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Deaf Children Invent Language
gmuslera writes "According to this story, Nicaraguan deaf kids, without knowing any existing sign language, invented their own language on their own, and it keeps evolving. Is this going in the same way as Varley's The Persistence of Vision?"
In Pysch class, we were told about these towns in Germany. They were two neighboring towns and both spoke german. The maids/slaves or whatever they were, on the other hand, were from all over the world, so none of them knew how to communicate. After the maids were released, they all met up in one location. Because they all spoke a different language, they tried to make up their own language.
As time went on, they had children in this new town. Childrens brains are adapted more to learning languages, so the children actually solidified this language.
I'm pretty sure that's how the story went. This was Psych class from almost 2 years ago.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
Something like this was covered a long time ago in "The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design."
The particular article dealt with stages of language. There's rough communication (usually done by adults in a foreign country that don't speak the language). There's pidgin, which is invented by the children and is a blend of the original and native tongues. Then there's a real language that pops, usually created by kids listening to the pidgin.
I guess it happened again, so it's reproducable now and could be considered a "fact."
It's been years since I've read the above book. It's a classic in the field, but is probably long in the tooth by now.
This study doesn't prove anything of the kind. As reported, it only shows that people can learn language. Of course that includes the capability of developing language constructs. How else did we ever start speaking? It also shows that you don't need to be able to talk or hear in order to develop language skills, and that's not really new either.
9 96411 had more details. But notice that some of the people in the study have other agendas and hope that acceptance of this study can help them further their own views http://mcneilllab.uchicago.edu/topics/gp.html.
Anyway, the New Scientist article http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99
In being taught sign language, the deaf community still have adapted ASL (American Sign Language) to their own needs, as it were.
Sign language is unique in the fact that some of the language is what some people would guess, correctly, what it was. Like sticking out your thumb and pinkie and holding up to your ear for "phone".
Speaking from personal experience, and having being taught sign language as my first language, English being second, I find that the deaf and hard of hearing have their own ways of saying things. Personally, I haven't been taught in the "offical" way, but taught by my mother. In that, I find that when you know someone, you often tend to bend the sign to fit what the both of you know.
I know "ghetto sign language", as it were.
Not only that, some even claims that language is human's nature and part of human evolution. The motive was that humans are social cretures. Check here for a short tutorial on "Origins of Language"
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Error 500: Internal sig error
They were deprived of learning an existing sign language because they are deprived, not as the result of any experiment.
Ummm... no, they are a living experiment. These kids are still kept isolated from learning any foreign signs and anyone deaf who visits them is forced to wear mittens and not make any facial expressions. It's kind of sick that they aren't allowed to know anything about the outside world for the sake of someone's research project.
As for the second generation of children adding syntax and so forth, I believe this can be explained by the fact that unlike their older peers, they were not raised in an environment lacking language, and hence were able to take more advantage of those crucial first 5 years of life. It's common to meet deaf in the United States whose hearing parents didn't allow them to learn sign language, and whose mental development is permanently stunted from this... they NEVER catch up. Deaf who are exposed to language and/or other deaf at an early age flourish.
Isolated deaf are actually common throughout the world... roughly 90% of deaf children have hearing parents, many of whom think their children are retarded and basically leave them at home 24/7 until it's time to go to 1st grade. And guess what... they ALL have their own invented language it's called "home signs" and many of them are quite unique. Oh believe me the deaf know all about isolated communities forming languages.
P.S. My first language was sign language.
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