News

SignLab at ICOLL conference in Nagoya
In February 2026, Marta, Josiah and Vanessa presented their joint experimental study on how ideophonic language background affects the perception of foreign ideophones, using data from Ga, German, and Cantonese speakers. Josiah presented his joint work with Kim, Markus and Cornelia on the conventionalization of ideophone-accompanying gestures, based on data from Ga and German. Vanessa also gave a presentation about the (in)flexibility of classifiers, comparing findings from German (DGS) and Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL). The conference, ICOLL2026, was the first joint conference of ICOsem (Iconicity Seminar) and ILL (Iconicity and Literature). It was successfully held at the University of Nagoya, Japan. With over 50 participants, the conference featured inspiring invited talks by Noburo Saji, Mutsumi Imai, Neil Cohn, and Pamela Perniss. It was a very engaging conference, with valuable discussions on iconicity across modalities. We also had a lot of exciting discussions about iconicity and multimodality with scholars from across the globe. And we look forward to having more exchange on this exciting topic.

New article by "WissesnWert|DGS" in Life InSight
In issue 158 of “Life InSight” Thomas Finkbeiner, Markus Steinbach, Patrick Trettenbrein, and Nina-Kristin Meister published a bimodal informational text about their ViCom project “Parts of Speech and Iconicity in German Sign Language (DGS)”. The article in written German can be downloaded here.















Lecture by Vadim Kimmelman
On Wednesday, January 7, 2026, Vadim Kimmelman from the University of Bergen gave a lecture entitled “Classifier Handshape Choice in Sign Languages” at 4 p.m. in our linguistic colloquium. In his lecture, Vadim presented new findings from the project “Whole-entity Classifiers: A Multiperspective Approach.” Among other things, this project examined various phonological, morphosyntactic, semantic, and discourse-related factors that can influence the choice between synonymous handshape classifiers in different sign languages. The lecture was translated into German Sign Language (DGS) by two interpreters. Forty participants from Göttingen attended online.