Richard P Meier

Biography

Richard P. Meier was educated at the University of Chicago (B.A., Anthropology, 1973), Washington University (M.A., Anthropology, 1975), and the University of California San Diego (Ph.D., Linguistics, 1982). His postdoctoral work at Illinois and Stanford was in Psychology. His research is inspired by the fact that there are two modalities, or transmission channels, available to human languages: the visual-gestural modality of sign and the oral-aural modality of speech. His publications examine the linguistics of signed languages and their acquisition by deaf children. He seeks insights into the ways in which linguistic organization and child language development are (or are not) shaped by the modality in which a particular language is produced and perceived.