This book is one of the first references of linguistic research of sign languages in East Asia (including China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong). The book includes the basic descriptions of aspects of Chinese (Shanghai, Tianjin) sign language, Hong Kong Sign Language, Japanese Sign Language, Korean Sign Language, Taiwanese Sign Language, and Tibetan Sign Language.

Table of contents

Introduction

Kazumi Matsuoka, Onno Crasborn and Marie Coppola

Part 1: Manuals: Numerals, classifiers, modal verbs

Historical relationships between numeral signs in Japanese Sign Language, South Korean Sign Language and Taiwan Sign Language

Keiko Sagara

Phonological processes in complex word formation in Shanghai Sign Language

Shengyun Gu

Classifiers and gender in Korean Sign Language

Ki-Hyun Nam and Kang-Suk Byu

Causative alternation in Tianjin Sign Language

Jia He and Gladys Tan

Epistemic modal verbs and negation in Japanese Sign Language

Kazumi Matsuoka, Uiko Yano and Kazumi Maegawa

Part 2: Non-manuals and space

The Korean Sign Language (KSL) corpus and its first application on a study about mouth actions

Sung-Eun Hong, Seong Ok Won, Hyunhwa Lee, Kang-Suk Byun and Eun-Young Lee

Negative polar questions in Hong Kong Sign Language

Felix Sze and Helen Le

Analyzing head nod expressions by L2 learners of Japanese Sign Language: A comparison with native Japanese Sign Language signers

Natsuko Shimotani

Composite utterances in Taiwan Sign Language

Shiou-fen Su

Time and timelines in Tibetan Sign Language (TSL) interactions in Lhasa

Theresia Hofer