Bonnie Barrett

In the Spotlight: Dr. Joseph Hill

Dr. Hill will be joining us at the 2026 LSA Annual Meeting for the Plenary Address! Dr. Hill is Professor of Deaf Studies and Linguistics and Director of the Center for Black Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University. Don’t miss this session! cvent.me/9Mdr3G

Want to know more about the Family ASL project? Check out our new paper “Language and Cognitive Development in Bimodal Bilingual Deaf Children in Hearing Families: Three Case Studies.” It’s part of a special issue on Lang & Cog Dev in Deaf Children www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/15...

📌 👉 The 14th International Construction Grammar conference will be held at Princeton, June 4-7, 2026

Usage-based analyses and Empirical methods

Stay tuned for updates!

Idioms and other constructions in American Sign Language Idioms are phrases like English [hit the sack], meaning ‘go to bed’. For linguists working with sign languages, a question arises: “What do idioms look like in a sign language?” This paper proposes a ...

What started as a half-baked lecture in 2023 is now an actual article in 2025. I try to define "idiom", look for them in ASL, and identify other ASL constructions, to boot. (We all complain about "reviewer 2", but I got good and helpful revisions on this one!) doi.org/10.1515/cog-... #linguistics

We had an incredible Forum Lecture last Sunday with Joan Bybee (University of New Mexico)! ✨
She gave a fascinating talk on Usage-Based Theory and Language Change.

Thanks to everyone who joined talk

#LSA2025 #Linguistics #ForumLecture #JoanBybee #LanguageChange #UsageBased

Really nice example to bring up in a data science or corpus #linguistics class about dealing with weirdness in your data!

A major danger of LLMs is that humans are SO predisposed to attribute knowledge to any entity that uses natural language fluently. We cannot imagine that a machine that outputs natural-seeming speech/text doesn't have cognition. Brilliantly articulated by @emilymbender.bsky.social et al. (2021).

One-pager describing the ASL Signbank. Top teal banner with 3 people signing "ASL-SIGNBANK FOR-FOR DOCUMENTATION" with text below (same as text in skeet). Below background image of lots of signers for the ASL Signbank dimmed. Foregrounded are different boxes - author information (Julie A. Hochgesang, Onno Crasborn and Diane Lillo-Martin, 2017-2025), The ASL Signbank logo with name sign in outlined hands, teal box with white text "The ASL Signbank is a cloud-based lexical database, which has been designed/organized using the Global signbank infrastructure", screenshot of home page of website for ASL Signbank, Screenshot of "all signs" view with "related signs" circled - text overlaid "There are currently 4400+ entries in ASl Signbank and growing. Categories of entry information follow prior signbanks and our proejct annotation conventions." Screenshot of ELAN showing a Black woman signing in ASL and text below with a smaller video linked - next to this is a teal box with white text "Although it can be used for reference and analysis of ASL signs, the primary purpose of the ASL Signbank is to serve as an annotation tool for ASL videos using ELAN, an annotation software (see left). Annotation makes videos machine-readable (searchable, countable, etc). The bottom of the screen has logo for project "SLAASh" along with the hand showing a slash mark. There's acknowledgments for participants and families as well as research assistants and grant information. It also links to the website via text and QR code. It also shows an Instagram logo and @ASLSignbank

SIGNBANK FOR-FOR DOCUMENTATION

The ASL Signbank is a documentation tool for annotating ASL videos

aslsignbank.com

#TheASLSignbank

Four volunteers smile for a selfie while standing in front of the ‘guess the story” and ‘in your hands’ booths with flyers, stickers, mini brain toys on the tables.

May 10th, we celebrated NSF's 75th Language Science Fair with Dr. Deanna Gagne, Lilly Berggoetz, & @bonniebarrett.bsky.social at the @langscistation.bsky.social!

Bluesky won't let me post this because too many graph-somethings, but it's important if you have a min. The residential program at the NJ School for the Deaf has been cut from the state budget www.instagram.com/share/reel/B...

Julie and Bonnie are standing next to a presentation screen with Bonnie's title slide. Black background with white text "Conclusions: Conclusions • Signers use GEs in ASL by employing a variety of constructions. • GEs in ASL are often used after lists, but they are also used in other constructional environments. • GEs are multifunctional; we have evidence of their grammaticalization." as bulleted list. Bottom of screen has pictures of people signing

Julie and Bonnie are standing next to a presentation screen with Bonnie's title slide. Black background with white text "General Extenders in ASL, and stuff like that" (large font) then bottom "Bonnie Barrett, Guided Research Project, Gallaudet University Department of Linguistics, Adviser: Dr. Julie A. Hochgesang, May 2, 2025"

So proud of @bonniebarrett.bsky.social what a great presentation! Done as one of her PhD milestones in Gallaudet Linguistics PhD program. Love it when it all comes together 😍

Thank you for all of your guidance and support always! ☺️

You can’t replace artists with AI.
You can’t replace teachers with AI.
You can’t replace scientists with AI.

Important work comes from people. AI does not have the creativity, problem solving skills, and humanity necessary for the most important work we do as humans.

Teal background with white text “ASL” on top and “Signbank” on bottom. Two outlined hands top right indicating “s” and “b”

Everyone!!!!!! ASL Signbank is live on its own domain 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Working on a few things but yay!

aslsignbank.com

Language science explores how people learn + use language. It is integral to our lives, health, education, tech + more. At the Language Science Fair, explore how language works and meet the scientists who study it!

📅 Sat, May 10 | Language Science Fair
📍 Planet Word | Free
🔗 Link in bio to register

Photo of Misa and Bonnie standing in front of a green and beige wall with “Department of Linguistics” written on it. Text above reads International Conference on Linguistics Communication 2025, 7-10 April 2025. LingComm25.

@bonniebarrett.bsky.social and I will be presenting on behalf of the ‘In Your Hands’ project team at #LingComm25! 💫 We’re presenting in ASL, and our presentation will have English interpretation.

#LingComm25 update: Feast your eyes on these posters.

Zines, African American language, trans language activism, bilingualism, Deaf outreach — and that's just Poster Session *one*

Read more:
lingcomm.org/lingcomm25/s...

Register now:
www.eventbrite.com/e/the-intern...

Labov (1971), Finding out about children's language (a.k.a "the bunny paper") has been published (open access) in Language Variation and Change! #linguistics 🐰