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Ted Supalla is a deaf linguist whose research centers on sign language in its developmental and global context, including studies of the grammatical structure and evolution of American Sign Language and other sign languages.[1]

Previously at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the University of Rochester in New York, Supalla is a professor in the Department of Neurology at Georgetown University.[2]

Biography

Ted Supalla was born deaf, into a deaf family,[3] including his younger brother Sam. Ted's father would often go to the Deaf Club, bringing the whole family.

He is married to Elissa L. Newport, also a professor in the Department of Neurology at Georgetown University.

Education

Research

Supalla co-authored with Elissa Newport the first work on the use of movement changes to derive nouns from verbs in American Sign Language.[4] He also produced the seminal[5] work on the structure of classifier constructions and verbs of motion and location.[6][7] He has published a book and several journal articles on the history of American Sign Language and the processes of linguistic change that introduce new grammatical forms into a sign language over its history.[8] In all of these works, his overarching claim is that the structure of sign languages is quite parallel to that of spoken languages, in complexity and in the processes that introduce grammatical complexities into the language. His recent work focuses on the structure of quite different sign language typologies, comparing American Sign Language and its family of French-derived sign languages with the quite different family of sign languages in Japan and other parts of Asia.

Selected publications

External links

References

  1. ^ "Ted Supalla". Archived from the original on 2015-02-26. Retrieved 2015-02-26.
  2. ^ "Ted Supalla, PhD". Georgetown University. Retrieved 16 May 2021.
  3. ^ Supalla, Samuel J. (1992). The book of name signs. Berkeley, Calif.: Dawn Sign Press. pp. 4. ISBN 0-915035-30-8.
  4. ^ Supalla, T., & Newport, E. (1978). "How many seats in a chair? The derivation of nouns and verbs in American Sign Language." In P. Siple (Ed.), Understanding Language through Sign Language Research. Academic Press.
  5. ^ Sandler, Wendy; Lillo-Martin, Diane (2006). Sign Language and Linguistic Universals. Cambridge University Press. p. 77. ISBN 978-0521483957.
  6. ^ Supalla, Ted (1982). Structure and acquisition of verbs of motion and location in American Sign Language (Ph.D.). University of California, San Diego.
  7. ^ Supalla, Ted (1986). "The classifier system in American Sign Language". In Craig, Colette (ed.). Noun classes and categorization: Proceedings of a symposium on categorization and noun classification, Eugene, Oregon 1983. Typological Studies in Language 7. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 978-9027228741.
  8. ^ Supalla, Ted; Clark, Patricia (2015). Sign language archaeology: Understanding the historical roots of American Sign Language. Washington D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. ISBN 978-1-56368-493-7.
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