The Emergence of a Sign Language in Nicaragua

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Nicaraguan Sign Language arose fifteen years ago when hundreds of previously isolated deaf individuals were brought together in schools for the first time as the result of an educational reform movement dedicated to providing literacy training and a fourth-grade education to everyone. For virtually the first time, it became possible to directly observe the emergence of a new language. This case is particularly interesting because this language arose not as the result of language contact or the creolization of previously existing languages, but rather from the merging of idiosyncratic gesture systems, called "home signs" that were used for communication within the immediate family by the first generation of deaf children to enter the schools. Home signers quickly began to share their idiosyncratic system imparting to the communication system more and more conventionality. In one generation, young children exposed to a mix of gesturing began to produce a communication form radically different from their input. The new form was more fluid, more complex and wholly language-like. With no co-existing signed languages and limited access to Spanish as a result of low literacy and inability to hear, the only source from which this highly complex linguistic structure could have come was the human brains of those very young first language learners. This constitutes the cleanest case to date in support of the proposal that humans are innately endowed with the capacity to acquire language--even when the input is non-optimal. This project will explore the rich source of evidence for innate language capacity offered by the Nicaraguan case. It begins with a systematic archiving, transcription and analysis of the language data collected over the past ten years including vocabulary, sentence structure, free conversation and controlled narratives elicited via 1.5 minute nonverbal cartoons. These cartoons are the stimuli for a population study that will document the signi ng of the entire population of signers in Nicaragua. The research involves several components: 1. the population study where a variety of factors conditioning sign fluency are considered including age, chronological year, and amount of exposure to signing; 2. the issue of critical mass (i.e., "How many gesturers does it take to make a language?); 3. the process by which a language emerges. While addressing issues of critical period, critical mass and the innate contribution of the human brain to language, the project will also produce a systematic linguistic analysis of Nicaraguan Sign Language. The areas of focus include the "phonetics" of this new language, an indepth analysis of its classifier and coreference systems, and the coding and analysis of the use of nonmanual gestures and facial expressions marking questions, topics, and a host of other grammatical functions.