Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.
Children Creating Core Properties of Language: Evidence from an Emerging Sign Language in Nicaragua
Ann Senghas,1*Sotaro Kita,2Asli Özyürek3,4,5
A new sign language has been created by deaf Nicaraguans overthe past 25 years, providing an opportunity to observe the inceptionof universal hallmarks of language. We found that in their initialcreation of the language, children analyzed complex events intobasic elements and sequenced these elements into hierarchicallystructured expressions according to principles not observedin gestures accompanying speech in the surrounding language.Successive cohorts of learners extended this procedure, transformingNicaraguan signing from its early gestural form into a linguisticsystem. We propose that this early segmentation and recombinationreflect mechanisms with which children learn, and thereby perpetuate,language. Thus, children naturally possess learning abilitiescapable of giving language its fundamental structure.
1 Department of Psychology, Barnard College of Columbia University, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027, USA. 2 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TN, UK. 3 F. C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Nijmegen University, Adelbertusplein 1, 6525 EK Nijmegen, Netherlands. 4 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525 XD Nijmegen, Netherlands. 5 Department of Psychology, Koç University, Rumeli Feneri Yolu, 34450, Sariyer, Istanbul, Turkey.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: annie{at}alum.mit.edu
