From Spontaneous Sign Systems to Sign Language

描述（由申请人提供）：失聪儿童的听力损失使他们无法使用口语，其听力父母没有让他们接触手语，实际上被剥夺了传统语言的输入。尽管他们缺乏语言输入，这些儿童发展的手势系统，称为homesigns，具有许多自然语言的属性。儿童在相对贫乏的语言学习环境中也能发展出某些语言特性，这一事实为这些特性的恢复力提供了强有力的证据。但是homesign并没有表现出自然语言的所有属性。这项研究的目的是探讨在何种条件下，家庭手语成为一种成熟的语言。在美国，失聪儿童很少保持家庭手语;他们要么学习传统的手语，要么接受人工耳蜗植入并专注于口语。在尼加拉瓜，不仅一些家庭手语者继续使用他们的手势系统到成年，而且30年前，大量的家庭手语儿童第一次聚集在一起，尼加拉瓜手语诞生了。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，连同后来的几代人和当今的家庭签名者（儿童和成人），提供了一个新兴语言的活生生的历史记录。虽然几代人的签名者和成人homesigners已在尼加拉瓜进行了研究，并在其他文化中的儿童homesigners进行了研究，没有人研究过所有这些群体的相同的语言属性，从而限制了该领域的能力，以确定如何这些不同的情况下有助于语言属性的增长。本研究将从动词结构、论元规范和话语调节三个方面来考察汉语儿童在这三个方面的变化，并有五个目的：（1）探讨汉语儿童在这三个方面的结构，从而探索儿童对语言结构的贡献。(2)探讨成年闽南语母语使用者使用的三种功能的结构，进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NSL使用的3个功能的结构，从而探讨作为一个接收器，以及生产者，一个符号系统的结构上的影响。(4)探讨NSL的后继群体使用的三种功能的结构，从而探索跨代传递在构建语言系统中所起的作用。(5)探讨如何在尼加拉瓜的听力扬声器使用手势，语音和没有它，当描述相同的情况下，手势可能提供的原材料，研究1-4中的聋人伪造自己的符号系统。 公共卫生相关性：拟议的研究旨在确定儿童在语言学习方面的能力，从而使教育工作者能够更好地帮助聋哑儿童和有语言障碍的听力儿童学习传统语言，无论是手语还是口语。

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.