The Acquisition of American Sign Language

Newport, Elissa L.; Meier, Richard P.

doi:10.4324/9781315802541-12

Cited by 197 publications

(60 citation statements)

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“…As the majority of research on infants’ and young children’s interpretation of movement has been within the framework of external goals and actions on objects (e.g., Woodward, 1998), we know little about when young children interpret a movement as a representation (but see Novack, Goldin-Meadow, & Woodward, 2015). Although it is clear that young children exposed to a conventional sign language like ASL can learn that language as naturally, and following approximately the same timetable, as children exposed to a spoken language (Lillo-Martin, 1999; Newport & Meier, 1985), the as-yet-unanswered questions are—when do children interpret movements that are not part of a linguistic system as representations, and are the same cues to representation that we have found to be important to adults also important to children?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What makes a movement a gesture?

2016

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Theories of how adults interpret the actions of others have focused on the goals and intentions of actors engaged in object-directed actions. Recent research has challenged this assumption, and shown that movements are often interpreted as being for their own sake (Schachner & Carey, 2013). Here we postulate a third interpretation of movement—movement that represents action, but does not literally act on objects in the world. These movements are gestures. In this paper, we describe a framework for predicting when movements are likely to be seen as representations. In Study 1, adults described one of three scenes: (1) an actor moving objects, (2) an actor moving her hands in the presence of objects (but not touching them) or (3) an actor moving her hands in the absence of objects. Participants systematically described the movements as depicting an object-directed action when the actor moved objects, and favored describing the movements as depicting movement for its own sake when the actor produced the same movements in the absence of objects. However, participants favored describing the movements as representations when the actor produced the movements near, but not on, the objects. Study 2 explored two additional features—the form of an actor’s hands and the presence of speech-like sounds—to test the effect of context on observers’ classification of movement as representational. When movements are seen as representations, they have the power to influence communication, learning, and cognition in ways that movement for its own sake does not. By incorporating representational gesture into our framework for movement analysis, we take an important step towards developing a more cohesive understanding of action-interpretation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What makes a movement a gesture?

2016

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“…This previous work shows that classifier predicates are learned between the ages of 3;0 and 9;0 (years; months), morpheme by morpheme (rather than as unsegmented wholes; Ellenberger & Steyaert 1978;Newport 1981;Supalla 1982;Newport & Meier 1985;Lillo-Martin 1999;2009;Singleton & Newport 2004). The specific morphosyntactic system associated with the agentive/non-agentive opposition addressed here first appears between ages 4 and 6 years, but is not fully mastered until ages 7;0-10;0 in ASL (Schick 1987, Brentari et al 2013).…”

Section: Study 2: Child Signers and Gesturers In Italy The Us And Nmentioning

confidence: 97%

Handshape complexity as a precursor to phonology: Variation, emergence, and acquisition

Brentari

Coppola²,

Cho

et al. 2016

Language Acquisition

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In this paper two dimensions of handshape complexity are analyzed as potential building blocks of phonological contrast-joint complexity and finger group complexity. We ask whether sign language patterns are elaborations of those seen in the gestures produced by hearing people without speech (pantomime) or a more radical re-organization of them. Data from adults and children are analyzed to address issues of cross-linguistic variation, emergence, and acquisition.Study 1 addresses these issues in adult signers and gesturers from the United States, Italy, China, and Nicaragua. Study 2 addresses these issues in child and adult groups (signers and gesturers) from the United States, Italy, and Nicaragua. We argue that handshape undergoes a fairly radical reorganization, including loss and reorganization of iconicity and feature redistribution, as phonologization takes place in both of these dimensions. Moreover, while the patterns investigated here are not evidence of duality of patterning, we conclude that they are indeed phonological, and that they appear earlier than related morphosyntactic patterns that use the same types of handshape.

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“…All studies to-date have focused on pronouns in spoken languages. In recent decades, a rapidly growing body of work has examined the signed languages of the deaf, which are full-fledged linguistic systems characterized by the hallmarks of human languages: for example, they are acquired naturally from birth by children exposed to them (Newport & Meier, 1985), they exhibit duality of patterning and syntactic recursion (Meier, 2002), and late-learners show critical period effects (Mayberry & Eichen, 1991; Mayberry, Lock, & Kazmi, 2002). A study of the use of sign language pronouns by TD and ASD deaf children could shed new light on the phenomena of pronoun reversal and avoidance.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Use of Sign Language Pronouns by Native-Signing Children with Autism

Shield

Meier

Tager–Flusberg

2015

J Autism Dev Disord

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We report the first study on pronoun use by an under-studied research population, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exposed to American Sign Language (ASL) from birth by their deaf parents. Personal pronouns cause difficulties for hearing children with ASD, who sometimes reverse or avoid them. Unlike speech pronouns, sign pronouns are indexical points to self and other. Despite this transparency, we find evidence from an elicitation task and parental report that signing children with ASD avoid sign pronouns in favor of names. An analysis of spontaneous usage showed that all children demonstrated the ability to point, but only children with better-developed sign language produced pronouns. Differences in language abilities and self-representation may explain these phenomena in sign and speech.

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The Acquisition of American Sign Language

Cited by 197 publications

References 0 publications

What makes a movement a gesture?

What makes a movement a gesture?

Handshape complexity as a precursor to phonology: Variation, emergence, and acquisition

The Use of Sign Language Pronouns by Native-Signing Children with Autism

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