SPONTANEOUS SIGN SYSTEMS IN CHINESE & AMERICAN CHILDREN

人们通常会问，语言是后天学来的还是天生的。这项建议 重塑问题，使其易于调查，询问哪个 语言发展的方方面面或多或少对语言敏感 和环境投入。该提案描述了一项研究计划，以 确定其发展能够承受广泛影响的语言的特性 学习条件的变化--学习环境的“弹性”特性 语言。没有接触过传统语言的儿童 将观察输入以确定语言的哪些属性 可以在一组严重退化的输入条件下开发。这个 这项研究的对象是听力损失如此广泛的聋儿 他们不能自然地获得口头语言，而是天生的听力 尚未让他们接触手册语言的父母。在这样的情况下 在不合时宜的情况下，人们可能会认为根本没有象征性的交流 或者，至少是不同于传统语言的交流。 事实证明并非如此。先前的研究表明， 尽管语言学习条件很差，但美国聋人 儿童能够发展出手势交流系统，这是 儿童习得的早期交流系统的结构是这样的 来自传统语言模型的语言。拟议的研究将 确定耳聋儿童是否缺乏传统的语言模式 另一种文化(中国文化)可以开发出 类似的结构，即项目将确定 面对广泛的文化差异，语言的各种属性。 研究1将探索聋儿的听力母亲在不同年龄之间是如何 3岁和5岁的孩子与他们在台湾和美国的孩子互动，因此 将尝试验证母亲之间相互作用 在中国和美国的文化中，他们对孩子的态度是不同的。研究2 将探索中美母亲的自发手势 在与他们的失聪儿童互动时产生。在这样做的过程中，该研究 将确定聋儿在每个手势模型中的类型 文化作为输入接受。如果两种文化中的母亲确实提供了 他们的聋儿有着不同的手势模式，这就变成了 尤其要问的是，聋儿的手势系统 与母亲的手势系统或彼此之间更具可比性。 因此，研究三将分析中国聋人所产生的手势 儿童，并将它们与美国聋人产生的手势进行比较 孩子们。它恰恰是语言的属性，在 两组儿童的手势(而不是 母亲)，这可以说是跨文化差异的弹性。学习 4将尝试通过以下方式将这些手势研究置于文化语境中 四位助听母亲及其助听子女的手势探索 (在3到4岁之间)，并比较这些 对中美听证会收集的数据的观察 母亲和她们的聋哑孩子。

It is commonly asked whether language is learned or innate. This proposal recasts the question so that it is amenable to investigation, asking which aspects of language development are more (or less) sensitive to linguistic and environmental input. The proposal describes a research plan to identify the properties of language whose development can withstand wide variations in learning conditions -- the "resilient" properties of language. Children who have not been exposed to conventional linguistic input will be observed in order to determine which properties of language can be developed under one set of severely degraded input conditions. The subjects of the study are deaf children with hearing losses so extensive that they cannot naturally acquire oral language, and born to hearing parents who have not yet exposed them to a manual language. Under such inopportune conditions, one might expect no symbolic communication at all or, at the least, communication which is unlike conventional language. This turns out not to be the case. Previous research has shown that, despite these impoverished language-learning conditions, American deaf children were able to develop gestural communication systems which were structured as are the early communication systems of children acquiring language from conventional language models. The proposed research will determine whether deaf children lacking conventional language models in another culture (a Chinese culture) can develop gesture systems that are similarly structured, i.e., the project will determine the resilience of various properties of language in the face of wide cultural variation. Study 1 will explore how hearing mothers of deaf children between the ages of 3 and 5 interact with their children in Taiwan and in America, and thus will attempt to verify the assumption that mothers interact quite differently with their children in Chinese and American cultures. Study 2 will explore the spontaneous gestures that Chinese and American mothers produce when interacting with their deaf children. In so doing, the study will determine the type of gestural model that the deaf child in each culture receives as input. If the mothers in the two cultures do provide their deaf children with different gestural models, it becomes particularly important to ask whether the deaf children's gesture systems are more comparable to their mothers' gesture systems or to one another. Thus, Study 3 will analyze the gestures produced by the Chinese deaf children, and compare them to the gestures produced by the American deaf children. It is precisely the properties of language which are found in the gestures of both groups of children (and not in the gestures of the mothers) that can be said to be resilient across cultural variation. Study 4 will attempt to put these studies of gesture in a cultural context by exploring the gestures of four hearing mothers and their hearing children (between the ages of 3 and 4) in each culture, and comparing these observations to the data gathered on the Chinese and American hearing mothers and their deaf children.