Tory Sampson

Tory Sampson is a current postdoctoral fellow in the Deaf Center under the NIH NIDCD T-32 training grant. She is interested in language change occurring within and across sign languages, with a special focus on how and why broader structures get reanalyzed for specific meanings. Her work includes mapping a grammaticalization pathway with the American Sign Language (ASL) sign SELF across 200 years of ASL history, and conducting experiments to evaluate nonverbal predication in ASL. Currently, Dr. Sampson is focusing on the role of movement repetition in sign language lexicons and spontaneous production, and how this may interact with the increasing symbolization as sign languages age.