Signed Languages: Their Linguistic Structure, Acquisition, and Representation in the Brain

Richard P. Meier
Departments of Linguistics and Psychology
The University of Texas at Austin

One of the fundamental empirical discoveries of recent linguistic and psycholinguistic research is the realization that there are two transmission channels available to human language: the oral-aural modality of spoken languages and the visual-gestural modality of signed languages.This discovery has profoundly altered our understanding of what the defining characteristics of language are.This course will provide an overview of linguistic analyses of signed languages, of results on the acquisition of signed languages, and of findings on how signed languages are represented in the brain.

 

Prerequisites: None.No prior knowledge of signed languages will be assumed.


 

Week 1 The Structure of Signed Languages.

A. What’s a language?What are the criteria by which we can identify a communication system as being a language?Hockett: design features of language.Saussure: the nature of linguistic symbols.Linguistic symbols in a signed language (Klima & Bellugi): the roles of iconicity and sub-lexical structure.

B. More on linguistic structure: the use of space in the pronominal systems of signed languages and in verb agreement.Does modality affect linguistic structure?Potential sources of modality effects.


 

Week 2 First language acquisition in sign.

A. An overview of the acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL) as a first language (Newport & Meier 1985; Meier 1991).Effects of iconicity on acquisition(Petitto 1987; Meier in press).

B. Critical period effects: the critical period hypothesis asserts that there is a maturationally-determined period during which the child is optimally prepared to acquire language.Some of the best evidence for a critical period in language acquisition comes from work on the acquisition of ASL as a first language (Newport 1990, Mayberry & Eichen 1991).


 

Week 3 The Creation of Signed Languages by Children.There is substantial evidence that, in certain situations, children can make crucial contributions to the creation of signed languages.

A. The invented gestural systems of deaf children of hearing parents: evidence for language-like structure in the near absence of input

B.The invention of a new sign language: background on spoken creoles (Bickerton); the development of Nicaraguan Sign Language (Senghas & Coppola). Regularization of sign morphology by a deaf child of deaf late-learners of ASL (Singleton & Newport).


 

Week 4 Brain and Signed Language

A Aphasiology: effects of left- vs. right-hemisphere damage on language production and comprehension (Poizner et al 1987). Sign paraphasias contrasted with the characteristic error of Parkinsonian signers.

B Lateralization of function (Hickok, Bellugi, & Klima 1998; Neville et al. 1998, and others): the results of imaging studies have led to a controversy about whether there is greater right hemisphere involvement in the processing of signed languages than in the processing of spoken languages.

Tentative Reading List




Aronoff, Mark, Irit Meir, Carol Padden, & Wendy Sandler.In press.Classifier complexes and morphology in two sign languages.In Karen Emmorey, ed. Perspectives on classifier constructions.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
 

Bickerton, Derek. 1984.The language bioprogram hypothesis.Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7:173-221.
 

Emmorey, Karen.  2002.  Language, Cognition, and the Brain: Insights from Sign Language Research.  Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
 

Goldin-Meadow, Susan, & Carolyn Mylander.1990.Beyond the input given: The child’s role in the acquisition of language.Language 66:323-355.
 

Hickok, G., Bellugi, U., & Klima, E. S.1998.The neural organization of language: evidence from sign language aphasia.Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2:129-136.
 

Hockett, Charles.1960.The origin of speech. Scientific American 203:88-96.
 

Klima, Edward S., & Ursula Bellugi.1979.The signs of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
 

Mayberry, R. I., & Eichen, E. B.1991.The long-lasting advantage of learning sign language in childhood: Another look at the critical period for language acquisition.Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 486-512.
 

Meier, Richard P.1991.Language acquisition by deaf children.American Scientist 79:60-70.
 

Meier, Richard P.In press.The acquisition of verb agreement: Pointing out arguments for the linguistic status of agreement in signed languages.In Current developments in the study of signed language acquisition, ed. Gary Morgan & Bencie Woll.Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
 

Neville, Helen J., Daphne Bavelier, David Corina, Josef Rauschecker, Avi Karni, Anil Lalwani, Allen Braun, Vince Clark, Peter Jezzard, & Robert Turner. 1998.Cerebral organization for language in deaf and hearing subjects: Biological constraints and effects of experience.Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 95:922-929.
 

Newport, Elissa L.1990.Maturational constraints on language learning.Cognitive Science 14:11-28.
 

Newport, Elissa L., & Richard P. Meier.1985.The acquisition of American Sign Language.InThe crosslinguistic study of language acquisition.Volume 1: The data, ed. Dan I. Slobin, 881-938.Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
 

Newport, Elissa L., &Ted Supalla.2000.Sign language research at the MilleniumIn The Signs of Language Revisited, ed. Karen Emmorey & Harlan Lane, 103-114. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
 

Petitto, Laura A.1987.On the autonomy of language and gesture: Evidence from the acquisition of personal pronouns in American Sign Language.Cognition, 27, 1-52.
 

Poizner, H., Klima, E. S., & Bellugi, U.1987.What the hands reveal about the brain.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
 

Polich, Laura G.2000.The Search for Proto-NSL: Looking for the roots of the Nicaraguan deaf community.In Melanie Metzger (ed.), Bilingualism and identity in Deaf communities.Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, pp. 255-305.
 

Sandler, Wendy, & Diane Lillo-Martin.2001.Natural sign languages.In: Handbook of Linguistics, ed. by M. Aronoff & J. Rees-Miller.Blackwell.
 

Saussure, Ferdinand de.1916/1959.Course in general linguistics.New York: Philisophical Library [English translation of Cours de linguistic générale.Paris: Payot].
 

Senghas, A, & Coppola, M.In press.Children creating language: How Nicaraguan Sign Language acquired a spatial grammar.Psychological Science.
 

Singleton, Jennie, & Elissa L. Newport.In press.When learners surpass their models: The acquisition of American Sign Language from inconsistent input.