential is manipulated by signers in context. We analyze…
Medical Signbank as a model for sign language planning? A review of community engagement
This paper reviews a sign language planning project conducted in Australia with deaf Auslan users. The Medical Signbank project utilised a cooperative language planning process to engage with the Deaf community and sign language interpreters to develop an online interactive resource of health-related signs, in order to address a gap in the health lexicon of Auslan. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the outcome of the bottom-up language planni…
Co-forming real space blends in tactile signed language dialogues
This article reports on a linguistic study examining the use of real space blending in the tactile signed languages of Norwegian and Swedish signers who are both deaf and blind. Tactile signed languages are typically produced by interactants in contact with each other’s hands while signing. Of particular interest to this study are utterances which not only consist of the signer producing signs with his or her own hands (or other body parts), but …
Elaborating Who's What
In spoken and signed language discourse, periods of gestural enactment, or constructed action, appear sequentially and simultaneously with linguistic signs. In the domain of signed language research, constructed action has been shown to be an important part of narrative discourse. However, there has yet to be much empirical investigation into its frequency or interaction with a signed language grammar. The current study addresses this gap with a …
Les variables financières sont-elles utiles pour anticiper la croissance économique
Dans la littérature économétrique récente, le rôle des variables financières pour la prévision des fluctuations macroéconomiques est ambigu. Les résultats empiriques dépendent, entre autres, des variables considérées, des modèles utilisés ou de l’échantillon étudié. Toutefois, certains faits stylisés apparaissent clairement. Dans cet article, les différentes variables financières sont discutées, les principaux modèles économétriques sont esquissé…
Caractérisation et datation des cycles économiques en zone euro
L’actualité économique récente est venue souligner avec force que les cycles économiques n’étaient pas morts. Dans cet article, nous mettons en évidence l’intérêt pour les conjoncturistes d’une datation des cycles, nous proposons une typologie des différents cycles considérés dans l’analyse empirique conjoncturelle, puis nous présentons quelques résultats récents relatifs à la datation des points de retournement en zone euro
Language as Description, Indication, and Depiction
Signers and speakers coordinate a broad range of intentionally expressive actions within the spatiotemporal context of their face-to-face interactions (Parmentier, 1994; Clark, 1996; Johnston, 1996; Kendon, 2004). Varied semiotic repertoires combine in different ways, the details of which are rooted in the interactions occurring in a specific time and place (Goodwin, 2000; Kusters et al., 2017). However, intense focus in linguistics on convention…
The semiotic diversity of doing reference in a deaf signed language
This article describes how deaf signers of Auslan (a deaf signed language of Australia) coordinate fully conventionalised forms (such as lexical manual signs and English fingerspelling and/or mouthing) with more richly improvised semiotics (such as indicating verbs, pointing signs, depicting signs, visible surrogates and/or invisible surrogates) to identify and talk about referents of varying agency. Using twenty retellings of Frog, Where Are You…
Elaborating Who's What
In spoken and signed language discourse, periods of gestural enactment, or constructed action, appear sequentially and simultaneously with linguistic signs. In the domain of signed language research, constructed action has been shown to be an important part of narrative discourse. However, there has yet to be much empirical investigation into its frequency or interaction with a signed language grammar. The current study addresses this gap with a …
Co-forming real space blends in tactile signed language dialogues
This article reports on a linguistic study examining the use of real space blending in the tactile signed languages of Norwegian and Swedish signers who are both deaf and blind. Tactile signed languages are typically produced by interactants in contact with each other’s hands while signing. Of particular interest to this study are utterances which not only consist of the signer producing signs with his or her own hands (or other body parts), but …
Depicting and describing meanings with iconic signs in Norwegian Sign Language
There is growing momentum towards a theory of languaging that acknowledges the diverse semiotic repertoires people use with each other. This paper contributes to this goal by providing further evidence from signed language discourse. In particular, we examine iconic signs from Norwegian Sign Language, which can be interpreted as both “regular” lexical signs and token depictions. This dual potential is manipulated by signers in context. We analyze…
Caractérisation et datation des cycles économiques en zone euro
L’actualité économique récente est venue souligner avec force que les cycles économiques n’étaient pas morts. Dans cet article, nous mettons en évidence l’intérêt pour les conjoncturistes d’une datation des cycles, nous proposons une typologie des différents cycles considérés dans l’analyse empirique conjoncturelle, puis nous présentons quelques résultats récents relatifs à la datation des points de retournement en zone euro
Les variables financières sont-elles utiles pour anticiper la croissance économique
Dans la littérature économétrique récente, le rôle des variables financières pour la prévision des fluctuations macroéconomiques est ambigu. Les résultats empiriques dépendent, entre autres, des variables considérées, des modèles utilisés ou de l’échantillon étudié. Toutefois, certains faits stylisés apparaissent clairement. Dans cet article, les différentes variables financières sont discutées, les principaux modèles économétriques sont esquissé…
Elaborating Who's What
In spoken and signed language discourse, periods of gestural enactment, or constructed action, appear sequentially and simultaneously with linguistic signs. In the domain of signed language research, constructed action has been shown to be an important part of narrative discourse. However, there has yet to be much empirical investigation into its frequency or interaction with a signed language grammar. The current study addresses this gap with a …
Medical Signbank as a model for sign language planning? A review of community engagement
This paper reviews a sign language planning project conducted in Australia with deaf Auslan users. The Medical Signbank project utilised a cooperative language planning process to engage with the Deaf community and sign language interpreters to develop an online interactive resource of health-related signs, in order to address a gap in the health lexicon of Auslan. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the outcome of the bottom-up language planni…
Co-forming real space blends in tactile signed language dialogues
This article reports on a linguistic study examining the use of real space blending in the tactile signed languages of Norwegian and Swedish signers who are both deaf and blind. Tactile signed languages are typically produced by interactants in contact with each other’s hands while signing. Of particular interest to this study are utterances which not only consist of the signer producing signs with his or her own hands (or other body parts), but …
Depicting and describing meanings with iconic signs in Norwegian Sign Language
There is growing momentum towards a theory of languaging that acknowledges the diverse semiotic repertoires people use with each other. This paper contributes to this goal by providing further evidence from signed language discourse. In particular, we examine iconic signs from Norwegian Sign Language, which can be interpreted as both “regular” lexical signs and token depictions. This dual potential is manipulated by signers in context. We analyze…
International Macroeconomics in the Wake of the Global Financial Crisis
The New Fama Puzzle
We re-examine the historically common finding that ex post depreciation and the forward premium are negatively correlated, termed the forward premium puzzle. When covered interest differentials are zero, this finding is equivalent to the rejection of the joint hypothesis of uncovered interest parity (UIP) and full information rational expectations. We term this result the Fama puzzle (1984), given the difficulty in identifying a time-varying risk…
Language as Description, Indication, and Depiction
Signers and speakers coordinate a broad range of intentionally expressive actions within the spatiotemporal context of their face-to-face interactions (Parmentier, 1994; Clark, 1996; Johnston, 1996; Kendon, 2004). Varied semiotic repertoires combine in different ways, the details of which are rooted in the interactions occurring in a specific time and place (Goodwin, 2000; Kusters et al., 2017). However, intense focus in linguistics on convention…
Spatial Vantage Points in Norwegian Sign Language
Previous studies on perspective in spatial signed language descriptions suggest a basic dichotomy between either a route or a survey perspective, which entails either the signer being conceptualized as a mobile agent within a life-sized scene or the signer in a fixed position as an external observer of a scaled-down scene. We challenge this dichotomy by investigating the particular couplings of vantage point position and mobility engaged during v…
The semiotic diversity of doing reference in a deaf signed language
This article describes how deaf signers of Auslan (a deaf signed language of Australia) coordinate fully conventionalised forms (such as lexical manual signs and English fingerspelling and/or mouthing) with more richly improvised semiotics (such as indicating verbs, pointing signs, depicting signs, visible surrogates and/or invisible surrogates) to identify and talk about referents of varying agency. Using twenty retellings of Frog, Where Are You…
Some interactional functions of finger pointing in signed language conversations
Interlocutors participating in conversation collaborate with each other to coordinate their actions and talk. Research on spoken language conversations has shown that speakers use bodily gestures, in addition to speech, to regulate their interaction. The current study expands on this research by investigating how signed language users finger point to express interactional meanings. Studies of pointing in signed languages have largely focused on r…
Indexing turn-beginnings in Norwegian Sign Language conversation
It is well known that signers and speakers routinely produce finger points during interaction. While the referential functions of such finger points have received great attention from researchers, they are also used to manage interactions between interlocutors. These functions are less understood and have received less research focus. The current study helps to redress this gap in the literature by investigating how finger pointing is used to ind…
Common factors of commodity prices
In this paper, we extract latent factors from a large cross‐section of commodity prices, including fuel and non‐fuel commodities. We decompose each commodity price series into a global (or common) component, block‐specific components, and a purely idiosyncratic component. We find that the bulk of the fluctuations in commodity prices are well summarized by a single global factor. This global factor is closely related to fluctuations in global econ…
A cross-linguistic comparison of reference across five signed languages
Do signers of different signed languages establish and maintain reference the same way? Here we compare how signers of five Western deaf signed languages coordinate fully conventionalized forms with more richly improvised semiotics to identify and talk about referents of varying agency. The five languages (based on a convenience sample) are Auslan, Irish Sign Language, Finnish Sign Language, Norwegian Sign Language, and Swedish Sign Language. Usi…
When are Google Data Useful to Nowcast GDP? An Approach via Preselection and Shrinkage
Alternative datasets are widely used for macroeconomic nowcasting together with machine learning–based tools. The latter are often applied without a complete picture of their theoretical nowcasting properties. Against this background, this article proposes a theoretically grounded nowcasting methodology that allows researchers to incorporate alternative Google Search Data (GSD) among the predictors and that combines targeted preselection, Ridge r…
Les cycles économiques de la France
Cet article propose une datation trimestrielle de référence des périodes de récession et d’expansion de l’économie française depuis 1970, réalisée par le comité de datation des cycles de l’Association française de science économique. La méthodologie repose sur deux piliers : 1) des estimations économétriques pour identifier les périodes candidates et 2) une approche narrative détaillant le contexte économique de l’époque pour finaliser la datatio…
Open research requires open mindedness
Article Open research requires open mindedness: commentary on “Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology” by Becker and Guzmán Naranjo was published on July 24, 2025 in the journal Linguistic Typology (volume 0, issue 0)
Backchannels as multimodal displays of joint understanding in signed language interaction
This study investigates how deaf signers from two historically unrelated signed languages (SLs), Norwegian SL and French Belgian SL (LSFB), signal understanding through backchannels (BCs). BCs include short vocal (e.g., mm mm) and visual cues (e.g., head nodding, facial expressions) or a combination of both. While most research on BCs examines spoken languages, little is known comparatively about BCs in signed discourse. The current study address…
Corpus research on signed languages in the Nordic countries
This semi-systematic literature review examines signed language corpus research in the Nordic countries, with a quantitative and qualitative assessment of corpus research. The article first describes some critical components and functionalities of signed language corpora. It then outlines the evolution of Nordic corpus research, highlighting Sweden’s pioneering role and subsequent developments in Finland and Norway. The findings suggest a progres…
Hearing Impairment and Communication (12 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (12 works) · Linguistics (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Mathematics (8 works) · Sign language (7 works) · Economics (6 works)