Prof. Diane Brentari
Diane Brentari joined the department at Hebrew University in 2019 as Distinguished Visiting Professor, and is also the Mary K. Werkman Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Center for Gesture Sign and Language at the University of Chicago.
Her ongoing projects include work supported by two awards from the National Science Foundation of the United States, and a Guggenheim fellowship (2020-2021). Two-verb predicates in sign languages investigates what motivates the use of multiple verb predicates in the sign languages of the world, including the emerging sign language in Nicaragua. What you see is what you feel analyzes the mechanisms of language emergence in protactile language, a tactile sign language emerging within some DeafBlind communities. Observing the emergence of language is a comparative study of cases of emerging signed and protactile languages.