RAPID: Acquisition of Zinacantec Family Homesign in the Only Second Generation Speaker

自发创造的手语为探索人类语言能力提供了一个天然的实验室，让我们得以一窥语言是如何在没有直接“语言输入”的情况下创造出来的。 这样一个微型的"语言社区"存在于墨西哥的恰帕斯州，那里正在创建Zinacantec Family Homesign（以下简称ZFHS），这是一个由三个聋人兄弟姐妹和两个听力正常的同龄人使用的手动通信系统。还有一名听力正常的婴儿，现在已近两岁，正在同时学习ZFHS和当地土著语言Tzotzil（玛雅语）。这项研究记录了这个孩子的双语收购Tzotzil和ZFHS，并将涉及在未来12个月的孩子每周录像。它还将使用自发的互动和半结构化的实验技术来记录照顾者的语言能力，在ZFHS和口语Tzotzil。这种情况提供了一个机会，探讨有关语言的性质，起源和进化的问题。它们让我们深入了解特定的词是如何以及为什么会出现的，什么样的聚合语义和语用范畴会产生语言交际系统，以及句法、形态和音系是如何出现的。研究聋人语言在"自然"条件下演变的机会很少。大多数手语研究所用的语言要么是已经确立的，要么是在第一代说话者消失后才引起研究人员的注意。这项研究将探讨创造，创新和变化的过程中，在一种语言的演变开始，与整个宇宙的发言者一起工作。 了解像ZFHS这样自发创造的语言的潜力和表达能力，特别是在像玛雅印第安人这样代表性不足的少数民族人口的背景下，不仅会影响那些在沟通方面处于劣势的人，而且实际上会影响一般少数民族语言的使用者，他们的沟通能力往往被低估或重新塑造为对其社会和经济生活的直接责任。最广泛的是，这项研究将对一个长期存在的问题做出直接贡献：人类语言是如何创造的，以及它是如何在人类连续几代的时间过程中进化和结构化的。

Spontaneously created sign languages provide a natural laboratory for exploring the human language capacity, allowing a glimpse into how language is created without direct "linguistic input". Such a miniature "speech community" exists in Chiapas, Mexico, where Zinacantec Family Homesign (hereafter ZFHS), a manual communication system used by three deaf siblings and two hearing age-mates, is being created. There is also a hearing infant, now nearing two years of age, who is simultaneously learning ZFHS and the local indigenous language, Tzotzil (Mayan). This research documents this child's bilingual acquisition of Tzotzil and ZFHS and will involve weekly video recordings of the child over the next twelve months. It will also use spontaneous interaction and semi-structured experimental techniques to document the linguistic abilities of the caregiver, in both ZFHS and spoken Tzotzil. Such situations provide an opportunity to explore questions about the nature, origins, and evolution of language. They give insight into how and why particular words come into existence, what sorts of paradigmatic semantic and pragmatic categories accrue to systems of linguistic communication, and how syntax, morphology, and phonology emerge. Opportunities for research on the languages of the deaf as they evolve in "natural" conditions are rare. Most sign language research works with languages which are either well-established or which have come to the attention of researchers only after the first generation of speakers has disappeared. This research will probe the processes of creation, innovation, and change at the beginning of a language's evolution, working together with the full universe of its speakers. Understanding the potential and expressive capacity of a spontaneously created language like ZFHS, especially in the context of an underrepresented minority populations like Mayan Indians, will impact not only people with communicational disadvantages but, indeed, speakers of minority languages in general, whose communicative abilities are often under-appreciated or recast as direct liabilities to their social and economic lives. Most broadly of all, this research will make a direct contribution to a perennial question: how is human language created, and how does it evolve and structure itself over the time course of successive human generations.