In this second lecture, Professor will zoom in on the question how important a spoken language is in the use of a sign language. This may seem like a paradox, but a series of corpus studies on NGT and sign languages like Auslan and Swedish Sign Language have shown how prominent spoken words are in signed conversation, in the form of mouthings. These silently articulated spoken words are omnipresent, and do not appear to be a mere by-product of the oral education of older signers. The mouthings fulfil a range of functions in the communication. He will discuss data from NGT signers communicating with each other, but also present emerging findings on NGT signers in interaction with Chinese and Belgian signers. These studies show how spoken languages form part of the communicative resources that Dutch signers bring to the table in any signing.

Speaker
Prof. Onno Crasborn
Radboud University
Onno Crasborn is professor of Sign Language of the Netherlands at Radboud University. He has been studying the linguistic structure and use of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) for the last 25 years. He has played a major role in the development of sign language corpora and related language technologies worldwide, including the Corpus NGT (2008), the ELAN annotation software and the Global Signbank lexical database. Ongoing work studies the use of international sign in cross-signing context and in conference interpreting. In 2005 he obtained his NGT interpreting certification.

In this first lecture, Professor will present in detail the findings of some older work on the realisation of ‘focus’, emphasised linguistic information in a sentence. We found for Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) that information can be emphasised in a myriad of ways, using both manual and non-manual cues. Some of the facial, head, and body signals are produced during a (series of) sign(s), while others are more ‘punctual’, following a focused constituent. There is a role for the mouth, eye brows, eyes, head, and torso. Professor will compare these findings to more recent research on other sign languages. Together, these studies enrich our understanding of the complexity of sign language prosody and help us understand why sign languages come across as so ‘expressive’ to non-signers.

Speaker
Prof. Onno Crasborn
Radboud University
Onno Crasborn is professor of Sign Language of the Netherlands at Radboud University. He has been studying the linguistic structure and use of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) for the last 25 years. He has played a major role in the development of sign language corpora and related language technologies worldwide, including the Corpus NGT (2008), the ELAN annotation software and the Global Signbank lexical database. Ongoing work studies the use of international sign in cross-signing context and in conference interpreting. In 2005 he obtained his NGT interpreting certification.

The CEFR holds much promise for innovation in sign language teaching and learning, as it is based in conceptions of the language learner as a social agent who develops general and particular communicative competences while achieving everyday goals. This is also known as an action-oriented teaching approach, which is in keeping with current trends in language education, specifically in seeking to address the needs of parent learners. Data is reported from a recent eight-month study of piloting an online teaching model for parents during the COVID-19 pandemic. A main theme that arose in this study was the role of mediation in terms of alleviating various barriers for participants, reducing otherness, and facilitating the linguistic and cultural dimensions of parents’ online ASL learning through cognitive and relational means.

Speaker
Prof. Kristin Snoddon
Toronto Metropolitan University
Kristin Snoddon is Associate Professor with the School of Early Childhood Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. Her research and professional experience includes collaborative work with deaf communities in developing sign language and early literacy programming for young deaf children and their parents. Her longstanding program of research has focused on developing a parent American Sign Language curriculum that is aligned with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Additionally, she analyzes policy issues related to inclusive education, sign language rights and acquisition planning for ASL. Her newest book is Critical Perspectives in Deaf Education (with Joanne Weber; Multilingual Matters, 2021).

The presentation outlines how children’s literacy development is supported through sign language. Data is reported from two studies of innovative sign language and early literacy programs: a program for teaching parents and caregivers American Sign Language (ASL) rhymes, rhythms, and stories; and a program for teaching parents and caregivers how to share children’s books through ASL. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of facilitating early literacy in early intervention for deaf children and their families.

Speaker
Prof. Kristin Snoddon
Toronto Metropolitan University
Kristin Snoddon is Associate Professor with the School of Early Childhood Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. Her research and professional experience includes collaborative work with deaf communities in developing sign language and early literacy programming for young deaf children and their parents. Her longstanding program of research has focused on developing a parent American Sign Language curriculum that is aligned with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Additionally, she analyzes policy issues related to inclusive education, sign language rights and acquisition planning for ASL. Her newest book is Critical Perspectives in Deaf Education (with Joanne Weber; Multilingual Matters, 2021).

Traditionally, the Deaf community “raised” its own interpreters organically through the mentoring of its own community members—the original “village.” The rapid growth of other interpreter-raising villages, namely professional interpreter organizations and interpreter education programs in academic institutions has been driven by federal disability civil rights laws. And because of competing needs and values, there continue to be tensions between these villages. If greater harmony and ecological balance are to be obtained, we must do the following: openly acknowledge the multiple tensions that exist; recognize both our successes and failures; and attempt to address the unintended consequences of the availability of interpreter services that were meant to solve incidental and temporary communication and linguistic problems. Harmony and balance can be nurtured through the intentional engagement of Deaf “village elders” and promoting the vision of the ideal permanent communication solution—bilingualism and direct, unmediated communication in ASL. Although this is a case study of interpreter education in the US, it is hoped that this presentation will foster continued international exchanges of ideas to further develop interpreter education globally.

Speaker
Prof. Danny Roush
Eastern Kentucky University
Danny Roush is a Professor of American Sign Language (ASL) and Interpretation and Chair of the Department of ASL and Interpreter Education at Eastern Kentucky University, USA. He earned a PhD in interpretation studies and a MA in linguistics, both from Gallaudet University, the nation’s only ASL & English bilingual university. He is a nationally certified interpreter and ASL teacher. He has been an ASL-English interpreter with over 30 years of professional experience including staff interpreter positions with the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Early in his career, he served as a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor for 9 years in Maryland and as a linguist and project manager working on signing avatars for 4 years at a 3D software development firm in Florida. As an interpreter educator with 16 years of classroom experience, he enjoys designing curricula and assessments that support student achievement. He was raised by a culturally-Deaf family and is a native ASL signer (a “CODA”). His research interests include linguistic im/politeness in ASL, conceptual metaphor theory and translation, parallel corpora, and Deaf-centered usability design of language and educational technology. He aims to promote the human rights of Deaf people everywhere through an international exchange of ideas to improve interpreter education. His book, “Event Structure Metaphors through the Body: Translation from English to ASL” was published by John Benjamins in 2018.. In 2021, he and his colleagues released the “Dennis Cokely American Freedom Speeches Parallel Corpus” as open access data.

The agent and patient referents in a transitive event are semantically reversible if the swapping of their semantic roles results in a sentence that still makes sense, e.g., ‘A boy is kissing a girl’ becoming ‘A girl is kissing a boy’. In some previous studies, it has been argued that if a transitive clause involves semantically reversible agent and patient referents, signers are more likely to opt for SVO, unless morphological factors such as classifiers, spatial and agreement affixations call for a verb-final construction. With picture-elicited data by fluent signers from the three Asian Sign Languages, she will argue that semantic reversibility does not necessarily result in a specific word order only; rather, it can have a range of effect on the expression strategies adopted by signers, which in turn may affect the surface constituent order. In addition, individual differences may exist across signers within a sign language as to how potential ambiguity associated with referents in reversible contexts is resolved. In all three sign languages, verbs that incorporate classifier handshapes of the direct objects have a strong tendency to appear sentence-finally. However, verbs that are inflected with locative and agreement affixes without classifier incorporation do not always lead to verb-final constructions, contrary to what has been suggested in the literature.

Speaker
Prof. Felix Sze, Department of Linguistic and Modern Languages
Prof. Felix Sze received her M.Phil. in Linguistics from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2000 and her doctoral degree from the Centre for Deaf Studies, University of Bristol, in 2008... Before joining the Department of Linguistic and Modern Languages, she was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies (CSLDS), CUHK, conducting research projects on sign language and providing sign linguistic training to the deaf junior researchers from Asia-Pacific countries. Her current research interests include the documentation of sign language lexical variants and discourse data in the Asia-Pacific region, sign language typology, information structure and non-manuals in Hong Kong Sign Language, as well as language development of deaf children in Hong Kong.

Depending on the types of abilities and grammatical aspects, language proficiency and linguistic knowledge can be assessed by various methods, including sentence repetition tests (SRT). In a typical SRT, the participants listen to a series of sentences one by one, and they need to repeat what they hear verbatim. Sentence length, word choice, grammaticality, meaning, etc., can be manipulated to achieve specific assessment or research goals. Previous studies suggest that SRT can be useful in measuring a person’s global language proficiency, and has been used in research on bilingual acquisition, second language acquisition, and specific language impairment in children. SRTs have been developed for several sign languages, including American Sign Language, British Sign Language, German Sign Language, and the Sign Language of the Netherlands. However, in these tests, the scoring scheme only covers the manual components of the signed sentences, without taking non-manuals into account. In this talk, Prof. Sze will briefly introduce how they developed the HKSL-SRT, in which both manuals and non-manuals produced by the test participants are scored. Evidence will be presented to show that our test is sensitive enough to differentiate deaf signers who differ in their signing competence due to a difference in the onset age of sign language acquisition. She will also show how we used the Rasch Model to evaluate the discriminability and reliability of our test, and develop a shortened version of the test.

Speaker
Prof. Felix Sze, Department of Linguistic and Modern Languages
Prof. Felix Sze received her M.Phil. in Linguistics from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2000 and her doctoral degree from the Centre for Deaf Studies, University of Bristol, in 2008.. Before joining the Department of Linguistic and Modern Languages, she was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies (CSLDS), CUHK, conducting research projects on sign language and providing sign linguistic training to the deaf junior researchers from Asia-Pacific countries. Her current research interests include the documentation of sign language lexical variants and discourse data in the Asia-Pacific region, sign language typology, information structure and non-manuals in Hong Kong Sign Language, as well as language development of deaf children in Hong Kong.

Shimao was composed of a central palatial terrace surrounded by two layers of stone enclosures. The settlement was built as a sophisticated defensive system, consisting of baffled gates, gate towers, bastions, and corner towers. Shimao was a regional political and ritual center, evidenced by the discoveries of human sacrifice performed prior to the construction of the fortification, large quantities of jades (some embedded in the stonewalls), bronze metallurgy, a main gate decorated with polychrome murals, and walls furnished with anthropomorphic stone carvings.
The discovery of Shimao revealed a unique trajectory to urbanism in China. This once powerful kingdom centered at Shimao was completely unknown in ancient textual records. Its discovery therefore also raises challenges to reevaluate sociopolitical changes over a broader region on the eve of Chinese dynastic civilization.

Speaker
Dr. Sun Zhouyong, Director of the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology
Dr. Sun Zhouyong studied Chinese archaeology at Xiamen University in 1991 and served as an archaeologist in Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology since 1995. He obtained his PhD from the University of Australia La Trobe with a scholarship offered by the ARC in 2007. He has been engaged in archaeological surveys and excavations for more than 50 projects. The Shimao Archaeology Project directed by Dr. Sun has made great contribution to the origin of the Chinese Early Civilization, and also was awarded the titles of "World Archaeological Discovery" and “Top Ten Archaeological Discovery in China in 2012 and 2018”. With a broad international perspective, Dr. Sun is committed to promoting the exchanges and cooperation between Shaanxi Archaeology and cultural institutions overseas.

Organised by Research Programme for Chinese Archaeology and Art, Art Museum

This online session offers opportunity for two experienced Arts scholars to discuss a range of matters associated with online teaching and learning at CUHK. Focusing upon matters that include student motivation, ‘good teaching practice’, etc., they will draw upon their own experiences and grant-centred projects to discuss the perils, pitfalls, and benefits aligned to e-learning and hybrid education. In so doing, what aids pedagogical growth within the context of the Arts Faculty at CUHK will be outlined. Topics discussed will be of relevance to those in the Arts Faculty seeking to compose their first teaching grant application, and postgraduate students envisaging a career in the higher education sector in the coming years.

• Faculty of Arts Scholarship for Outstanding International Students
  Quota: 5
  Amount: HK$240,000 (in 4 yearly installments)
• Faculty of Arts Admissions Scholarship for International Students
  Quota: 10
  Amount: HK$100,000 (in 2 yearly installments)
• Faculty of Arts Admissions Scholarship for JUPAS and Non-JUPAS Students
  Quota: 10
  Amount: HK$10,000

Students who meet the minimum academic requirements listed below will be eligible for nomination:

• HKDSE - Total score of 29 based on the best 5 subjects^ (Only eligible for students admitted from JUPAS)
• GCE A-Level - 1A* 2A
• IB Diploma - 38 (out of 45)
• SAT/ACT - Total score of 2000 (out of 2400) or Redesigned SAT score of 1350 or total ACT score of 30 and at least 700 each in two SAT subject tests / at least 4 each in two AP subject tests
• Malaysia UEC / STPM  - UEC: 5(A1) 3(A2) STPM: 1A 3B
• Taiwan GSAT - 55 out of 60 for the Best 4 subjects including English

^ A total score of 29 is equivalent to an average of 5* in all the best 5 subjects, under the score conversion scale Level 5**=7, Level 5*=6 and so on.

For those qualifications not covered in the list, they will be considered on a case-by-case basis.