Language emergence in the manual modality

在典型的语言学习环境中，很难将学习者对语言结构的贡献与语言使用方式的贡献区分开来。这个研究项目转向一个不寻常的语言学习情况下的个人-聋人谁正在开发一个手动通信系统，在没有输入从传统语言-来解决这个问题，然后在实验室的实验研究补充了实地调查。该项目的目标是评估在与他人共享和不共享的情况下，语言结构在人工交流系统中的发展程度。除了在探索语言特性方面的理论重要性外，该研究计划还具有实际意义，这些特性是如此具有弹性，以至于不需要从语言模型中学习。如果教育工作者了解儿童学习语言的能力，就能更好地帮助有语言障碍的聋哑儿童或听力正常儿童学习传统语言，无论是手语还是口语。此外，在实验室研究中发现语言特性是如何继续增长并变得结构化的，有可能为促进残疾儿童这些特性发展的条件提供洞察力。本项目的具体目标是确定哪些语言特征对缺乏语言输入具有弹性，这些特征只出现在二元交流过程中，只有通过传播给新一代的学习者才能出现。家庭手语者是聋人，他们的听力损失使他们无法学习口语，他们的听力家庭没有让他们接触传统的手语。尽管他们缺乏来自传统语言的输入，homesigners沟通和使用具有自然语言的许多属性的手势来这样做。 在第一项研究中，来自危地马拉的homesigners谁做，或不，定期与其他homesigners互动，将被观察到，以确定共享的通信系统的语言结构的出现的影响。在第二项研究中，听力正常的成年人将被要求在实验室中在三种条件下描述场景：自己;与另一个手势者合作;或者在从另一个手势者那里学习手势之后。这种手势创造范式的目的是反映自然的情况下，homesigns被发现：homesigns创建的环境中，没有其他homesigners; homesigners创建的homesigners在其他homesigners的存在;和homesigns传输到新一代的学习者。

Disentangling contributions to language structure that are driven by learners from contributions that are driven by the way language is used is difficult in typical language-learning circumstances. This research program turns to individuals in an unusual language-learning situation--deaf individuals who are developing a manual communication system in the absence of input from a conventional language--to address this question, and then complements the fieldwork with an experimental study in the lab. The goal of the project is to assess the degree to which linguistic structures can develop in a manual communication system when it is--and is not--shared with others. In addition to its theoretical importance in exploring properties of language that are so resilient they need not be learned from a language model, the research program has practical significance. Informed of the capacities that children bring with them to language learning, educators may be better able to help deaf children or hearing children with language disabilities learn a conventional language, signed or spoken. Moreover, discovering how linguistic properties continue to grow and become structured in the lab studies has the potential to provide insight into conditions that promote the development of these properties in children with disabilities.The specific aims of this project are to determine which linguistic features are resilient to the absence of linguistic input, which emerge only in the process of dyadic communication, and which emerge only via transmission to a new generation of learners. Homesigners are deaf individuals whose hearing losses prevent them from learning a spoken language, and whose hearing families have not exposed them to a conventional sign language. Despite their lack of input from a conventional language, homesigners communicate and use gestures that have many of the properties of natural language to do so.  In the first study, homesigners from Guatemala who do, or do not, regularly interact with other homesigners will be observed to determine the impact that sharing a communication system has on the emergence of linguistic structure. In the second study, hearing adults will be asked to describe scenes not by speaking, but by using their hands, in the laboratory under three conditions:  on their own; in collaboration with another gesturer; or after learning the gestures from another gesturer. This gesture-creation paradigm is designed to mirror the naturalistic situations in which homesigns are found:  homesigns created in an environment where there are no other homesigners; homesigns created by homesigners in the presence of other homesigners; and homesigns transmitted to a new generation of learners.