Wendy Sandler is an American-Israeli linguist who is known for her research on the phonology of Sign Languages. Sandler earned her PhD in linguistics from the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

in 1987, with a dissertation entitled "Sequentiality and simultaneity in American Sign Language." A revised version of her dissertation was published in 1989 under the title, "Phonological Representation of the Sign: Linearity and Nonlinearity in Sign Language Phonology." After her dissertation, Sandler took up a position at the

University of Haifa The University of Haifa ( he, אוניברסיטת חיפה Arabic: جامعة حيفا) is a university located on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel. Founded in 1963, the University of Haifa received full academic accreditation in 1972, becoming ...

, Israel, where she became a Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English Language and Literature. She was also the Founding Director of the Sign Language Research Lab there. Sandler has co-written a book on

Israeli Sign Language Israeli Sign Language, also known as Shassi or ISL, is the most commonly used sign language by the Deaf community of Israel. Some other sign languages are also used in Israel, among them Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language. History The history of ...

with Irit Meir (Meir & Sandler 2007). With Diane Lillo-Martin, she has co-authored a standard linguistic introduction to the phonology and syntax of American Sign Language (Sandler & Lillo-Martin 2006). In collaboration with

Mark Aronoff Mark Aronoff (), a native of Montreal, Quebec, is a morphologist and distinguished professor at Stony Brook University. The editor of ''Language'' from 1995 to 2001 and president of the Linguistic Society of America in 2005, he has been electe ...

, Irit Meir and

Carol Padden Carol A. Padden (born 1955 in Washington, D.C.) is an American academic, author, and lecturer. She is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego, where she has been teaching since 1983. Padden recei ...

, Sandler has made fundamental contributions to the investigation of the emergence of language with her research on

Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) is a village sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert of southern Israel. As deafness is so frequent (4% of the population is deaf, ...

. This research is featured in ''Talking Hands'', by

Margalit Fox Margalit Fox (born 1961) is an American writer. She began her career in publishing in the 1980s, before switching to journalism in the 1990s. She joined the obituary department of ''The New York Times'' in 2004, and authored over 1,400 obituarie ...

. In December 2017, Sandler won a prize of 150,000 Israeli new shekels from

Mifal HaPayis Mifal HaPais ( he, מפעל הפיס) is the national lottery of Israel. Most gambling is illegal in Israel. The only bodies licensed to provide betting services are Mifal HaPais and The Israeli Sports Betting Council. In 2012, Mifal HaPais's annua ...

for her conceptual research systems while following new sign languages which are being converted into functional communication, including a sign language of a Bedouin community in Israel. During 2014–2018, Sandler led a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant entitled, "The Grammar of the Body: Revealing the Foundations of Compositionality in Human Language" (GRAMBY).

Key publications

*Sandler, Wendy. 1989. ''Phonological Representation of the Sign: Linearity and Nonlinearity in Sign Language Phonology''. Dordrecht: Foris. *Sandler, Wendy and Diane Lillo-Martin. 2006. ''Sign Language and Linguistic Universals''. Cambridge University Press. *Meir, Irit & Wendy Sandler. 2007. ''A Language in Space: the Story of Israeli Sign Language''. Psychology Press. *Sandler, Wendy, Aronoff, Mark, Padden, Carol & Meir, Irit. (2014). Language emergence. In J. Sindell, P. Kockelman & N. Enfield (Eds.),'' The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology'' (pp. 250–284). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *Sandler, Wendy, Meir, Irit, Padden, Carol & Aronoff, Mark. 2005
The emergence of grammar: Systematic structure in a new language.
''PNAS'' 102, 2661-2665. *Sandler, Wendy. (2012). Dedicated gestures in the emergence of sign language. ''Gesture'' 12/3, 265-307. *Sandler, Wendy, Aronoff, Mark, Meir, Irit, Padden, Carol. (2011). The Gradual Emergence of Phonological Form in a New Language. ''Natural Language and Linguistic Theory'' 29, 503-543. *Sandler, Wendy. (2010). The phonology of movement in sign language. In ''Blackwell companion to phonology,'' Marc van Oostendorp, Colin Ewen, Keren Rice, and Elizabeth Hume (Eds.), Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. 577–603.

References

External links

*http://www.talkinghandsbook.com/ *http://gramby.haifa.ac.il/ *http://signlab.haifa.ac.il/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Sandler, Wendy Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Linguists from Israel Women linguists Linguists of sign languages University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts alumni University of Haifa faculty