Dr Gerardo Ortega BA, MA, PhD

Dr Gerardo Ortega, University of Birmingham

Department of Linguistics and Communication
Associate Professor

Contact details

Email: g.ortega@bham.ac.uk

Address: Frankland Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

I am an Associate Professor interested in the acquisition and emergence of manual communication. I specialise in the acquisition of a sign language as a first and second language, sign language processing, and the similarities between sign and gesture. I also explore the role of gesture and iconicity in sign language emergence and evolution.

Qualifications

PhD Cognitive, perceptual and Brain Sciences (University College London, UK) 2013
MA Applied Linguistics (Universidad de las Americas, Mexico) 2006
BA Environmental Engineering (Universidad de las Americas, Mexico) 2003

Biography

Gerardo completed his PhD at the Deafness, Language and Cognition Research Centre at University College London under the supervision of Gary Morgan and Bencie Woll. He then took a position as postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands under the supervision of Asli Ozyurek. After six years in the Netherlands, he accepted a lecturer position at the department of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham. In addition ot his research projects, Gerardo is actively engaged in the research community and contributes as ad hoc reviewer for journals and funding agencies including Sign Language and Linguistics, Second Language Research, Language Learning, Cognition. Psychological Science, and Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.

Teaching

I am currently teaching the under graduate modules Investigating Language, Theories of Language, and Applied Linguistics

Postgraduate supervision

I am always interested in discussing the possibility of supervising PhD students to pursue research on the acquisition of sign languages as a second or first language, sign language processing, the interface between gesture and sign.

Find out more - our PhD English Language and Applied Linguistics page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

The main focus of his research is to explore the underlying mechanisms behind the acquisition of a sign language. He primarily focuses on how hearing people - who already master a spoken language - go on to acquire a sign language as second language. He has also worked on sign language learning by deaf children. Using a wide range of techniques such as naturalistic observation, behavioural tasks, and electrophysiological methods, he has investigated how iconicity and gesture contribute to sign learning and processing. In a different line of research he has also investigates how the different strategies to communicate with iconic gesture may serve as scaffolding for language emergence and evolution. He has carried out extensive research in different sign languages (British Sign Language, Sign Language of the Netherlands, Turkish Sign Language, and Mexican Sign Language) as well as cross-cultural studies in gesture production and comprehension.

Publications

Highlight publications

Ortega, G 2017, 'Iconicity and sign lexical acquisition: a review', Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 8, 1280. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01280

Ortega, G, Ozyurek, A & Peeters, D 2019, 'Iconic gestures serve as manual cognates in hearing second language learners of a sign language: an ERP study', Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000729

Ortega, G, Sumer, B & Ozyurek, A 2017, 'Type of iconicity matters in the vocabulary development of signing children', Developmental Psychology, vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 89-99. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000161

Recent publications

Article

Ortega, G, Schiefner, A, Lazarus, N & Perniss, P 2025, 'A lexical database of British Sign Language (BSL) and German Sign Language (DGS): Iconicity ratings, iconic strategies, and concreteness norms', Behavior Research Methods, vol. 57, no. 5, 139. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-025-02660-z

Mamus, E, Speed, LJ, Ortega, G, Majid, A & Özyürek, A 2025, 'Gestural and Verbal Evidence of Conceptual Representation Differences in Blind and Sighted Individuals', Cognitive Science, vol. 49, no. 10, e70125. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70125

Hernández, D, Puupponen, A, Keränen, J, Ortega, G & Jantunen, T 2024, 'Between bodily action and conventionalized structure: The neural mechanisms of constructed action in sign language comprehension', Brain and Language, vol. 252, 105413. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2024.105413

Karadöller, DZ, Peeters, D, Manhardt, F, Özyürek, A & Ortega, G 2024, 'Iconicity and Gesture Jointly Facilitate Learning of Second Language Signs at First Exposure in Hearing Nonsigners', Language Learning. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12636

Niu, C, Cienki, A, Ortega Delgado, G & Coen, M 2022, 'Learning to express causal events in Mandarin Chinese: A multimodal perspective', Journal of Child Language. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000922000447

Ortega Delgado, G & Ostarek, M 2021, 'Evidence for visual simulation during sign language processing', Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001041

Ortega, G, Schiefner, A & Özyürek, A 2019, 'Hearing non-signers use their gestures to predict iconic form-meaning mappings at first exposure to signs', Cognition, vol. 191, 103996. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2019.06.008

Ortega, G & Özyürek, A 2019, 'Systematic mappings between semantic categories and types of iconic representations in the manual modality: A normed database of silent gesture', Behaviour Research Methods, vol. 52, pp. 51–67. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-019-01204-6

Ortega, G & Özyürek, A 2019, 'Types of iconicity and combinatorial strategies distinguish semantic categories in silent gesture across cultures', Language and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2019.28

Chapter

Ortega, G, Hirata, Y & Kelly, S 2026, Iconicity in L2 learning. in O Fischer, K Akita & P Perniss (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Iconicity in Language. Oxford University Press, pp. 589-609. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192849489.013.0037

Abstract

Tong, Q, Ortega, G & Perlman, M 2026, 'Do visual signals really afford more iconicity than acoustic signals?', IcoLL2026 (the joint conference of the 4th Iconicity Seminar (IcoSem) and the 15th International Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature (ILL) , Nagoya, Japan, 21/02/26 pp. 117-119. <https://ianjoo.github.io/icosem/IcoLL2026Abstracts.pdf>

Book/Film/Article review

Ortega, G 2024, 'Review of Żywiczyński, Blomberg & Boruta-Żywiczyńska (2024): Perspectives on Pantomime', Gesture, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 325-336. https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.24027.ort

Conference contribution

Tong, Q, Ortega, G & Perlman, M 2026, The evolution of visual versus auditory communication when produced with the same articulatory apparatus. in S Hartmann, M Sibierska, M Fröhlich, M Josserand, Y Jadou, K Mudd, T Matzinger, J Nölle, M Pleyer, S Wacewicz & P Żywiczyński (eds), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference (EVOLANG XVI). Proceedings of the International Conference on the Evolution of Language, The Evolution of Language Conferences, Nijmegen, pp. 469-472. https://doi.org/10.17617/2.3696655

Ortega, G, Schiefner, A & Ozyurek, A 2017, Speakers’ gestures predict the meaning and perception of iconicity in signs. in G Gunzelmann, A Howe & T Tenbrink (eds), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. vol. Austin, Cognitive Science Society, Texas, pp. 889-894, 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, London, United Kingdom, 26/07/17. <https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2017/papers/0176/paper0176.pdf>

Ortega, G & Ozyurek, A 2016, Generalisable patterns of gesture distinguish semantic categories in communication without language. in A Papafragou, D Grodner, D Mirman & J Trueswell (eds), Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society, Austin, Texas, pp. 1182-1187, 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, 10/08/16. <https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2016/papers/0212/index.html>

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