Pamela Perniss
Biographic Data
| ID | 6213295 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Pamela Perniss |
| GIVEN NAMES | Pamela |
| FAMILY NAME | Perniss |
| SIGNATURE | PERNISS P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cologne |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Interaction of the differential object marker pam with other prominence hierarchies in syntax in German Sign Language (DGS)
There has been growing debate about the special status of object marking in sign languages. In this article, we contribute evidence for the existence of a differential object marker in DGS (German Sign Language). Based on data from the Public DGS Corpus, we investigate the behavior of this sign, glossed as pam , in different morphosyntactic environments to understand its interaction with different morphosyntactic phenomena involved in marking arg…
The palm-up open hand gesture across language modalities
Language development beyond the here-and-now
Most language use is displaced, referring to past, future, or hypothetical events, posing the challenge of how children learn what words refer to when the referent is not physically available. One possibility is that iconic cues that imagistically evoke properties of absent referents support learning when referents are displaced. In an audio-visual corpus of caregiver–child dyads, English-speaking caregivers interacted with their children (N = 71…
Construals of iconicity
While speculations on form–meaning resemblances in language go back millennia, the experimental study of iconicity is only about a century old. Here we take stock of experimental work on iconicity and present a double special issue with a diverse set of new contributions. We contextualise the work by introducing a typology of approaches to iconicity in language. Some approaches construe iconicity as a discrete property that is either present or a…
Does space structure spatial language
The spatial affordances of the visual modality give rise to a high degree of similarity between sign languages in the spatial domain. This stands in contrast to the vast structural and semantic diversity in linguistic encoding of space found in spoken languages. However, the possibility and nature of linguistic diversity in spatial encoding in sign languages has not been rigorously investigated by systematic crosslinguistic comparison. Here, we c…
The bridge of iconicity
Iconicity, a resemblance between properties of linguistic form (both in spoken and signed languages) and meaning, has traditionally been considered to be a marginal, irrelevant phenomenon for our understanding of language processing, development and evolution. Rather, the arbitrary and symbolic nature of language has long been taken as a design feature of the human linguistic system. In this paper, we propose an alternative framework in which ico…
Language as a multimodal phenomenon
Our understanding of the cognitive and neural underpinnings of language has traditionally been firmly based on spoken Indo-European languages and on language studied as speech or text. However, in face-to-face communication, language is multimodal: speech signals are invariably accompanied by visual information on the face and in manual gestures, and sign languages deploy multiple channels (hands, face and body) in utterance construction. Moreove…
Gestural Viewpoint Signals Referent Accessibility
The tracking of entities in discourse is known to be a bimodal phenomenon. Speakers achieve cohesion in speech by alternating between full lexical forms, pronouns, and zero anaphora as they track referents. They also track referents in co-speech gestures. In this study, we explored how viewpoint is deployed in reference tracking, focusing on representations of animate entities in German narrative discourse. We found that gestural viewpoint system…
Use of sign space
Locative expressions in signed languages
Locative expressions encode the spatial relationship between two (or more) entities. In this paper, we focus on locative expressions in signed language, which use the visual-spatial modality for linguistic expression, specifically in Turkish Sign Language ( Türk İşaret Dili, henceforth TİD). We show that TİD uses various strategies in discourse to encode the relation between a Ground entity (i.e., a bigger and/or backgrounded entity) and a Figure…
Gestural Viewpoint Signals Referent Accessibility
The tracking of entities in discourse is known to be a bimodal phenomenon. Speakers achieve cohesion in speech by alternating between full lexical forms, pronouns, and zero anaphora as they track referents. They also track referents in co-speech gestures. In this study, we explored how viewpoint is deployed in reference tracking, focusing on representations of animate entities in German narrative discourse. We found that gestural viewpoint system…
Does space structure spatial language
The spatial affordances of the visual modality give rise to a high degree of similarity between sign languages in the spatial domain. This stands in contrast to the vast structural and semantic diversity in linguistic encoding of space found in spoken languages. However, the possibility and nature of linguistic diversity in spatial encoding in sign languages has not been rigorously investigated by systematic crosslinguistic comparison. Here, we c…
Locative expressions in signed languages
Locative expressions encode the spatial relationship between two (or more) entities. In this paper, we focus on locative expressions in signed language, which use the visual-spatial modality for linguistic expression, specifically in Turkish Sign Language ( Türk İşaret Dili, henceforth TİD). We show that TİD uses various strategies in discourse to encode the relation between a Ground entity (i.e., a bigger and/or backgrounded entity) and a Figure…
Locative expressions in signed languages
Locative expressions encode the spatial relationship between two (or more) entities. In this paper, we focus on locative expressions in signed language, which use the visual-spatial modality for linguistic expression, specifically in Turkish Sign Language ( Türk İşaret Dili, henceforth TİD). We show that TİD uses various strategies in discourse to encode the relation between a Ground entity (i.e., a bigger and/or backgrounded entity) and a Figure…
Use of sign space
Gestural Viewpoint Signals Referent Accessibility
The tracking of entities in discourse is known to be a bimodal phenomenon. Speakers achieve cohesion in speech by alternating between full lexical forms, pronouns, and zero anaphora as they track referents. They also track referents in co-speech gestures. In this study, we explored how viewpoint is deployed in reference tracking, focusing on representations of animate entities in German narrative discourse. We found that gestural viewpoint system…
The bridge of iconicity
Iconicity, a resemblance between properties of linguistic form (both in spoken and signed languages) and meaning, has traditionally been considered to be a marginal, irrelevant phenomenon for our understanding of language processing, development and evolution. Rather, the arbitrary and symbolic nature of language has long been taken as a design feature of the human linguistic system. In this paper, we propose an alternative framework in which ico…
Language as a multimodal phenomenon
Our understanding of the cognitive and neural underpinnings of language has traditionally been firmly based on spoken Indo-European languages and on language studied as speech or text. However, in face-to-face communication, language is multimodal: speech signals are invariably accompanied by visual information on the face and in manual gestures, and sign languages deploy multiple channels (hands, face and body) in utterance construction. Moreove…
Does space structure spatial language
The spatial affordances of the visual modality give rise to a high degree of similarity between sign languages in the spatial domain. This stands in contrast to the vast structural and semantic diversity in linguistic encoding of space found in spoken languages. However, the possibility and nature of linguistic diversity in spatial encoding in sign languages has not been rigorously investigated by systematic crosslinguistic comparison. Here, we c…
Construals of iconicity
While speculations on form–meaning resemblances in language go back millennia, the experimental study of iconicity is only about a century old. Here we take stock of experimental work on iconicity and present a double special issue with a diverse set of new contributions. We contextualise the work by introducing a typology of approaches to iconicity in language. Some approaches construe iconicity as a discrete property that is either present or a…
Language development beyond the here-and-now
Most language use is displaced, referring to past, future, or hypothetical events, posing the challenge of how children learn what words refer to when the referent is not physically available. One possibility is that iconic cues that imagistically evoke properties of absent referents support learning when referents are displaced. In an audio-visual corpus of caregiver–child dyads, English-speaking caregivers interacted with their children (N = 71…
Interaction of the differential object marker pam with other prominence hierarchies in syntax in German Sign Language (DGS)
There has been growing debate about the special status of object marking in sign languages. In this article, we contribute evidence for the existence of a differential object marker in DGS (German Sign Language). Based on data from the Public DGS Corpus, we investigate the behavior of this sign, glossed as pam , in different morphosyntactic environments to understand its interaction with different morphosyntactic phenomena involved in marking arg…
The palm-up open hand gesture across language modalities
Hearing Impairment and Communication (8 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (8 works) · Linguistics (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Sign language (6 works) · Iconicity (5 works) · Mathematics (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · German (3 works) · Gesture (3 works)