Emergence of Grammar in a New Sign Language

描述(由申请人提供)：我们的目标是通过对过去75年内创造的几乎没有任何外部影响的村庄手语的进一步调查来了解人类语言。当一小群人在没有直接语言输入的情况下一起长大时，他们创造的语言应该是了解所有人类语言基础的窗口。研究对象是Al-Sayyid Bedouin手语(ABSL)，以以色列南部创造这种语言的社区命名。这种语言是聋人和聋人使用的，是该村仅次于当地阿拉伯语的第二种语言。老年签名者的语言具有广泛的交际功能，在某些方面具有高度的规律性。然而，与更成熟的手语不同，它在语法结构上似乎非常简洁，这表明功能人类语言在没有复杂语法的情况下是可能的。年轻签名者的语言表现出更多的复杂性和规律性，我们建议将注意力转向这一群体。我们对以下类型的语言复杂性的发展特别感兴趣：句法嵌入、双重模式、复杂构词和韵律结构。更根本的是，我们感兴趣的是揭示机制和社会环境，这些机制和社会环境允许在ABSL的老年签名者中发现的简单系统中发展出更复杂的语言。使用我们为这种语言和社区开发的各种启发式工具，我们将拍摄三代签名人的任务，这些任务旨在产生(A)复杂句子；(B)词汇项的引用形式；(C)复合词；(D)描述性叙述。ABSL中的命题复杂性(如嵌入)通过韵律来表示，我们将使用专门创建的详细韵律编码系统来识别跨年龄组的复杂性的发展。人类语言中模式的二元性--一种无意义的形成元素组合成有意义的语言单词和句子的水平--的要求以前从未受到挑战，我们将从三个主要角度来研究这个问题：(1)跨代语音分析，并与成熟的手语进行比较；(2)感知实验，旨在从离散的手形识别中梳理出梯度；(3)实验室进化实验，试图通过迭代的社会传递从整体形式中识别二元性的自组织。将为所有签名者记录手语密度概况，以揭示其家庭和队列中歌唱语言互动的数量，作为绘制语言规律性和复杂性在社区中的创新和传播的手段。我们期待着这一记录一种新语言的难得机会以及常规化和复杂性的出现，为语言的基本要素及其组织提供一个模式，为任何妨碍正常获取或产生语言的干预计划奠定基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Our aim is to gain understanding of human language through further investigation of a village sign language, created within the past 75 years with little if any outside influence. When a small group of people grow up together with no direct linguistic input, the language that they create should provide a window into the fundamentals of all human languages. The object of study is Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL), named after the community in the south of Israel where the language was created. The language is used by deaf and hearing people, and is the second language of the village after the local dialect of Arabic. The language of the older signers, which serves a wide range of communicative functions, is highly regular in some ways. However, unlike more mature sign languages, it appears to be remarkably spare in grammatical structure, suggesting that functional human language is possible without complex grammar. The language of younger signers shows indications of more complexity and regularity, and it is to this group that we propose to turn our attention. We are particularly interested in the development of the following types of linguistic complexity: syntactic embedding, dual patterning, complex word formation, and prosodic structure. More fundamentally, we are interested in uncovering the mechanisms and social circumstances that permit the development of more complex language from the simple systems found among older signers of ABSL. Using a variety of elicitation tools that we developed for this language and community, we will videotape signers of three generations on tasks designed to produce (a) complex sentences; (b) citation forms of vocabulary items; (c) compound words; and (d) descriptive narratives. Propositional complexity such as embedding is signaled by prosody in ABSL, and we will use a specially created, detailed prosodic coding system to identify the development of complexity across age groups. The requirement for duality of patterning in human language -- a meaningless level of formational elements that combine to form the meaningful words and sentences of language -- has never been challenged before, and we will investigate this issue from three main angles: (1) phonological analysis across generations and in comparison with a mature sign language, (2) a perception experiment designed to tease apart gradient from discrete identification of handshapes, and (3) a laboratory evolution experiment attempting to identify the self-organization of duality from holistic forms through iterated social transmission. A sign language density profile will be recorded for all signers to reveal the amount of sing language interaction in their families and cohorts, as a means of mapping the innovation and spread of linguistic regularity and complexity in the community. We expect this rare opportunity to document a new language and the emergence of conventionalization and complexity to provide a model of the essential elements of language and their organization, forming the basis for any intervention program where normal access to or production of language is hampered.