Publications

Forthcoming Publications

Occhino, C.,  Hill, J. C., & Lucas, C.. (under review).  Sixty Years of Sign Language Sociolinguistics.

 

Occhino, C., (in press).  Force Dynamics in ASL. To appear in Eds. Fuyin Thomas Li, Handbook of Cognitive Semantics. Brill.

Recent Publications

Occhino, C. (2023). When hands are things and movements are processes: Cognitive iconicity, embodied cognition, and signed language structure. In T. Janzen & B. Shaffer (Ed.), Signed Language and Gesture Research in Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 127-154). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110703788-006

Occhino, C., Lidster, R., Geer, L. C., Listman, J., & Hauser, P. C. (2023). Development of the American Sign Language Fingerspelling and Numbers Comprehension Test (ASL FaN-CT). Language Testing, 02655322231179494. https://doi.org/10.1177/02655322231179494 


Caselli, N., Occhino, C., Artacho, B., Savakis, A., & Dye, M. (2022). Perceptual optimization of language: Evidence from American Sign Language. Cognition, 224, 105040. doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105040

Occhino, C., Hill J. C., Hochgesang, J. A., Shaw, E., Fisher, J. N., & Tamminga, M. (2021). New Trends in ASL Variation Documentation. Sign Language Studies 21 (3), 350-377. doi.org/10.1353/sls.2021.0003


Occhino, C., Anible, B., & Morford, J. P. (2020). The role of iconicity, construal, and proficiency in the online processing of handshape. Language and Cognition 12(1), 114-137. doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2020.1

Morford, J. P., Occhino, C., Zirnstein, M., Kroll, J. F., Wilkinson, E., & Piñar, P. (2019). What is the source of bilingual cross-language activation in deaf bilinguals? Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. 24(4), 356-65. doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enz024 

Kurz, K., Mullaney, K., & Occhino, C.  (2019). Constructed Action in ASL: A Look at Second Modality and Second Language Learners. Languages 4 (4), 90. doi.org/10.3390/languages4040090  

Other Publications

In this chapter, we extend a usage-based theory of Construction Morphology to the analysis of sign language structure, to address two long-standing categorization problems in sign language linguistics. Sign language linguistics traditionally distinguishes monomorphemic core lexical signs from multimorphemic classifier construction signs, based on whether or not a sign form exhibits analyzable morphological structure (“the Core vs. Classifier problem”). In this tradition, core signs are retrieved from the lexicon, while classifier signs are derived productively via grammatical rules. Sign linguists are also accustomed to classifying discrete and listable aspects of sign structure as language, while aspects of signing that exhibit more holism or gradience are considered to be gesture (“the Language vs. Gesture problem”). These categories of core vs. classifier on the one hand and language vs. gesture on the other derive from a shared source: the assumption that linguistic forms are built up from discrete building blocks. Instead, we analyze multimodal usage events in terms of constructions, conventional patterns of meaning and form containing both fixed elements and variable slots and organized in a structured network. We argue that the Construction Morphology approach leads to a uniform analysis of core and classifier signs alike, without resorting to an a priori distinction between language and gesture.

Lepic, R., & Occhino, C. (2018). A Construction Morphology approach to sign language analysis. In G. Booij (Ed.), The Construction of Words (Vol. 4, pp. 141–172). Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-74394-3_6

Occhino, C. (2017). An Introduction to Embodied Cognitive Phonology: Claw-5 handshape distribution in ASL and Libras. Complutense Journal of English Studies. 

Occhino, C., Anible, B., Morford, J., Wilkinson, E., (2017). Iconicity is in the eye of the beholder: How language experience affects perceived iconicity. Gesture,16(1)

Morford, J. P., Occhino-Kehoe, C., Piñar, P., Wilkinson, E., & Kroll, J. F. (2017). The time course of cross-language activation in deaf ASL-English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. Published online October 21, 2015, doi:10.1017/S136672891500067X

Occhino, C., & Wilcox, S., (2017) Gesture or sign? A categorization problem. [Peer commentary “Gesture, sign and language: The coming of age of sign language and gesture studies,” by S. Goldin-Meadow & D. Brentari] Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Wilcox, S., & Occhino, C., (2016). Constructing Signs: Place as a Symbolic Structure in Signed Languages. Cognitive Linguistics, 27(3).       

Wilcox, S., & Occhino, C. (2016) Historical Change in Signed Languages, in Oxford Handbooks Online, New York: Oxford University Press.

Anible, B., & Occhino-Kehoe, C. (2014). What’s Happening with HAPPEN: The Grammaticalization of HAPPEN in American Sign Language. In Benjamin Anible, Keiko Beers, Laura Hirrel & Deborah Wager (Eds.), Proceedings of the High Desert Linguistics Society Conference, 10, 27-41.