Ronnie Wilbur

Joint Appointment

Department of Linguistics, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, College of Liberal Arts

Areas of Expertise

• Sign language structure (morphosyntax, semantics, prosody), neurocognitive processing, kinematics of production, successful outcomes of use in education

Biography

Responsible for sign language (SL) breakthroughs: (1) Documented deaf children’s SL knowledge does not interfere with English acquisition; single best predictor of ultimate educational outcomes is ASL fluency [Hrastinski, Wilbur 2016]. (2) Demonstrated SLs have syllables/standard stress patterns [Wilbur, Malaia 2018] (NSF funds); complex syntax (what looks like question-answer pair prosodically single sentence with information focus function; relative clauses [Wilbur 2017]; adverbial clauses; formal semantics (operators, modality, comparatives); formulated and tested Event Visibility Hypothesis as explanation for so-called sign iconicity. Grammatical use face/head/body: perform same functions as spoken morphemes, but simultaneously produced (NIH funds). Contributed to other SL grammars (Croatian, Austrian, Turkish) (NSF funds). (3) Conducted ASL motion capture [Wilbur, Malaia 2018]; neuroimaging and EEG [Krebs et al 2018]; and signal analysis [Malaia, Wilbur 2019].

Education

• PhD, 1973, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Websites

• CLA Linguistics

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

• SLHS DEI Committee; first generation

Current Courses

• SLHS 22700/LING 20100 - Introduction to Linguistics
• LING 53200 - Semantics 2
• SLHS 41100 - Speech vs. Sign
• SLHS 41000 - Evolution of Language
• LING 52100 - Syntax 1
• LING 52200 - Syntax 2

Selected Honors/Awards

• Expert in Sign Language/Expertscape - September 23, 2021
• Research and Scholarship Distinction Award/Purdue University - 2015
• Helen B. Schleman Gold Medallion Award/Mortar Board Society - 2014
• Fulbright Specialist/Fulbright, World Learning Organization - February 7, 2020
• EU Expert Reviewer/European Commission Director General, Informatics DG - 2012

Selected Grants

• Co-PI, Computational Methods for the Study of American Sign Language Nonmanuals Using Very Large Databases. National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (R01 DC014498). Aleix Martínez (PI, OSU). Period: 01/01/2016-12/31/22. Subcontract: $131,750.
• Co-PI, NCS-FO: Neuroimaging to Advance Computer Vision, NLP, and AI. National Science Foundation (NSF 1734938). Jeffrey M, Siskind (PI). Period: 08/15/17-08/14/22. Total: $1,000,000.

In the News

• Bradley C, Malaia EA, Siskind JM, Wilbur RB 2022. Visual form of ASL verb signs predicts non-signer judgment of transitivity. PLoS ONE 17(2): e0262098.
• Malaia, E. A., Borneman, S.C., Krebs, J., Wilbur, R.B. 2021. Low-frequency entrainment to visual motion underlies sign language comprehension. IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 29, 2456-2463.
• Karabüklü, S., Wilbur, R. B. 2021. Marking various aspects in TİD: BİT (finish) and ‘bn’. Sign Language & Linguistics 24(2): 182-225
• Krebs, J., Malaia, E., Wilbur, R. B. 2021. Age of sign language acquisition has lifelong effect on syntactic preferences in sign language users. International Journal of Behavioral Development 45(5): 397-408.
• Krebs, J., Malaia, E., Wilbur, R. B., & Roehm, D. 2021. Psycholinguistic mechanisms of classifier processing in sign language. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47(6), 998–1011.
• Li, R., Johansen, J.S., Ahmed, H., Ilyevsky, T.V., Wilbur, R. B., Bharadwaj, H.M., Siskind, J.M. 2021. The perils and pitfalls of block design for EEG classification experiments. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 43(1): 316-333.
• Wilbur, R. B. 2021. Non-manual markers – theoretical and experimental perspectives. In Josep Quer, Roland Pfau & Annika Herrmann (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Theoretical and Experimental Sign Language Research, 530-565.
• Malaia, E, Wilbur, R.B. 2020. Syllable as a unit of information transfer in linguistic communication: the Entropy Syllable Parsing model. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIREs) Cognitive Science 11: e1518.