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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?"
I must go to Nicaragua and study this so I can become a neurolingquistic hacker and control all of you with just a few gestures... Muahahahah!
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Ancient news, and contrary to the unending hype no one has ever rigorously established that none of the kids had any prior exposure to sign language. The argument actually boils down to "we don't know of any prior exposure for any of the kids involved".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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 is a well-known occurrence, and is very well covered in "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker, which I can highly recommend for anyone interested in language.
-Lars
This news is so old, it's discussed in Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" published in 1995, which I've just been reading. He cites this as one of many examples establishing a biological basis for language. He specifically discusses the fact that a limited, pidgin sign language was originally developed by adults, but that the children who came to the school and learned it in their critical early years developed it independently into a full-fledged, grammatical language with all the subtlety and nuance of other sign languages and spoken languages. The grammatical usage of the language would essentially appear to come out of nowhere, including things like rules for establishing case and sentence word roles and the like that weren't built into the original sign language. And that the grammatical rules became rapidly consistent within the young deaf population.
Seems a bit of a risk to deprive these children of learning an existing sign language just for the sake of an experiment.
They were deprived of learning an existing sign language because they are deprived, not as the result of any experiment.
Havn't you seen any of those Sally Struthers commercials?
Are they going to lock some normal Nicaraguan children up and see if they come up with a new spoken language?
Pretty much all children come up with a new spoken language. Yeah, it's based on the old one, but it comes out new. You'll understand this better when you hit 40 or 50 and find yourself walking around muttering under your breath that you don't understand a damned thing kids say these days.
Just imagine what it was like before the invention of the dictionary and standarized spelling and grammar as a somewhat stablizing force.
And we still got ebonics. The kids made it up as they went along. The professorial types then make a career out of analyzing it. Hence the invention of dictionaries and standarized spellings, but the language always comes first, then gets codified as "correct" after the fact.
The O.E.D. isn't so a much definitive reference to the English language so much as it is a biography of the language.
Or, to put it another way, a history of the way kids talk.
KFG
Obviously the children are going to need to develop some way to communicate with the world around them. Almost all deaf children (and young hearing children) develop some form of gesture language before "proper training" is given. Think a young hearing child who walks to their parents holding their arms up in the air wanting to be picked up for a hug, it's the same principle.
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.
As for the origin of sign language, it's as old as the origin of Native American tribes. Anyone who has taken an ASL course would know that Native American tribes used signs as a sort of inter-tribal language among themselves.
Even after that, it is not rare for an isolated group of people to develop a language of their own. That is exactly how sign language developed (Somebody didn't just make up a system of sign language out of pity for the deaf who couldn't possibly communicate on their own). Even now, a small group of people often come up with their own system for basic communication needs (i.e. mother and baby, a deaf person without formal education and his close family, etc.) Also, twins are known to come up with their own languages--this is a very well documented case.
This article falls short of other details that might have been interesting. It says,
That method of communicating now shows similarities to other languages, researchers say in Thursday's issue of the journal Science.
What similarities? That it is used to communicate (isn't it how one defines language)? Knowing the diversity of modern languages, I find it difficult not to find any similarity to other languages. Do they tend to put the subject in front of everything else? Every language does that (for obvious reasons...). Do they tend to omit the subject? I know Korean does that regularly, whereas in English it's done only when brevity is paramount. Do they sometimes put the object first? Find any inflected language and you can do that there as well (usually means emphasis on the object, though). Tell me when the children have matured enough to learn multivariable calculus on their own and they happen to use the inverted capital delta for their "del" operator. Then I will be astonished at the similarity. Frankly, I doubt that this new language thing will go far (same case with twin language--for the twins to live in the world, they have to learn the language of their society, the process which inevitably all but destroys their own language). Or, if it is to "evolve" to show a parallel structure, well, expect to have generations of isolated (hereditary) deaf children for a century or a millenium.
Even the article's sidenotes about similarity among existing languages is trivial.
The mothers in every country reported that their children learned significantly more nouns than other types of words. The researchers said this held true regardless of whether the language emphasized nouns, as does American English, or verbs, as does Korean.
Might as well say, "The mothers in every country reported that their children learned significantly more words related to food or household item than words used to describe linear vector spaces or binary operation structure." Of course they know more nouns! That's what the mothers teach most, because it's the easiest thing to teach ther children. And, I'll bet, among nouns, the children know more concrete nouns abstract nouns. It's not just that. In all the languages I know (and I know more than 2, if you count a few dead languages), nouns comprise the biggest group of part of speech. Also, usually, there is always a way to make a word from any other part of speech (excepting a few specialized parts like conjunctions or articles) into a noun (but not the other way around--for example, how would turn the noun "apple" into a verb?).
This study reveals nothing new--that is, other than the fact that there are too many (useless) researchers around the world with too much time on their hands (even then, that's not new either, eh?).
Segmentation fault.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
But does this here new language have Pirate Slang? If not they'll never be good ship-mates. Arrr.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
I realize this is tangential to the article.... But the world-wide deaf community really lost out... They had the opportunity to create a global sign language (with local modifications of course) but no, we have ASL, GSL, ISL, one-finger spelling, etc... A global sign-language would have become the defacto cross-cultural communication method and ultimately, it wouldn't be quite so much a pain in the ass to live in a world dominated by the hearing. I took an ASL course and practiced a fair bit. I taught my 8 month old (now 3 years) ASL. For 6 months, that was his principal method of communication... An 8 month old that can ask for more milk is an impressive thing.
The AP story linked in the article isn't particularly informative. It picked up on the old features of the story. Linguists have been studying Nicaraguan Sign Language for over a decade now. The interesting thing about NSL is that older signers use it as a pidgen (no consistent grammar), but younger signers use it as a creole (i.e., they have created a fully-formed language with consistent grammatical structures.) This transition point has generally passed by the time scientists get around to studying the language. This story from the economist: http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm? story_id=2441743
gives more details of the actual study, which apparently involves some tests of syntactic ability in older signers in comparison to younger ones. It's not ground-breaking stuff, but it does help fill out the big picture.
I bet you didn't know that there are way too many regional dialect of American Sign Language.
Most animated ones are the one-hander New York/NJ (it isn't the Bronx, thats for sure) dialect of which the signer keeps one hand in their pocket and conduct the entire conversation with their other hand. It was cool for a veteran ASL to STILL be able to understand them flawlessly without a hitch.
Studies have been made to show that environment is a largest driven factor in the development of sign language, followed by personality.
Naval SEAL also developed their own dialect as well to conduct underwater missions (demo anyone?)
Various elite US Army and Marine has their own as well (team-snipers, recon).
Iowan Deaf farmers also have their own structure that is closer to English syntax (as opposed to the usual French grammer, verb first, subject last). Some of you in Deaf Studies academic circles will quickly surmise that this is PSE (Pigeon Signed English) but I assured you, that is far from it.
The most disserviced group of the ASL community are some department heads of languages at various universities who are clueless to enforce a god-like edict to implement PSE as their main driving force for teach such a broken and stunted language to our deaf children. The correct language is ASL. Not Exact English, not PSE. We don't teach Ebonic to Black children, thus we shouldn't teach anything but ASL to Deaf children.
Dipolmatic Deaf corps also have their own nuances to ensure a smoother dialoge and less misunderstanding across international borders. That language is called G.... guess anyone?
Personalized is just another subset under regional dialect.
It gets more interesting as you travel from one microsociety to another.
Try it! You'll never know that it may save your life. The US Army/Navy/Marine can't be wrong.
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.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Man, I'm truly amazed at the amount of freakin' ignorance there is about the Deaf and Deaf culture. (I'm not an expert, just worked several years on my American Sign Language and have a wife who worked on her masters in anthropology with a slant towards communication).
o Deaf children of hearing parents will frequently create home signs to communicate to their parents.
o Human beings are hard wired for language.
o Creation of an informal language (hey, like slang!) to be used amongst others is neither new (my wife studied her masters in the 80's) nor "surprising". Apparently it is "news" because the children were Deaf (which DOESN'T make them stupid!).
BTW American Sign Languange is a great language to learn. Very expressive. There is slang the kids use, jokes that TRULY don't translate into English, and a whole culture that is the same yet very different from the Hearing.
And most of them HATE these stupid stories about "those amazing Deaf people".
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
As others have already pointed out, this case is given a good treatment in Steven Pinkers very readable book THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT.
In the study of langauge acquisition there is the fact that language is underdetermined. Also called the poverty-of-stimulus arguement. Basically, the input that a child is presented with is not enough to "teach" them the langauge. This fact was noted by Noam Chomsky, from which he came up with the influential Universal Grammar theory. Steven Pinker expands on this and adds in a twist - that langauge is something evolved (like the trunk on an elephant is an evolutionary feature). Basically they claim that there is a langauge module in the brain.
Chomsky has updated his theory and lots of others (people in pure linguistics, applied linguistics, cognitive theory, second language acquistion researchers etc) have extended his work. If I remember correctly, the basic take on the theory these days is that there are principles and parameter of language syntax that are thought to be innately present in the brain. (I am doing research right now looking for evidence of UG in language acquisition.)
The case of the children in Nicaragua is old news .... but it IS used as an arguement for the presence of Universal Grammar. The langauge did NOT (as a poster above gushed) "appear out of thin air". Those kids did have some exposure to a pidgen sign langauge used by parents (not a full language). This is akin to the spoken-language phenomena whereby language goes from being a pidgen ... to a creole (fully syntactic langauge). This has happened many times in many places (Hawaii for example). The people in the universal (or generative) grammar camp say that grammar (principles) are in the brain, so language WILL develop unless actively prevented. (There are cases of that too - like a girl named Genie who was kept locked up for 13 years or so .... and could never become fluent after.)
When he started trying to communicate with them, he noticed that they had already developed a method of communicating with their hands, which he developed into a more consistent language with a slightly richer vocabulary called French Sign Language. Eventually, he opened a school for the deaf. Rich Americans sent their deaf kids there, and local (French) deaf kids attended for free. Eventually, a school was opened in the US, and the language was imported (I believe the original Gallaudet had something to do with it).
One of the interesting things about ASL is how dynamic it is. Phrases and names (i.e., "Joe") can be assigned to gestures by the user as they speak, much like a macro or a
(Note: I didn't RTFA, but I am in linguistics and I have read articles on this subject before.)
I don't think you understand the point.
There had been no systematic education of deaf children in Nicaragua prior to 1979. At that point, they sent all of the deaf children in the country to two schools in Managua. Though all of the kids had some rudimentary signs that had been developed independently within each of their families, they did not have a language, really. They had gestures for communication without syntax.
Though attempts were made to teach these kids spanish finger-spelling (which for various reasons is not regarded as an actual sign language) none were successful. And yet, the teachers saw blatant communication going on between the children: they had adapted signs into a system which they all understood to varying degrees.
The interesting thing, though, was that whereas the older children, who had gone longer without having access to a linguistically-rich environment rarely linked more than a few signs together and showed only a rudimentary syntax (their signing has been categorized as a "pidgin"), the younger children's language evolved into something much more complex. The language they use includes the use of agreement between subject and object (it has something to do with the placement of the signs in space relative to eachother. I am no expert on sign language, but this is apparently something demonstrated by all other sign languages.)
The point is that, whereas the older children, who had passed out of their language-acquisition period, spoke in a manner which could almost be compared to the signing of chimps (even if that sounds horrible and the claims of language in non-human primates are dubious), the younger children created a generative, varied system which included a rule-based system of grammar. So whereas the older kids would be limited to sentences like, "pour coffee," the younger ones would be able to create ones like "Damn it, I shouldn't have stayed out all last night partying because now I have to stay up and study. Pour me a cup of coffee, would you?"
So no, they didn't have to come up with the concept of a sign language, but they did have to come up with the rules from scratch. It's nothing like the fact that teenagers create their own slang.