From Spontaneous Sign Systems to Sign Language

从自发手语系统到手语

• 批准号: 8186284
• 负责人: SUSAN J GOLDIN-MEADOW
• 金额: $ 43.03万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1988
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1988-09-01 至 2016-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8186284
• 关键词: Adolescent; Adult; Affect; Age; Child; China; Cochlear Implants; Cognitive; Communication; Communities; Development; Disadvantaged; Exhibits; Family; Friends; Generations; Gestures; Goals; Growth; Hearing; Hearing Impaired Persons; Individual; Language; Language Development; Language Disorders; Learning; Life; Linguistics; Manuals; Meleagris gallopavo; Modeling; Nicaragua; Nicaraguan; Oral; Parents; Partner Communications; Play; Population; Property; Relative (related person); Research; Role; Schools; Series; Sign Language; Special Education; Specific qualifier value; Speech; Staging; Structure; Students; System; Time; Variant; Vocabulary; Work; cohort; design; forging; hearing impairment; member; natural language; peer; prevent; programs; resilience; social; transmission process

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Deaf children whose hearing losses prevent them from accessing spoken language and whose hearing parents have not exposed them to sign language are effectively deprived of input from a conventional language. Despite their lack of linguistic input, these children develop gesture systems, called homesigns that have many of the properties of natural language. The fact that children can develop certain linguistic properties under relatively impoverished language learning circumstances provides strong evidence for the resilience of these properties. But homesign does not exhibit all of the properties of natural language. The goal of the proposed research is to explore the conditions under which homesign becomes a full-blown language. Deaf children rarely remain homesigners in the US; they either learn a conventional sign language or receive cochlear implants and focus on spoken language. In Nicaragua not only do some homesigners continue to use their gesture systems into adulthood, but 30 years ago large numbers of homesigning children were brought together for the first time and Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) was born. NSL has continued to develop as new waves of children enter the community and learn to sign from older peers. The first generation, taken together with subsequent generations and current day homesigners (child and adult), thus provides a living historical record of an emerging language. Although generations of signers and adult homesigners have been studied in Nicaragua, and child homesigners have been studied in other cultures, no one has studied the same linguistic properties across all of these groups, thus limiting the field's ability to determine how each of these varying circumstances contributes to the growth of a linguistic property. The proposed research will chart changes in 3 central aspects of sentence structure (verb structure, argument-specification, and sentence-modulation) across these populations and has 5 aims: (1) To probe the structures child Nicaraguan homesigners use for these 3 functions, and thus explore the contribution children make to linguistic structure. (2) To probe the structures that adult Nicaraguan homesigners use for the 3 functions, and thus explore the impact that cognitive and social maturity has on emerging linguistic structure. (3) To probe the structures that the first cohort of NSL use for the 3 functions, and thus explore the impact that being a receiver, as well as a producer, of a sign system has on the structure of that system. (4) To probe the structures that subsequent cohorts of NSL use for the 3 functions, and thus explore the role that transmission across generations plays in structuring a linguistic system. (5) To probe how hearing speakers in Nicaragua use gesture, with speech and without it, when describing the same situations; gesture may provide the raw materials out of which the deaf individuals in Studies 1-4 forge their sign systems. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed research is designed to identify the capacities that children bring with them to language learning, thereby enabling educators to better help deaf children and hearing children with language disabilities learn a conventional language, be it signed or spoken.

描述(申请人提供)：听力损失使他们无法接触口语，听力父母没有让他们接触手语的聋儿实际上被剥夺了从传统语言输入的能力。尽管他们缺乏语言输入，但这些孩子发展了手势系统，称为家手势，具有许多自然语言的特性。儿童可以在相对贫困的语言学习环境中发展某些语言属性，这一事实有力地证明了这些属性的韧性。但是，HomeSign并没有表现出自然语言的所有属性。这项拟议的研究的目标是探索在什么条件下同源语成为一种成熟的语言。在美国，失聪儿童很少继续留在家里；他们要么学习一门传统的手语，要么接受人工耳蜗植入，专注于口语。在尼加拉瓜，不仅一些家庭签名者在成年后继续使用他们的手势系统，而且30年前，大量的家庭签名者第一次被聚集在一起，尼加拉瓜手语(NSL)诞生了。随着新一波儿童进入社区并从年长的同龄人那里学习手语，NSL继续发展。因此，第一代人，连同后来的几代人和现在的房主(儿童和成人)，提供了一种新兴语言的活的历史记录。尽管尼加拉瓜已经研究了几代人的签名者和成年签名者，在其他文化中也研究了儿童签名者，但没有人研究所有这些群体的相同语言属性，从而限制了该领域确定这些不同环境中的每一种如何促进语言属性增长的能力。这项拟议的研究将绘制这些人群在句子结构的三个主要方面(动词结构、论元规范和句子调制)的变化，并有5个目的：(1)探索尼加拉瓜儿童同源语者在这三个功能中使用的结构，从而探索儿童对语言结构的贡献。(2)探讨尼加拉瓜成年人在这三种功能中使用的结构，从而探讨认知和社会成熟度对新兴语言结构的影响。(3)探讨第一批非第二语言使用者在这三种功能中所使用的结构，从而探讨作为符号系统的接受者和生产者对该系统结构的影响。(4)探讨非第二语言习得的后代人对这三种功能的使用结构，从而探索代际传递在构建语言系统中的作用。(5)探讨尼加拉瓜听力说话者在描述相同情况时如何使用手势，包括有言语和无手势；手势可能为研究1-4中的聋人锻造他们的手势系统提供原始材料。 公共卫生相关性：拟议的研究旨在确定儿童学习语言的能力，从而使教育工作者能够更好地帮助失聪儿童和听力障碍儿童学习一种传统语言，无论是手语还是口语。