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Most scholarly speculation on the origin of human language has centered around speech. However, the growing understanding of sign languages on human development has transformed the debate on language evolution. David F. Armstrong's new book Show of Hands: A Natural History of Sign Language casts a wide net in history and geography to explain how these visible languages have enriched human culture in general and how their study has expanded knowledge of the human condition. Armstrong addresses the major theories of language evolution, including Noam Chomsky's thesis of an innate human \"organ\" for language and Steven Pinker's contention that there is language and not-language without any gradations between gesture and language. This engrossing survey proceeds with William C. Stokoe's revival of the early anthropological cognitive-linguistic model of gradual development through the iconicity of sign languages. Armstrong ranges far to reveal the nature of sign languages, from the anatomy of early human ancestors to telling passages by Shakespeare, Dickens, and Pound, to the astute observations of Socrates, Lucretius, and Abbé de l'Epée on sign communication among deaf people. Show of Hands illustrates the remarkable development of sign languages in isolated Bedouin communities and among Australian indigenous peoples. It also explores the ubiquitous benefits of \"Deaf Gain\" and visual communication as they dovetail with the Internet and its mushrooming potential for the future.

Deaf President Now, or DPN, should be viewed as a process, not as a single event. The forces that led to the installation of the first deaf president at Gallaudet were set in motion long before 1988, and they continued to be significant through the protests of 2006. Among the many changes wrought by the 1988 DPN movement is a fundamental shift in the demographics of the Gallaudet workforce, such that the percentage of deaf people among the pool of employees has doubled from 25 percent to 50 percent. This article attempts to put DPN in historical context, and it argues that this shift in the Gallaudet workforce has led to profound changes in the institutional culture.

Aspirin resistance is a well-documented laboratory finding, but the effects of clinical aspirin (ASA) failure on patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) have been debated. Likewise, there is recognition of clopidogrel resistance, but the clinical effects of clopidogrel failure are not well understood. We sought to determine the 6-month outcomes of patients who developed an ACS while on ASA or dual antiplatelet agents. Of all patients admitted to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, between 1999 and 2005 with a diagnosis of ACS, 6-month follow-up data were available for 3126. The cohort was divided into 3 groups based on medication history: no prior antiplatelet agent, ASA only, and ASA with clopidogrel (or ticlopidine). Primary end point was the rate of death, myocardial infarction, and stroke, or composite major adverse cardiac events (MACEs) at 6 months. Aside from a lower rate of myocardial infarction in patients without any prior antiplatelet agent use, there were no significant differences in 6-month stroke, death, or MACE between the 3 medication cohorts. In the propensity-adjusted model, whereas dual antiplatelet status was not an independent predictor of 6-month mortality or MACE, there was a trend toward lower 6-month death rates for patients with prior ASA use (odds ratio 0.72, 95% CI 0.51-1.04, P = .08). Patients who “fail” antiplatelet therapy do not have overall worse prognosis. Our data do not support ASA or dual antiplatelet agent failure as a distinct clinical entity.

The idea that iconic visible gesture had something to do with the origin of language, particularly speech, is a frequent element in speculation about this phenomenon and appears early in its history. Socrates hypothesizes about the origins of Greek words in Plato’s satirical dialogue,Cratylus, and his speculation includes a possible role for sound based iconicity as well as for the visual gestures employed by the deaf. Plato’s use of satire to broach this topic also points to the fine line between the sublime and the ridiculous that has continued to be a hallmark of this sort of speculation. This paper will present recent evidence supporting the idea that language first arose as visible gesture. This evidence is culled from several lines of research, including research on the neurological underpinnings of gesture, i.e., research on mirror neurons; new research on the gestural communication of African apes; research on the cognitive basis of the signed languages of the deaf; and research on the emergence of new signed languages

Dr. Lucas is Professor of Linguistics at Gallaudet University, co-author of The Linguistics of American Sign Language, and author of numerous articles on the linguistics of signed languages.

Carrying forward Bill Stokoe's work for the past eight years through the editing of Sign Language Studies has been an honor and a privilege, and I would like to thank all those who have made it possible: the numerous scholars who have submitted manuscripts or given their time and effort by reviewing the work of others, members of the editorial board, but most especially Ivey Wallace and Deirdre Mullervy of the Gallaudet University Press whose efforts, I believe, have given us ajournai that we can all be proud of. Of particular interest here was his involvement in the creation of the Gallaudet University Press Institute and in the planning for each of its conferences, including the Revolutions in Sign Language Studies conference of 2006 and the April, 2007 sesquicentennial celebration of the founding of Gallaudet on Kendall Green.

Corballis presents a plausible evolutionary mechanism to explain the tight linkage between cerebral lateralization for language and for handedness in humans. This argument may be bolstered by invoking Stokoe's notion of semantic phonology to explain the role of Broca's area in grammatical functions.

Stokoe begins his seminal article in semantic phonology with complaints about the complexities of the sign phonologies that were emerging at the time. His insight was not just that phonology is somehow meaningful. Rather, semantic phonology suggests that language structures are built of components that are structurally identical to themselves: Sentences are composed of words, but words are composed of semantic-phonological \"sentences\" or \"noun-verb\" constructions--that is, they are fundamentally recursive. In this article, the authors explain Stokoe's seminal concept of semantic phonology and clarify some controversies concerning its application.

The first of two commemorative articles (reprinted from The Study of Signed Languages: Essays in Honor of William C. Stokow [2002]) introducing a volume celebrating the work of this well-known language scholar examines his impact not only on the science of language, but especially on its educational opportunities for deaf people. Before Stokoe's valuable contributions to the study of sign language, the primary focus in this area had been deaf people's ability to master spoken language & to discern speech on the lips of others. S. Stanton