Lingua orale e lingua dei segni: approcci possibili per lo sviluppo del linguaggio nei sordi

Deafness is a sensory impairment which strongly affects the normal acquisition and development of linguistic abilities. Deaf people are severely hindered in the development of oral speech because they do not have direct access to the linguistic input and many of them do not acquire much more than the rudiments of oral communication. While hearing children acquire easily and naturally a spoken language, deaf children might acquire in the same way a sign language, exploiting the visual modality. This study investigated the general linguistic competence in Italian of four different groups of deaf individuals (orally-trained children with cochlear implants, native signers, non-native signers and deaf foreigners adolescents and adults), by using a standardized picture matching task, in order to determine the level of their linguistic competence. Results revealed that most deaf individuals showed a performance comparable to that of very young hearing children. Cochlear implanted children performed significantly better than all the other groups, and the less accurate performance was that of foreigner deaf students, who often have not any kind of underlying language. Despite the better performance of cochlear implanted children, who generally do not use the sign language, the best solution to approach the oral language would appear to be the combination of oral training and sign language, in order to be able to communicate with both the deaf and the hearing communities. The school system in this sense should find some strategies in order to help deaf foreigners to get access to the grammar of the oral language.La sordità è una minorazione sensoriale che incide gravemente sulla normale acquisizione del linguaggio e sullo sviluppo delle abilità linguistiche. Le persone sorde, non avendo acesso diretto all’input linguistico, sono limitate nel loro sviluppo della lingua orale tanto che molti non acquisiscono che i rudimenti della comunicazione orale. Allo stesso modo dei bambini udenti, che acquisiscono spontaneamente e naturalmente la língua parlata, i bambini sordi possono acquisire la lingua dei segni, che si serve del canale visivo. Questo studio esamina la competenza linguística dell’italiano, in quattro differenti gruppi di individui sordi (bambini con impianto cocleare, segnanti nativi, segnanti non nativi e sordi stranieri adolescenti e adulti), studiata attraverso la somministrazione di uno specifico test standardizzato di misurazione della competenza linguistica, e che si avvale dell’associazione di immagini a frasi. I risultati provano che molti soggetti sordi mostrano una prestazione paragonabile a quella di bambini udenti molto più giovani. I bambini con impianto cocleare mostrano una prestazione considerevolmente migliore che negli altri gruppi, mentre la prestazione meno accurata è stata data dagli studenti sordi stranieri i quali spesso non possiedono nessuna lingua di base. Nonostante la prestazione migliore è risultata essere quella dei soggetti impiantati, che generalmente non usano la lingua dei segni, la migliore soluzione per un efficace approccio alla lingua orale, sembra essere la combinazione di apprendimento della lingua orale e uso della lingua dei segni, al fine di comunicare con la comunità sorda e la comunità udente. In tal senso il sistema scolastico dovrebbe trovare le strategie più adeguate per aiutare i sordi stranieri a sviluppare la grammatica della lingua orale del paese che li ospita

The iconicity advantage in sign production: The case of bimodal bilinguals

Recent evidence demonstrates that pictures corresponding to iconic signs are named faster than pictures corresponding to non-iconic signs. The present study investigates the locus of the iconicity advantage in hearing bimodal bilinguals. A naming experiment with iconic and noniconic pictures in Italian Sign Language (LIS) was conducted. Bimodal bilinguals named the pictures either using a noun construction that involved the production of the sign corresponding to the picture or using a marked demonstrative pronoun construction replacing the picture sign. In this last condition, the pictures were colored and participants were instructed to name the pronoun together with the color. The iconicity advantage was reliable in the noun utterance but not in the marked demonstrative pronoun utterance. In a third condition, the colored pictures were presented as distractor stimuli and participants required to name the color. In this last condition, distractor pictures with iconic signs elicited faster naming latencies than non-iconic signs. The results suggest that the advantage of iconic signs in production arises at the level of semantic-tophonological links. In addition, we conclude that bimodal bilinguals and native signers do not differ in terms of the activation flow within the sign production system

Da dove viene campagnolo? La traduzione di una guida turistica di Venezia dall'italiano alla lingua dei segni (LIS). Nuove prospettive di ricerca

Translating into Italian Sign Language (LIS) involves the transposition of a written text to sign language (SL) by means of recording the sign language. Sign language is a non-alphabetic language because it lacks a shared written form, although efforts in creating one are in progress. The recording enables us to control the production in SL, any errors can be detected, corrected and re-filmed. Some aspects of translation are discussed, such as planning and sign language production control. This paper is a study of the theoretical approach of translation applied to LIS. A tourist guide of Venice is translated from Italian to LIS, and this experience is a starting point to examine different problems: the transposition of the written text into a recorded video text from a technical point of view; the analysis of specific structures of written language that require translating into a language whose structures are closer to spoken language; the choice of the most appropriate lexical elements (e.g. choice of regional words far places, art terms). Section 4 examines the lexical level in greater detail and provides some specific examples of LIS. This study aims to open a new field of LIS research and to promote translation of informative and cultural material. Moreover, these considerations concerning mainly lexical elements could offer important insights far studies of the linguistics of LIS. This also could make possible to create a literature in LIS, natural language of deaf people, thus enabling them to access it in a complete and autonomous mode

Gaia Early Data Release 3: Structure and properties of the Magellanic Clouds

We compare the Gaia DR2 and Gaia EDR3 performances in the study of the Magellanic Clouds and show the clear improvements in precision and accuracy in the new release. We also show that the systematics still present in the data make the determination of the 3D geometry of the LMC a difficult endeavour; this is at the very limit of the usefulness of the Gaia EDR3 astrometry, but it may become feasible with the use of additional external data. We derive radial and tangential velocity maps and global profiles for the LMC for the several subsamples we defined. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the two planar components of the ordered and random motions are derived for multiple stellar evolutionary phases in a galactic disc outside the Milky Way, showing the differences between younger and older phases. We also analyse the spatial structure and motions in the central region, the bar, and the disc, providing new insights into features and kinematics. Finally, we show that the Gaia EDR3 data allows clearly resolving the Magellanic Bridge, and we trace the density and velocity flow of the stars from the SMC towards the LMC not only globally, but also separately for young and evolved populations. This allows us to confirm an evolved population in the Bridge that is slightly shift from the younger population. Additionally, we were able to study the outskirts of both Magellanic Clouds, in which we detected some well-known features and indications of new ones

Le conseguenze della sordità nell’accessibilità alla lingua e ai suoi codici

This essay offers a general perspective on the linguistic competence of deaf children in Italian language. Some studies have investigated the linguistic competence in different typologies of deaf people: orally-trained children with cochlear implants, native signers, non-native signers and deaf foreigners adolescents and adults. Although the results vary according to the different populations, the difficulties that overall deaf individuals experience are the same. They all make mistakes in unstressed elements (articles, clitic pronouns, prepositions, morphological functional elements) often co-articulated with the word that follows or precedes them. Deaf people seem to follow the same phases of language acquisition of hearing people but with atypical errors that cannot be assimilated to errors foreigners learning Italian language make. In most cases the written language is the main channel for deaf people to access to oral language, literacy skills are the final step in the process of language acquisition, while for deaf people these are the starting point. Is it possible to acquire language through its written form? These remarks lead us to reflect and reconsider the current school system in an attempt to find appropriate strategies that better enable deaf people to access the spoken language. This need justifies the presence of a linguist, specialized in linguistic acquisition and deafness, within the group of professionals who collaborate in the rehabilitation and education of deaf students

La lingua dei segni italiana a Ca' Foscari. Didattica, ricerca e progetti sull'accessibilità

This paper presents the Deaf studies developed at Ca’ Foscari in the past 20 years. Teaching activities and research projects are presented and discussed. The goal of the deaf studies programme at Ca’ Foscari is not only to advance in the knowledge of sign languages, deafness, and language and communication disorders, but also to offer the teaching of the language and culture of the Italian Deaf community within a public institution, on a par with the spoken languages taught at the university. The Ca’ Foscari team is also engaged in accessibility and inclusion projects, in line with the 17 sustainable development goals of the United Nations (Agenda 2030)

Klic-Score: a Reliable Tool to Predict Outcome in Early PJI Treated with Dair?

Background: Debridement, antibiotics and implant retention (DAIR) forms the primary treatment modality for early prosthetic joint infection (PJI), although protocols differ in several retrospective series with a variable success rate (18-100%) (1). The KLIC score has been proposed as a risk stratification tool for use in predicting outcome of PJI treated with DAIR (2). Objective: Our aim was to determine the accuracy of this scoring system at an independent tertiary Orthpedic centre in a typical DAIR population. Methods: 24 cases of PJI were retrospectively enrolled from November 2009 to June 2019 at Santa Maria Maddalena Institute (Rovigo, Italy). Strict inclusion criteria were considered: acute onset of symptoms (within 3 weeks from the primary implant), fever for less than 3 weeks, absence of immune system impairment (diabetes, rheumatologic diseases, steroid therapies), well fixed prosthetic components, absence of sinus tract. When an infection was suspected, debridement and collection of samples for microbiological, histopathological and physico-chemical with leukocyte count analyses were performed. Each patient was evaluated by a multidisciplinary team and treated with an appropriate antibiotic treatment for at least 8-10 weeks. The end point for early failure was defined as: 1) the need for unscheduled surgery, 2) persistence of knee pain associated with signs of infection and high PCR values or 3) the need for suppressive antibiotic treatment. Results: All the enrolled patients had a KLIC-score between 4-5 and 5.5-7 (55% and 71% of expected failure, respectively). None of the patient reported a KLIC-score >7. DAIR treatment was successful in 21 patients (87,5%). The 3 patients (12,5%) who developed an early failure had the lower KLIC-score. In all three failed cases, a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strain was detected. Conclusions: In our case series, the KLIC-score applied retrospectively was not able to predict patients with the highest risk of early failure. As already suggested by other authors, evidence of MRSA infection is a contraindication for performing DAIR. Further studies are needed to validate a successful prognostic score for DAIR procedure that also consider bacterial-related variables, such us type of isolated strains and antimicrobial resistance profiles. 1. Qasim et al. 2017 2. Tornero et al 201