About

The grammars of signed languages are as highly complex as the grammars of spoken languages and share with them many universal features, despite the difference in modality between spoken languages (which use the auditory channel) and signed languages (which use the visual channel). Yet, sign languages also differ from spoken languages in radical ways: morphological information in sign languages is often conveyed simultaneously by different articulators rather than linearly; moreover, certain aspects of their phonological, syntactic and semantic structures are not commonly found in spoken languages. These differences raise an interesting challenge both for formal linguistic and experimental research frameworks.

Conference series

FEAST (Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory) is the regular forum to discuss formal approaches to sign language grammar (in particular in the generative tradition), experimental approaches to sign languages, and their interaction. FEAST is held as a conference series every one or two years. The next installment will take place at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on July 6th–8th, 2026. It is organized by SignLab Amsterdam at the University of Amsterdam (UvA).

FEAST conferences

2011, Venice: June 20–22, 2011
2012, Warsaw: June 1–2, 2012
2014, Venice: June 9–11, 2014
2015, Barcelona: May 4–6, 2015
2016, Venice: September 1–2, 2016
2017, Reykjavik: June 21–22, 2017
2018, Venice: June 18–20, 2018
2020, Paris: June 23–25, 2020
2021, Hong Kong: June 1–4, 2021
2023, Bergen: June 27–29, 2023
2024, Michigan: August 6-8, 2024
2026, Amsterdam: July 6-8, 2026

Information about previous FEAST conferences can be find here: https://sites.google.com/site/feastconference/home.

Proceedings

Since 2018, FEAST proceedings are published as an open-access journal: https://raco.cat/index.php/FEAST.

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