ABSTRACT
In 1980, Ursula Bellugi and a group of researchers from The Salk Institute came to
California State University Northridge for a week-long workshop on the research
activities of the Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Studies (LLCS). As an
undergraduate majoring in Linguistics with an interest in American Sign Language (ASL)
and not a clear understanding of how those two interests were related to each other, I
attended the workshop and came away a changed person. I remember how exciting and
stimulating the workshop was, and I remember thinking how lucky those researchers
were to be able to devote their time to understanding the linguistics (and
psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics) of a language in another modality. I applied to
graduate school at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), and nowhere else,
confident that what I wanted to do was learn at the feet of the masters.
