Spontaneous Sign Systems in Five Cultures

描述（由申请人提供）：语言是天生的，或者语言必须学习，这意味着什么？这个提议试图用实验调查的方式来阐明这个问题，询问语言发展的哪些方面是如此的过度决定，以至于它们即使在与正常情况大相径庭的学习条件下也会出现。参与者是聋哑儿童，他们的听力父母还没有让他们接触手语，他们的听力损失如此严重，以至于无法习得口语。尽管美国、中国、土耳其和西班牙的失聪儿童缺乏可访问的传统语言模型，但他们开发了以类似语言的方式构建的手势系统。这些结构化的手势系统从何而来？一种可能是听力正常的成年人在说话时做出的手势。但是，听力正常的人在与孩子交流时所做的手势缺乏类似语言的特性。只有当听力正常的说话者被要求在不说话的情况下做出手势时，他们的手势才会呈现出类似语言的结构。在以前的研究中，聋儿接受口头教育，他们的听力正常的父母总是在说话的同时做手势。最近对尼加拉瓜失聪儿童的听力正常的父母的观察表明，这些听力正常的父母在与失聪儿童交流时经常做手势而不说话。这种可能在结构上类似语言的手势输入，会导致聋儿构建一个语言上更复杂的手势系统吗？将尼加拉瓜与其他四种文化进行比较，提供了一个独特的机会来研究听力正常的人的手势是否以及如何影响聋哑儿童发展的手势系统。该项目有四个目标：(1)在尼加拉瓜，失聪儿童可能接受无语言手势作为其手势系统的输入；在西班牙、土耳其、中国和美国，失聪儿童主要接受有语言手势作为输入；(2)确定尼加拉瓜聋儿创造的手势系统是否比西班牙、土耳其、中国和美国聋儿创造的手势系统更复杂；(3)确定，在每一种文化中，对说话人在言语环境中做出的手势进行解释的听力正常的儿童，使用的手势是否与聋哑儿童不同，聋哑儿童必须在没有语言的情况下解释这些相同的手势；(4)利用新近开发的技术，探索聋儿和健全成人无言语手势结构的潜在认知基础。研究结果除了具有理论意义外，还具有实际意义。如果教育工作者了解儿童本身在语言学习方面的能力，他们就能更好地帮助失聪儿童或有语言障碍的听障儿童学习传统语言，无论是手语还是口语。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): What might it mean to say that language is innate or, alternatively, that language must be learned? This proposal attempts to articulate the question in terms that lend themselves to experimental investigation, asking which aspects of language development are so over-determined that they will appear even under learning conditions that vary widely from the norm. The participants are deaf children whose hearing parents have not yet exposed them to sign language, and whose hearing losses are so profound as to preclude acquisition of spoken language. Despite their lack of an accessible conventional language model, deaf children in the U.S., China, Turkey and Spain develop gesture systems that are structured in language-like ways. Where do these structured gesture systems come from? One candidate is the gestures hearing adults produce as they talk. But the gestures that hearing speakers produce as they communicate with their children lack language-like properties. Only when hearing speakers are asked to produce gesture without speech do their gestures take on language-like structure. The deaf children in previous studies were being educated orally and their hearing parents always produced gestures along with speech. Recent observations of hearing parents of deaf children in Nicaragua have revealed that these hearing parents often produce gestures without speech when communicating with their deaf children. Will this gestural input, which is likely to be language-like in structure, lead deaf children to construct a more linguistically sophisticated gesture system? Comparing Nicaragua to the other four cultures offers a unique opportunity to examine whether and how the gestures of hearing speakers influence the gesture systems developed by deaf children. The proposed project has 4 aims: (1) To characterize the gestures hearing adults produce with speech and without it in Nicaragua where deaf children are likely to receive gesture-without-speech as input to their gesture systems, and in Spain, Turkey, China, and the U.S. where deaf children primarily receive gesture- with-speech as input; (2) To determine whether gesture systems created by Nicaraguan deaf children are more complex than gesture systems created by Spanish, Turkish, Chinese and American deaf children; (3) To determine whether, in each of these cultures, hearing children, who interpret the gestures hearing speakers produce in the context of speech, use gestures differently from deaf children, who must interpret these same gestures without access to speech; (4) To explore a potential cognitive basis for the structure found in the deaf children's and hearing adults' gestures without speech, using a recently developed technique. In addition to their theoretical importance, the results will have practical significance. Informed of the capacities children themselves bring to language-learning, educators may be better able to help deaf children or hearing children with language disabilities learn a conventional language, be it signed or spoken.