Spontaneous sign systems created by deaf children in two cultures

被引:169
作者
Goldin-Meadow, S [1 ]
Mylander, C [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Chicago, Dept Psychol, Chicago, IL 60637 USA
关键词
D O I
10.1038/34646
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Deaf children whose access to usable conventional linguistic input, signed or spoken, is severely limited nevertheless use gesture to communicate(1-3). These gestures resemble natural language in that they are structured at the level both of sentence(4) and of word(5). Although the inclination Ito use gesture maybe traceable to the fact that the deaf children's]tearing parents, like all speakers, gesture as they talk(6), the children themselves are responsible for introducing language-like structure into their gestures(7). We have explored the robustness of this phenomenon by observing deaf children of hearing parents in two cultures, an American and a Chinese culture, that differ in their child-rearing practices(8-12) and in the way gesture is used in relation to speech(13). The spontaneous sign systems developed in these cultures shared a number of structural similarities: patterned production and deletion of semantic elements ii the surface structure of a sentence; patterned ordering of those elements within the sentence; and concatenation of propositions within a sentence. These striking similarities offer critical empirical input towards resolving the ongoing debate about the 'innateness' of language in human infants(14-16).
引用
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页码:279 / 281
页数:3
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