Grammatical Regularities in Sign Language and Homesign

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With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Diane Brentari will conduct five years of linguistic research on the handshapes used in well-established sign languages and in the invented systems used by deaf individuals who have not been exposed to a signed or spoken languages, called 'homesign' systems. Three different deaf populations that use a visual-gestural system as their primary means of communication will be studied: native signers of Italian Sign Language (adults and children); Italian homesigning children, and Nicaraguan homesigners(adults and children). The populations are all from environments where gesture is also a strong part of the language environment. The data will come from descriptions of events of motion and location.The scientific questions addressed by this project are the following. First, how do grammatical properties in syntax, phonology, and morphology emerge in the case of children acquiring a language from their parents vs. when children are inventing their own systems of gestures without language input from their families? Second, what aspects of grammar are more or less robust in the case of acquisition case vs. the case of invention and at what age? Third, do homesign systems become more sophisticated when they are used as the primary means of communication over the course of a lifetime, as is the case in homesigning adults in Nicaragua? Finally, this research will contribute to our understanding of the evolution of language because homesigners are inventing communication anew in a way that is not possible to observe in the realm of spoken languages; this particlar moment of spoken language history was not recorded in a way that it can be studied with contemporary means. In addition to its scientific merit, this project will recruit native-signing Deaf undergraduate and graduate students to help analyze data, and so provide an opportunity for these students to engage in first-hand scientific research on sign languages.