From Spontaneous Sign Systems to Sign Language

从自发手语系统到手语

• 批准号: 8703066
• 负责人: SUSAN J GOLDIN-MEADOW
• 金额: $ 50.31万
• 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/8703066
• 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.

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，而听力正常的父母没有让他们接触手语，他们实际上被剥夺了传统语言的输入。尽管他们缺乏语言输入，这些孩子发展了手势系统，称为家庭符号，具有许多自然语言的特性。儿童在相对贫乏的语言学习环境下可以发展出某些语言特性，这一事实为这些特性的弹性提供了强有力的证据。但是本土语言并没有表现出自然语言的所有特性。本研究的目的是探讨在何种条件下，家语成为一种成熟的语言。在美国，失聪儿童很少会继续在家写作；他们要么学习传统的手语，要么接受人工耳蜗植入，专注于口语。在尼加拉瓜，不仅一些家庭手语使用者在成年后还继续使用他们的手势系统，而且30年前，大批家庭手语儿童第一次聚集在一起，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，非母语儿童手语也在不断发展。第一代，连同后来的几代和现在的家庭设计者（儿童和成人），因此提供了一种新兴语言的活生生的历史记录。尽管在尼加拉瓜已经研究了几代的手语手和成年的家庭手语手，在其他文化中也研究了儿童的家庭手语手，但没有人研究过所有这些群体的相同语言特性，因此限制了该领域确定每种不同环境如何促进语言特性的发展的能力。本研究将绘制这些人群中句子结构的3个中心方面（动词结构、论证规范和句子调节）的变化图表，并有5个目标：(1)探索尼加拉瓜家庭设计儿童用于这3种功能的结构，从而探索儿童对语言结构的贡献。(2)探讨尼加拉瓜成年家庭设计师对这三种功能使用的结构，从而探讨认知和社会成熟度对新兴语言结构的影响。(3)探讨第一批非母语语言使用者使用这三种功能的结构，从而探讨作为一个符号系统的接受者和生产者对该系统结构的影响。(4)探究非自然语言后续群体对这三种功能的使用结构，从而探讨代际传递在构建语言系统中的作用。(5)探索尼加拉瓜的听力使用者在描述相同的情况时，如何使用手势（有语言和没有语言）；手势可能为研究1-4中的失聪个体提供了构建其符号系统的原材料。