V Setmana de les Llengües de Signes (Vth Week on Sign Languages)

Gasteiz, May 24th 2009. The city is grey and rainy. And it will be for the next 3 days. It's Sunday (funny irony, it seems typical linguists humour). The catalan group of research (Guillem, Marta and Raquel -Gemma is still in Barcelona) gets to the train station at lunch time. We are in the mood for having a great week in Euskadi.

May 25th. The Fifth Week on Sign Languages starts with a conference: Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen's "Pointing Signs. An overview". Then Martha Kaperotxipi (from the basque group of research) and Guillem Massó drive a workshop on Corpus and Phonology. Interesting comments from the experts in the audience (Martha, have you made a note of it?). Shared luch time at the vegetarian's restaurant. Afternoon with Roland Pfau starting the PhD Course on Sign Languages of the World: an introduction to the theory of the gesture's origin of language. Simply amazing.

May 26th. Conference on "Eye Gaze and Agreement" by Robin Thompson. Workshop on "Non-manual features" by Brendan Costello and Marta Mosella. Lunch time at the university's cantina. Afternoon with Roland Pfau: from gesture to sign. Night of celebration: it's Raquel's birthday. Some of us go for a couple of pintxos and txakolis. Nice evening, indeed.

May 27th. Last conference of the week: "Transcription of phonological features in a sign language corpus" by Onno Crasborn (also named Cono Crasborn). Workshop on "Deixi" by Gemma Barberà and Javier Fernández. Cantina again and siesta on the green grass of the campus, just strengthening our boundaries. Afternoon with Roland: secondary sign languages. Memorable night: Barça's winning of the Champions League Cup, dinner at an indian restaurant, disco until 3.00.

May 28th. Presentation of a TV programe in LSE (most of the crew just left the ship: too much dancing yesterday). Lunch at the vegetarian: today the food tastes weird (is the sad taste of goodbye). Afternoon with Roland: village sign languages. Quite night.

May 29th. The last day. Free morning (museums, flowers and sun). Last lunch at the vegetarian: just 4 of us left. Afternoon with Roland: sign language typology. It's always hard to say goodbye.

But... we will always have Lille.

PS: These photos reflect just a tinny part of the week. The rest, of course, is top secret.