**Wendy Sandler**

Wendy Sandler has developed models of sign language phonology and prosody that exploit general linguistic principles to reveal both the similarities and the differences in natural languages in two modalities. With colleagues Carol Pasdden, Mark Aronoff and the late Irit Meir, her work has turned to the emergence of new sign languages. Sandler focuses on ways in which the body is recruited to manifest increasingly complex linguistic form within a community of signers. In her multi-disciplinary research project, The Grammar of the Body, supported by the European Research Council, she studied how actions of the body illuminate the evolution and emergence of linguistic structure in human language and its precursors. As part of that project, she founded a unique sign language theatre company named 'Ebisu'. Sandler has authored or co-authored three books on sign language: *Phonological Representation of the Sign* (Foris); *A Language in Space: The Story of Israeli Sign Language* co-authored with Irit Meir (Hebrew version: University of Haifa Press; English version: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates/Taylor Francis); and *Sign Language and Linguistic Universals*, coauthored with Diane Lillo-Martin (Cambridge University Press). She is a member of the Linguistic Society of America, the Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
