Children creating core properties of language: Evidence from an emerging sign language in Nicaragua

Science

Volumn 305, Issue 5691, 2004, Pages 1779-1782

  Senghas, Ann ^a   Kita, Sotaro ^b   Özyürek, Ash ^c,d,e  

^a USA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL   (United Kingdom)

^c RADBOUD UNIVERSITY NIJMEGEN   (Netherlands)

^d MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR PSYCHOLINGUISTICS   (Netherlands)

^e KOÇ UNIVERSITY   (Turkey)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH; CHARACTER RECOGNITION; LINGUISTICS;

SIGN LANGUAGES; STRUCTURED EXPRESSIONS;

SOCIAL SCIENCES;

COMMUNICATION; LANGUAGE;

ARTICLE; CHILD; GESTURE; HUMAN; INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION; LANGUAGE; LANGUAGE ABILITY; LEARNING; NICARAGUA; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SIGN LANGUAGE; ADOLESCENT; ADULT; COHORT ANALYSIS; HEARING IMPAIRMENT; LINGUISTICS; MOVEMENT (PHYSIOLOGY);

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; CHILD; COHORT STUDIES; DEAFNESS; GESTURES; HUMANS; LEARNING; LINGUISTICS; MOVEMENT; NICARAGUA; SIGN LANGUAGE;

EID: 4544274171     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.1100199     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. C. F. Hockett, Refurbishing Our Foundations: Elementary Linguistics from an Advanced Point of View (Benjamins, Philadelphia, 1987).
2. M. H. Christiansen, S. Kirby, Trends Cognit. Sci. 7, 300 (2003).
3. R. Jackendoff, Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2002).
4. M. D. Hauser, N. Chomsky, W. T. Fitch, Science 298, 1569 (2002).
5. S. Pinker, P. Bloom, Behav. Brain Sci. 13, 707 (1990).
6. S. Kirby, Function, Selection, and Innateness: The Emergence of Language Universals (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1999).
7. M. Tomasello, in Language Evolution, M. H. Christiansen, S. Kirby, Eds. (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2003), pp. 94-110.
8. L. Polich, But with Sign Language You Can Do So Much (Gallaudet Univ. Press, in press).
9. R. J. Senghas, thesis, University of Rochester (1997).
10. S. Goldin-Meadow, in Language Acquisition: The State of the Art, E. Wanner, L. R. Gleitman, Eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 1982), pp. 51-77.
11. J. P. Morford, Lang. Commun. 16, 165 (1996).
12. M. Coppola, thesis, University of Rochester (2002).
13. J. Kesl, A. Senghas, M. Coppola, in Language Creation and Language Change: Creolization, Diachrony, and Development, M. DeGraff, Ed. (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999), pp. 179-237.
14. A. Senghas, thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1995).
15. A. Senghas, M. Coppola, Psychol. Sci. 12, 323 (2001).
16. A. Senghas, Cogn. Dev. 18, 511 (2003).
17. See supporting data on Science Online.
18. S. Kita, A. Özyürek, J. Mem. Lang. 48, 16 (2003).
19. D. McNeill, Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal About Thought (Univ, of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992).
20. L. Talmy, in Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon, Vol. III, T. Shopen, Ed. (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1985), pp. 57-149.
21. E. Lenneberg, Biological Foundations of Language (Wiley, New York, 1967).
22. E. L. Newport, Cogn. Sci. 14, 11 (1990).
23. E. Newport, in Aspects of the Development of Competence, W. A. Collins, Ed., vol. 14 of Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology (Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1981), pp. 93-124.
24. J. Holm, Pidgins and Creoles, Vol. 1: Theory and Structure (Cambridge Univ, Press, Cambridge, 1988).
25. M. DeGraff, Ed., Language Creation and Language Change: Creolization, Diachrony, and Development (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999).
26. R. W. Anderson, in Pidginization and Creolization as Language Acquisition, R. Anderson, Ed. (Newbury, Rowley, MA, 1983), pp. 1-56.
27. D. Bickerton, Behav. Brain Sci. 7, 173 (1984).
28. G. Sankoff, S. Laberge, Kivung 6, 32 (1973).
29. Unlike NSL, creoles draw much of their vocabulary and possibly some grammatical structure from the languages in contact where they arise; much debate surrounds the question of the nature and degree of this influence (25).
30. R. P. Meier, J. Mem. Lang. 26, 362 (1987).
31. We thank the Nicaraguan participants for their enthusiastic participation; the Melania Morales School for Special Education, the National Nicaraguan Association of the Deaf (ANSNIC), and the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports (MECD) for their assistance and cooperation; Quaker House, Managua, for providing testing facilities; A. Engelman, M. Flaherty, E. Housman, S. Katseff, S. Littman, J. Pyers, M. Santos, and P. Shima for assistance with data collection and analysis; and S. Bogoch, P. Hagoort, S. Pinker, and R. Short for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. Supported by the Language and Cognition Group at the Max Planck institute for Psycholinguistics, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) project 051.02.040 (A.Ö.), National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) grant R01 DC00491 (Susan Goldin-Meadow and A.Ö.), Turkish Academy of Sciences grant HAO/TUBA-GEBIP/2001-2-16 (A.Ö.), a visiting faculty position in psychology at Harvard University (A.S.), and NIDCD grant R01 DC05407 (A.S.).