Ulrike Zeshan OBE is a German-born linguist and academic specializing in the linguistics of signed languages. She is Professor of Sign Language Linguistics at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. [1]
Zeshan obtained an MA at the University of Cologne in 1996 and her PhD in linguistics from the same institution in 2000. [1] Between 1999 and 2006 she held two postdoctoral positions: first at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology in Canberra, Australia, and then (from 2003) at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen in the Netherlands. [2] In 2006 she took up her current position as Professor at the University of Central Lancashire and Director (later Co-Director) of the International Institute for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies (iSLanDS) based at the same university. [1] [2]
She has been an ordinary member of the Academia Europaea since 2014. [2] In 2015, Zeshan was appointed an honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for "services to higher education and the international deaf community" as part of the 2015 Special Honours. [3] In 2016 she was awarded an honorary professorship at the Amity University Gurgaon in India. [4]
Zeshan is a leading researcher in the field of sign language typology, and has worked on such phenomena as kinship terms, negation, possession, quantification, and questions. [1] She has worked with UNESCO on the documentation of sign languages worldwide, including endangered sign languages. [1] She has worked on sign languages of Ghana, India, Turkey, and Uganda. [1] [2] Between 2011 and 2016 she held a European Research Council grant to investigate multilingualism and multilingual behaviours of sign language users. [1] [2]
Zeshan is also politically active, having stood as a Green Party MEP candidate in the North West England constituency in 2014, as well as in local council elections. [5] [6]
Tamaz (Thomas) Valerianis dze Gamkrelidze was a Georgian linguist, orientalist public benefactor and Hittitologist, Academic and President (2005–2013) of the Georgian Academy of Sciences (GAS), Doctor of Sciences (1963), Professor (1964).
Indo-Pakistani Sign Language (IPSL) is the predominant sign language in the subcontinent of South Asia, used by at least 15 million deaf signers. As with many sign languages, it is difficult to estimate numbers with any certainty, as the Census of India does not list sign languages and most studies have focused on the north and urban areas. As of 2021, it is the most used sign language in the world, and Ethnologue ranks it as the 151st most "spoken" language in the world.
Winfred Philip Lehmann was an American linguist who specialized in historical, Germanic, and Indo-European linguistics. He was for many years a professor and head of departments for linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, and served as president of both the Linguistic Society of America and the Modern Language Association. Lehmann was also a pioneer in machine translation. He lectured a large number of future scholars at Austin, and was the author of several influential works on linguistics.
Marianne Mithun is an American linguist specializing in American Indian languages and language typology. She is professor of linguistics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she has held an academic position since 1986.
Stephen C. Levinson FBA is a British social scientist, known for his studies of the relations between culture, language and cognition, and former scientific director of the Language and Cognition department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Alexandre François is a French linguist specialising in the description and study of the indigenous languages of Melanesia. He belongs to Lattice, a research centre of the CNRS and École Normale Supérieure dedicated to linguistics.
Martin Haspelmath is a German linguist working in the field of linguistic typology. He is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, where he worked from 1998 to 2015 and again since 2020. Between 2015 and 2020, he worked at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. He is also an honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Leipzig.
Östen Dahl is a Swedish linguist and professor best known for pioneering a marker-based approach to tense and aspect in linguistic typology. Dahl finished his PhD at the University of Gothenburg and subsequently worked there as a docent before becoming professor of general linguistics at the University of Stockholm in 1980.
Jamaican Country Sign Language, also Country Sign, or Konchri Sain (KS) in Jamaican Patois, is an indigenous village sign language of Jamaica. It is used by a small number of Deaf and hearing Jamaicans, spread over several communities in the rural south-western parish of St. Elizabeth.
A village sign language, or village sign, also known as a shared sign language, is a local indigenous sign language used by both deaf and hearing in an area with a high incidence of congenital deafness. Meir et al. define a village sign language as one which "arise[s] in an existing, relatively insular community into which a number of deaf children are born." The term "rural sign language" refers to almost the same concept. In many cases, the sign language is known throughout the community by a large portion of the hearing population. These languages generally include signs derived from gestures used by the hearing population, so that neighboring village sign languages may be lexically similar without being actually related, due to local similarities in cultural gestures which preceded the sign languages. Most village sign languages are endangered due to the spread of formal education for the deaf, which use or generate deaf-community sign languages, such as a national or foreign sign language.
Yolŋu (Yolngu) or Murngin Sign Language is a ritual sign language used by the Yolngu, an Aboriginal community in the Arnhem Land region of Australia. As with other Australian Aboriginal sign languages, YSL was developed by the hearing for use when oral speech is forbidden, as during mourning or between certain family relations. However, "YSL is not a signed version of any spoken Yolngu language... YSL also serves as a primary means of communication for a number of deaf members in Yolngu communities... YSL functions as both an alternate and primary sign language". That is, it is used for communicating to the deaf, but also when communicating at a distance, when hunting, or when ceremonies require silence. It was acquired from birth by the hearing population. YSL is now considered an endangered language.
Alipur Sign Language is a village sign language of India. It is spoken in the town of Alipur, Karnataka, a Shia Muslim enclave with a high degree of congenital deafness. There are between 150 and 250 deaf people in Alipur, and there are approximately 10,000 hearing people speaking the language on a population of 26,000. The language has no official status and deaf children receive no formal education. This fact plus the increasing influence of the Indian Sign Language threaten the survival of Alipur Sign Language. Sibaji Panda was the first person to officially document the language in 2012.
Iraqi Sign Language is the deaf sign language of Iraq. It appears to be close to Levantine Arabic Sign Language the common sign language of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Jordan. It is taught in seven schools or deaf associations in the capitol of Baghdad and 5 other cities.
Zdzisław Wąsik is a Polish linguist and semiotician, Rector Senior and Professor Ordinarius at the Philological School of Higher Education in Wrocław and Professor Senior at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.
Lisa Cheng is a linguist with specialisation in theoretical syntax. She is a Chair Professor of Linguistics and Language at the Department of Linguistics, Leiden University, and one of the founding members of the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition.
Andrej Kibrik is a Russian linguist, the director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and professor at the Philological Faculty of the Moscow State University. Member of the Academia Europaea since 2013.
Mena B. Lafkioui is a linguist specializing in Berber languages. She is currently Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and Professor of Berber Linguistics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.
Brita Elisabeth Bergman is a Swedish emeritus professor specializing in the linguistics of signed languages. She initiated a line of research in signed language linguistics at the Department of Linguistics at Stockholm University that is still being carried out to this day.
Helle Metslang is an Estonian linguist.
Mira Ariel is a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, specializing in pragmatics. A pioneer of the study of information structure, she is best known for creating and developing Accessibility Theory.