American Sign Language Vocabulary Acquisition

项目总结/摘要 聋哑儿童面临贫困和/或延迟接触语言的风险，无论是口头还是手语。早期的词汇是 对后期语言发展的强有力预测，并了解聋人词汇发展的轨迹 儿童可以帮助教育工作者和研究人员制定干预措施，以减轻语言剥夺的风险和影响。 在手语词汇习得中，有两个因素可能发挥独特的作用：邻域密度和象似性。 一般来说，听力正常的儿童会跟踪有关语言声音的统计信息，以获得新的单词， 与许多其他单词（具有高音位邻域密度）相似声音在早期口语中被过度表示 词汇手语语音学不是基于顺序组织的声音，而是基于像手这样的特征， 配置和位置同时铰接。在许多符号中也缺少最小对 语言我们问聋儿是否跟踪统计信息的组合手的特点作为儿童 获取口语跟踪语音信息的话，或者如果性质的标志音位使标志 更易于整体处理和获取。如果前者是真的，我们期待的迹象与高邻里 密度在早期词汇中被过度表示，就像在语音习得中一样;如果后者是真正的邻域密度， 不应该在符号获取中起作用。第二个在符号习得中起独特作用的因素是 符号语言的象似性。目前尚不清楚儿童是否可以利用 因为象似性与手语中的邻域密度相混淆。拟议 研究中，我们第一次提出了象似性是否能预测符号词汇的习得， 用儿童ASL词汇的父母报告研究儿童导向言语中的邻区密度和频率 技能（ASL-CDI）。本研究收集了所有词汇和输入因素（习得的表达和接受年龄 规范，象似性类型，以及儿童导向言语中的频率）将通过与 美国手语词汇交互式在线数据库。ASL-LEX当前包含有关邻居的信息 密度，象似性程度，词汇类别，和频率在成人指导的讲话，以及其他几个属性。这 这项工作将揭示塑造母语手语儿童词汇习得的因素，并将奠定 理解听力正常父母的聋儿晚习得手语的词汇发展的基础 参与发展.

Project Summary/Abstract Deaf children are at risk for impoverished and/or delayed exposure to language, spoken or signed. Early vocabulary is a robust predictor of later language development, and understanding the trajectory of vocabulary development in deaf children can help educators and researchers develop interventions to mitigate the risks and effects of language deprivation. Two factors that might play a unique role in sign language vocabulary acquisition are neighborhood density and iconicity. Typically hearing children track statistical information about the sounds of language to acquire new words, and words that sound similar to many other words (have high phonological neighborhood density) are overrepresented in early spoken vocabularies. Sign language phonology is not based on sounds that are sequentially organized but on features like hand configurations and locations that are articulated simultaneously. There is also a dearth of minimal pairs in many sign languages. We ask whether deaf children track statistical information about combinations of manual features as children acquiring spoken language track phonological information about words, or if the nature of sign phonology makes signs more amenable to holistic processing and acquisition. If the former is true, we expect signs with high neighborhood density to be overrepresented in early vocabularies just as in speech acquisition; if the latter is true neighborhood density should not play a role in sign acquisition. The second factor that may play a unique role in sign acquisition is the abundance of iconicity in signed languages. It is unclear whether children can make use of iconic relationships between sign forms and meanings because iconicity is confounded with neighborhood density in sign language. In the proposed study we ask for the first time whether iconicity predicts signed vocabulary acquisition while controlling for neighborhood density and frequency in child-directed speech by using parental reports of children’s ASL vocabulary skills (ASL-CDI). All of the lexical and input factors gathered in this study (expressive and receptive age of acquisition norms, type of iconicity, and frequency in child-directed speech) will be made publically available by integrating with an interactive online database of ASL vocabulary, ASL-LEX. ASL-LEX currently contains information about neighborhood density, degree of iconicity, lexical class, and frequency in adult-directed speech, as well as several other properties. This work will shed light on the factors that shape vocabulary acquisition in native signing children, and will lay the groundwork for understanding vocabulary development in deaf children of hearing parents acquiring sign language later in development.