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

科学很少有机会研究一种处于新出现过程中的新语言；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在很大程度上依赖于儿童。这个项目调查了正在学习--或许还在发展--一种年轻的手语--查蒂诺手语--的聋哑儿童，这种语言是在中美洲土著社区的一系列家庭手势系统中自发产生的。在理查德·P·梅尔博士和安吉拉·野中博士的指导下，博士生林恩·侯将在墨西哥瓦哈卡州西南部马德雷山脉的两个相邻的查蒂诺村庄--San Juan Quiahije和Cienguilla--进行民族志田野调查。侯女士将通过结合语言习得和语言社会化方法的三管齐下的方法，研究四个听力家庭的聋儿和四个混合聋人家庭的听力儿童的语言学习环境：(1)录像，纵向参与者观察儿童和他们家庭在日常生活中的语言、交流和互动实践；(2)使用文化上合适的视觉刺激的半结构化词汇启发任务；以及(3)关于家庭的信念、态度和关于孩子养育、语言和认知发展、聋人、手语和口语以及教育的知识的深入访谈。定性和定量分析将描述每个儿童的语言学习环境，以显示儿童正在接受的输入类型、输入嵌入的背景以及儿童正在产生的输出。此外，分析将比较这些家庭内部和之间的词汇变化，以确定这些家庭之间是否有共同的词汇。这是对一种新兴手语的首次研究，它将密切关注对儿童及其互动对象(无论是儿童还是成人)的自然观察。研究聋哑儿童对查蒂诺手语的使用和习得，将为农村手语社区的交流实践如何促进一种新手语的出现和保持提供新的见解。

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.