here - Linguistic Society of America

Friday, 4 JanuaryTutorialAugmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC):What can AAC Speakers teach us about Human Languageand the Intersection between Grammar and Modality?Clarendon/Berkeley2:00 – 5:00 PMOrganizer:Participants:Carol Tenny (Industry Linguist)Katya Hill (University of Pittsburgh)Chris Klein (BeCOME AAC)Eric Nyberg (Carnegie Mellon University)Helen Stickney (University of Pittsburgh)Carol Tenny (Industry Linguist)The purpose of this Symposium/Tutorial is to introduce a unique population of language speakers to the linguistic community:speakers using Augmentative and Alternative Communication devices (whom we call AAC speakers), who should be recognizedas a population of normal language speakers using alternative modalities. AAC Speakers crosscut the well-studied modalities ofproduction and comprehension of vocally articulating speakers and deaf speakers of American Sign Language and other signlanguages. AAC Speakers are persons with a disability such as cerebral palsy, who comprehend spoken language normally, butproduce speech using a keyboard and voice synthesizer. Their reduced articulatory system most often consists of sequences of hitsby a single digit on a keyboard. AAC speakers are unique in the relation between their language perception and productionmodalities.Not only do AAC speakers cross-cut the perception and production modalities used by vocal and manual articulators, they alsoconfound the traditional distinctions between spoken and written language. There are a number of different systems available forrepresenting language on a keyboard for an AAC device. Language input systems for AAC devices can range over: symbolic andlinguistically-oriented systems; hierarchically organized word menus; pictorial symbols; and spelling on a Qwerty keyboard. Mostspeakers hit keys with a digit, like a typist, so in that respect they are comparable to someone producing written language bytyping.AAC speakers have a unique set of language modalities differing from that of previously studied language populations. However,in contrast to speakers of sign languages such as ASL, linguistic research has not focused to any significant extent on AACspeakers. This is partly because there has been little opportunity for linguists and AAC speakers to meet. The population of AACspeakers is small and not well known among linguists. Furthermore, there has been no easy access to language data from AACspeakers, because of the difficulty of gathering linguistic data from AAC speakers. With recently developed technology, it hasbecome easier to record language data from AAC devices.From the point of view of understanding basic language function, AAC speakers constitute an important, understudied populationfrom which we have much to learn, for example: the relation between modality and grammar; the role of language productionduring language acquisition; and the effect on language processing of the difference between production and perceptionmodalities. We do not have answers to these questions, though we have a few suggestive results. We are a group based inPittsburgh which has begun efforts to launch research at the interface of AAC and linguistics. The presentations in thistutorial/symposium will cover a basic introduction to AAC; how AAC language representation systems are structured; what typesof language data can be gathered from AAC speakers; what initial research there is in acquisition and psycholinguistics; and anoverview of our project for an AAC language database.Abstracts:Carol Tenny (Industry Linguist)Katya Hill (University of Pittsburgh)IntroductionThis session will provide a background and introduction to AAC. The presenters will give an overview of existing research at theintersection of AAC and linguistics. The relevant background for an understanding of AAC includes the history of AAC;diagnoses of persons using AAC; non-aphasic versus aphasic AAC-speakers; speaking rates of AAC users compared with non-100