IJN Sign Language Group

The IJN sign language group is a research team that is part of the Institut Jean Nicod at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Contemporary linguistics and psycholinguistics have been mostly developed on the basis of spoken languages. Sign languages bring new questions and challenges, and they have proven to be a remarkable source of insight for linguistic research. The similarities and differences between signed and spoken languages, and the specific contribution made by the gestural modality, are topics of considerable contemporary interest. We study them in a spirit of great openness: we wish to bring sign languages to bear on contemporary debates, be it to confirm or to refute (or improve) existing theoretical frameworks.

In addition to our scientific work, our team also has on-going international collaborations with computational linguists and computer scientists to develop assistive technologies for Deaf and Deaf-blind singers.