Doctoral Dissertation Research: Sign language development and socialization in a Chatino village

科学很少有机会研究一种正在新生的新语言；对某些手语的研究提供了这种机会。尼加拉瓜手语研究表明，一种新语言的出现可能主要依赖于儿童。这个项目调查了聋哑和听力健全的儿童，他们正在学习和发展一种年轻的手语，Chatino手语，这种手语自发地出现在中美洲土著社区的一系列家庭手语系统中。在Richard P. Meier博士和Angela Nonaka博士的指导下，博士生Lynn Hou将在墨西哥瓦哈卡州西南部马德雷山脉的两个邻近的查特诺村庄San Juan Quiahije和Cieneguilla进行人种学田野调查。侯女士将通过一种结合语言习得和语言社会化方法的三管齐下的方法来研究四名听力正常家庭的失聪儿童和四名聋人混合家庭的听力正常儿童的语言学习环境：(1)录像，纵向参与观察儿童及其家庭在日常生活中的语言，交际和互动实践；(2)使用与文化相适应的视觉刺激的半结构化词汇引出任务；(3)扩展访谈，了解家庭在养育子女、语言和认知发展、耳聋、手语和口语、教育等方面的信念、态度和知识。定性和定量分析将描述每个孩子的语言学习环境，以显示孩子正在接受什么样的输入，输入的背景，以及孩子正在产生什么样的输出。此外，分析将比较这些家庭内部和家庭之间的词汇变化，以确定这些家庭之间是否存在共同的词汇。这是第一个对紧急手语的研究，它将密切关注对儿童及其互动者（无论是儿童还是成人）的自然观察。研究聋哑和听障儿童对查特诺手语的使用和习得，将有助于我们了解农村手语社区的交际实践如何促进新手语的产生和维持。

Science rarely has the opportunity to study a new language that is in the process of emerging de novo; the study of certain signed languages has provided this opportunity. The emergence of a new language may be crucially dependent on children, as suggested by research on Nicaraguan Sign Language. This project investigates deaf and hearing children who are acquiring -- and perhaps developing -- a young sign language, Chatino Sign Language, that has spontaneously emerged out of a constellation of home sign systems in an indigenous Mesoamerican community. Working under the supervision of Dr. Richard P. Meier and Dr. Angela Nonaka, doctoral student Lynn Hou will conduct ethnographic fieldwork in two neighboring Chatino villages, San Juan Quiahije and Cieneguilla, in the Sierra Madre mountains of southwestern Oaxaca in Mexico. Ms. Hou will examine the language-learning environments of four deaf children of hearing families and four hearing children of mixed deaf-hearing families through a three-pronged methodology that combines language acquisition and language socialization approaches: (1) videotaped, longitudinal participant observation of linguistic, communicative, and interactive practices between children and their families as they go about their daily lives; (2) semi-structured lexical elicitation tasks using culturally appropriate visual stimuli; and (3) extended interviews about the families' beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge about child-rearing, language and cognitive development, deafness, signed and spoken languages, and education. Qualitative and quantitative analyses will describe each child's language-learning environment to show what kind of input the child is receiving and the context in which the input is embedded, and what output the child is producing. Furthermore, analyses will compare the lexical variation within and between the families in order to ascertain whether there is a shared lexicon across these families. This is the first study of an emergent sign language that will pay close attention to naturalistic observations of children and their interactants (whether children or adults). Studying deaf and hearing children's use and acquisition of Chatino Sign Language will shed new insight on how communicative practices in a rural signing community can facilitate the emergence and maintenance of a new sign language.