Department of Linguistics

World map of languages — What’s up with languages at USM? USM’s language offerings have recently expanded. But that’s only part of the story. Learn more.

An illustration from the poster for MDFF 2022. The illustration shows eight sets of human arms making different ASL signs. The arms are arranged into a group circled by another pair of arms. At the top of the image is a quote, "Together we are stronger" and at the bottom is the text "18th Annual Maine Deaf Film Festival 2022".

The Maine Deaf Film Festival has a new website! Click this button to see the new page.

Linguistics students shadow-sign As You Like It

ASL shadowed productions offer Deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences the experience of theater instead of a sole interpreter. Each speaking actor is shadowed by a signing actor.

Prof. Dana McDaniel with a child in a language acquisition study. — Prof. McDaniel with child in a language acquisition study

Prof. McDaniel with child in a language acquisition study

One of Professor McDaniel’s research areas is child language acquisition. She studies children’s syntactic knowledge through language games. This child is describing a scene shown on the computer.