<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><span style="font-family:Times">Call
for Submissions: </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><span style="font-family:Times">Special
Thematic Issue on the Historical Linguistics of Signed Languages</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">The
past two centuries of research on human language change have produced great
insights into the extent, types, and mechanisms of language change. Theories
and models of change within the field of historical linguistics, however,
overwhelmingly derive solely from languages in the oral/aural modality. At the
same time, for at least the last half century, linguists working on languages
in gestural/visual and/or tactile modalities have made strides in exploring historical
relationships among sign languages (Woodward 1978, 2000, 2011; McKee and
Kennedy 2000; Yu et al. 2018; Abner et al. 2020; Reagan 2021; Power et al. 2020;
Power 2022), Creolization and sign languages (Fisher 1978, 1996; Meier 1984,
Kegl et al. 1999), the historical sociolinguistics and philology of signed
languages (Lucas et al. 2001, McCaskill et al. 2011, Fischer 2015, Battison et
al. 1975, Shaw and Delaporte 2014), the diachrony of specific sign languages
(Supalla and Clark 2015, Wilkinson 2016,
Wilcox and Occhino 2016,), and language contact, both within and across
modalities (Brentari and Padden 2001, Quinto-Pozos 2007, 2008, Battison 1978).
Sign linguistics research has also proposed compelling generalizations of types
of sign changes (Frishberg 1975, Radutzky 1989), and introduced a wealth of new
data and insights on the emergence of new languages in homes, villages and
communities (Polich 2005, Zeshan and de Vos 2012, Goldin-Meadow and Mylander
1990, Singleton et al. 1993, Hou 2016, Senghas and Coppola 2001, Wilcox 2009, Edwards
and Brentari 2021, Sandler et al. 2011, Power 2020). Yet, in spite of the clear
thematic and theoretical relevance of signed languages to the understanding of
human language change, there has been strikingly little dialogue or
cross-pollination between historical linguistics research on spoken languages
and scholarship on the diachrony of signed languages. As a telling datum, <i>Diachronica
</i>has not yet published a single research article dedicated to a sign
language over its nearly 40 years. In the interest of starting to redress this
gap and spurring greater consideration of signed language data in the
development of theories of human language change, we invite submissions for a
special thematic issue on the historical linguistics of signed languages. We
invite papers that deal with change in languages in the gestural/visual (or
tactile) modality and which, consistent with the journal's usual </span><a href="https://benjamins.com/catalog/dia/submission" style="color:rgb(5,99,193)"><span style="font-family:Times">submission guidelines</span></a><span style="font-family:Times">, combine new
insights of theoretical interest with rigorous analysis of data, and have a
diachronic focus, rather than synchronically analyzed data from older
languages. Topics may address a wide range of issues related to language change
including, but not limited to: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">- Processes of change in the context of
emerging home or village sign languages</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">- The historical emergence and
development of signed languages that have been linked to the establishment of
schools for the deaf or other institutions</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">- Contact between signed languages or
between signed and spoken/written languages</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">- Theoretical contributions to models
of language families, cognacy, and linguistic relatedness in the context of
sign languages</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">- Effects of language modality on
processes of language change: e.g., effects of iconicity, effects of aspects of
linguistics structure that are typical of a given language modality, etc.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">-
Language change at all linguistic levels within stable sign languages</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">- Comparative/Historical reconstruction
of earlier stages of sign languages</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">- Sign etymologies</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">- Presentation of historically-oriented
or comparative corpora for sign languages</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Please
submit papers online through the </span><a href="https://www.editorialmanager.com/diachronica/default1.aspx" style="color:rgb(5,99,193)"><span style="font-family:Times">Editorial
Manager</span></a><span style="font-family:Times">
system, with “thematic issue” as the article type. Articles may be up to 10,000
words, and shorter articles or discussion notes are accepted. Regular <i>Diachronica
</i>submission instructions apply in other respects. For thematic review
article suggestions, please contact the editor before submission. You are welcome
to submit a presubmission inquiry.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Deadline
for the thematic issue is May 1, 2023. (However, please note that submissions
on the diachrony of signed languages are welcome at any time.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Abner, N., Geraci, C., Yu, S., Lettieri, J., Mertz, J., and
Salgat, A. (2020). Getting the upper hand on sign language families. FEAST 3,
17–29. doi: 10.31009/FEAST.i3.02</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Battison, R., Markowicz, H., and Woodward, J. (1975). A good
rule of thumb: Variable phonology in American Sign Language. In R. W. Fasold
& R. W. Shuy Analyzing (Eds.), <i>Variation in Language: Papers from
the Second Colloquium on New Ways of Analyzing Variation</i>, 291–302.
Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Battison, R. (1978). Lexical Borrowing in American Sign
Language. Silver Spring, MD: Linkstok Press.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Brentari, D., and C. A. Padden. 2001. Native and foreign
vocabulary in American Sign Language: A lexicon with multiple origins. In
Foreign vocabulary in sign languages: A cross-linguistic investigation of word
formation, ed. D. Brentari, 87-119. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Edwards, T., and D. Brentari. 2021. The grammatical
incorporation of demonstratives in an emerging tactile language. <i>Frontiers
in Communication: Language Sciences</i>. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.579992 </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Fischer, S. D. (1978). Sign languages and creoles. In Understanding
Language Through Sign Research, ed P. Siple (New York, NY: Academic Press), 309–331.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Fischer, S. D. (1996). By the numbers: Language-internal
evidence for creolization, in International Review of Sign Linguistics, Vol. 1,
eds. W. H. Edmondson and R. B. Wilbur (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum), 1–22.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Fischer, S. D. (2015). Sign languages in their historical
context, in The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, eds C. Bowern and
B. Evans (London: Routledge), 442–465.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Frishberg, N. (1975). Arbitrariness and iconicity:
Historical change in American Sign Language. Language 51, 696–719. doi:
10.2307/412894</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Goldin-Meadow,
S. & Mylander, C. (1990). Beyond the input given: The child’s role in the
acquisition of language. <i>Language</i> 66 (2). 323–355.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Kegl, J., Senghas, A., and Coppola, M. (1999). Creation
through contact: Sign language emergence and sign language change in Nicaragua.
In M. DeGraff (Ed.), <i>Language creation and language change</i>,
179–238. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Lucas, C. Bayley, R., & Valli, C. (2001). <i>Sociolinguistic
variation in American Sign Language</i>. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University
Press.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">McCaskill, C. Lucas, C. Hill, J. and Bayley, R. (2011). The
Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Its History and Structure. Washington D.C.:
Gallaudet University Press.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">McKee, D., and Kennedy, G. (2000). Lexical comparison of
signs from American, Australian, British, and New Zealand sign languages, in
The Signs of Language Revisited: An Anthology to Honor Ursula Bellugi and
Edward Klima, eds K. Emmorey and H. Lane (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum), 49–76.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Meier, R. P. (1984). Sign as creole. Behav. Brain Sci. 7.
201–202. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X00044289</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Polich, L. (2005). The Emergence of the Deaf Community in
Nicaragua: With Sign Language You Can Learn so Much. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University
Press.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Power, J. M. (2020). The origins of Russian-Tajik Sign
Language: Investigating the Historical Sources and Transmission of a Signed
Language in Tajikistan. Austin, TX: University of Texas at Austin dissertation.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Power, J. M. (2022). Historical Linguistics of Sign
Languages: Progress and Problems. Front. Psychol. 13:818753. doi:
10.3389/fpsyg.2022.818753</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Power, J. M., Grimm, G. W., and List, J.-M. (2020).
Evolutionary dynamics in the dispersal of sign languages. Royal Soc. Open Sci.
7, 1–15. doi: 10.1098/rsos.191100</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Quinto-Pozos, D. (2008). Sign language contact and
interference: ASL and LSM. Lang. Soc. 37, 161–189. doi:
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Radutzky, E. J. (1989). <i>La Lingua Italiana dei
Segni: Historical change in the sign language of deaf people in Italy</i>. New
York University dissertation.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Reagan, T. (2021). Historical linguistics and the case for
sign language families. Sign Lang. Stud. 21, 427–454. doi:
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Hou, L. (2016). Making Hands: Family Sign Languages in the
San Juan Quiahije Community. Austin, TX: University of Texas at Austin
dissertation.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Sandler, W., Aronoff, M., Meir, I. and Padden, C.
(2011) The gradual emergence of phonological form in a new language. <i>Natural
Language and Linguistic Theory, 29</i>(2),503-543.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Schembri, A., McKee, D., McKee, R., Pivac, S., Johnston, T.,
and Goswell, D. (2009). Phonological variation and change in Australian and New
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language: How Nicaraguan Sign Language acquired a spatial grammar. Psychol.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Shaw, E., and Delaporte, Y. (2014). A Historical and
Etymological Dictionary of American Sign Language. Washington, DC: Gallaudet
University Press.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Singleton,
Jenny L., Jill P. Morford, & Susan Goldin-Meadow. 1993. Once is not enough:
Standards of well-formedness in manual communication created over three
different time spans. <i>Language</i>69 (4). 683–715.</span></p>
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Archaeology: Understanding the Historical Roots of American Sign Language.
Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Wilcox, S. (2009). Symbol and Symptom: Routes from Gesture
to Signed Language. <i>Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics</i> 7:
89–110.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Wilcox, S. and Occhino, C. (2016). Historical Change in
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of NOT collocations in American Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics
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Language. In Understanding Language Through Sign Language Research, ed P. Siple
(New York, NY: Academic Press), 333–348.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Woodward, J. (2000). Sign languages and sign language
families in Thailand and Vietnam. In The Signs of Language Revisited: An
Anthology to Honor Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima, eds. K. Emmorey and H. Lane
(Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum), 25–45. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Woodward, J. (2011). Some observations on research
methodology in lexicostatistical studies of sign languages. In Deaf Around the
World: The Impact of Language, eds. G. Mathur and D. J. Napoli (Oxford: Oxford
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Yu, S., Geraci, C., and Abner, N. (2018). Sign languages and
the online world of online dictionaries and lexicostatistics. In LREC 2018, ed
N. Calzolari (Miyazaki: European Language Resources Association), 4235–4240.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times">Zeshan, U.
& de Vos, C. (Eds.). (2012). <i>Sign languages in village communities:
Anthropological and linguistic insights</i>. Berlin & Nijmegen: De Gruyter
Mouton & Ishara Press. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0in 0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Times"> </span></p><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div><span style="font-size:small">Claire Bowern</span><div style="font-size:small"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>Professor</div><div>Editor: <i>Diachronica</i></div><div>Department of Linguistics, Yale University</div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>