A black and white picture of Natasha from the shoulders up wearing glasses, a knit scarf and hat, and a jacket; looking thoughtfully away from the camera to the right. The camera is angled slightly up over Natasha's left shoulder towards a large, regal dome of a historical building.

Natasha Abner

Assistant Professor

Department of Linguistics

University of Michigan

e-mail

 

Selected Papers & Publications

Additional publication and presentation information (including links to download) available on my CV.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

  • Motamedi, Y., K. Montemurro, N. Abner, M. Flaherty, S. Kirby, and S. Goldin-Meadow. 2022. The seeds of the noun-verb distinction in the manual modality: improvisation and interaction in the emergence of grammatical categories. Languages.
  • Kayabaşı, D. * and N. Abner. 2022. On the Reflexive kendi in Turkish Sign Language. Frontiers in Psychology.
  • Abner, N., S. Namboodiripad, E. Spaepen, and S. Goldin-Meadow. 2022. Emergent Morphology in Child Homesign: Evidence from Number Language. Language Learning and Development
  • Abner, N., M. Flaherty, K. Stangl * , D. Brentari, and S. Goldin-Meadow. 2019. The Noun-Verb Distinction in Established and Emergent Sign Languages. Language
  • Cooperrider, K., N Abner, and S. Goldin-Meadow. 2018. The Palm-Up Puzzle: Meanings and Origins of a Widespread Form in Gesture and Sign. Frontiers in Communication. [Open Access]
  • Abner, N . 2017. What You See Is What You Get.Get: Surface Transparency and Ambiguity of Nominalizing Reduplication in American Sign Language. Syntax. [PDF]
  • Abner, N., K. Cooperrider, and S. Goldin-Meadow. 2015. Gesture for Linguists: A Handy Primer. Language and Linguistics Compass. [PDF]
  • Abner, N. 2013. Gettin' Together a POSSe: The Primacy of Predication in ASL Possessives. Sign Language and Linguistics.. [PDF]

Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters

  • Abner, N. 2021 Determiner phrases — theoretical perspectives. Routledge Handbook of Theoretical and Experimental Sign Language Research.
  • Abner, N. 2017 Syntactic Categorization in Sign Languages. Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science (2nd edition).
  • Abner, N. and R. Wilbur. 2017. Quantification in American Sign Language. Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language, Vol. 2. [PDF]

Conference Proceedings

  • Abner, N., C. Geraci., S. Yu, J. Lettieri, J. Mertz, A. Salgat. 2020 Getting the Upper Hand on Sign Language Families: Historical Analysis and Annotation Methods. FEAST: Proceedings by the Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory Conference.
  • Yu, S., C. Geraci, and N. Abner. 2018. Sign Languages and the Online World Online Dictionaries & Lexicostatistics. 11th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2018). [PDF]
  • Wilbur, R. B., N. Abner, S. Wood, and H. Koulidobrova. 2018. When beat is ‘exceed’: Verbal comparison in American Sign Language. Proceedings of Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory
  • Abner, N. 2014. Got Me A Plumb, Gonna Get Me A Scale. Proceedings of Chicago Linguistics Society. [PDF]
  • Abner, N. 2012. The Object of My POSSession. Proceedings of West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 30. [PDF]
  • Graf, T. and N. Abner. 2012. Is Syntactic Binding Rational? Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammars and Related Formalisms. [PDF]
  • Abner, N. 2011. WH-Words That Go Bump in the Right. Proceedings of West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 28. [PDF]