From Spontaneous Sign Systems to Sign Language

描述（由申请人提供）：听力损失导致他们无法使用口语且听力正常的父母没有让他们接触手语的聋哑儿童实际上被剥夺了传统语言的输入。尽管缺乏语言输入，这些孩子仍发展出手势系统，称为“手势”，具有自然语言的许多特性。儿童在相对贫困的语言学习环境下能够发展某些语言特性，这一事实为这些特性的恢复力提供了有力的证据。但手语并没有表现出自然语言的所有属性。本研究的目的是探索手语成为一种成熟语言的条件。在美国，聋哑儿童很少会继续用手语。他们要么学习传统的手语，要么接受人工耳蜗并专注于口语。在尼加拉瓜，不仅一些手语者在成年后继续使用他们的手势系统，而且 30 年前，大量手语儿童首次聚集在一起，尼加拉瓜手语 (NSL) 诞生了。随着新一批孩子进入社区并向年长的同龄人学习手语，NSL 不断发展。因此，第一代人与后代和当今的手语者（儿童和成人）一起，提供了一种新兴语言的活生生的历史记录。尽管尼加拉瓜对几代手语者和成年手语者进行了研究，并且在其他文化中对儿童手语者进行了研究，但没有人研究所有这些群体的相同语言特性，从而限制了该领域确定这些不同情况如何促进语言特性发展的能力。拟议的研究将绘制这些人群中句子结构的 3 个核心方面（动词结构、论元指定和句子调制）的变化，并有 5 个目标：（1）探讨尼加拉瓜儿童手语者用于这 3 个功能的结构，从而探索儿童对语言结构的贡献。 (2) 探讨尼加拉瓜成年手语者用于这 3 种功能的结构，从而探讨认知和社会成熟度对新兴语言结构的影响。 (3) 探究第一批 NSL 用于 3 个功能的结构，从而探讨作为符号系统的接收者和生产者对该系统结构的影响。 (4) 探讨后续 NSL 群体用于这 3 种功能的结构，从而探讨代际传播在构建语言系统中所起的作用。 (5) 探讨尼加拉瓜听力正常者在描述相同情况时如何使用手势（无论是否有言语）；手势可以为研究 1-4 中的聋哑人打造他们的手语系统提供原材料。

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.