The Resilience Of Language

by Goldin-meadow, Susan

• ISBN13: 9781841694368
• ISBN10: 1841694363
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-04-05
• Publisher: Psychology Pres

Summary

Imagine a child who has never seen or heard any language at all. Would such a child be able to invent a language on her own? Despite what one might guess, the children described in this book make it clear that the answer to this question is 'yes'. The children are congenitally deaf and cannot learn the spoken language that surrounds them. In addition, they have not yet been exposed to sign language, either by their hearing parents or their oral schools. Nevertheless, the children use their hands to communicate - they gesture - and those gestures take on many of the forms and functions of language. The properties of language that we find in the deaf children's gestures are just those properties that do not need to be handed down from generation to generation, but can be reinvented by a childde novo- the resilient properties of language. This book suggests that all children, deaf or hearing, come to language-learning ready to develop precisely these language properties. In this way, studies of gesturecreation in deaf children can show us the way that children themselves have a large hand in shaping how language is learned.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Accompanying Website of Video Clips	xv
Introduction	xvii
PART I THE PROBLEM OF LANGUAGE-LEARNING
Out of the Mouths of Babes	3	(10)
How Do Children Learn Language?	13	(8)
Language-Learning Across the Globe	21	(10)
Language-Learning by Hand	31	(10)
Does More or Less Input Matter?	41	(14)
PART II LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT WITHOUT A LANGUAGE MODEL
Background on Deafness and Language-Learning	55	(10)
How Do We Begin?	65	(6)
Words	71	(12)
The Parts of Words	83	(14)
Combining Words Into Simple Sentences	97	(18)
Making Complex Sentences out of Simple Ones: Recursion	115	(10)
Building a System	125	(12)
Beyond the Here-and-Now: The Functions Gesture Serves	137	(14)
How Might Hearing Parents Foster Gesture Creation in Their Deaf Children?	151	(12)
Gesture Creation Across the Globe	163	(22)
PART III THE CONDITIONS THAT FOSTER LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE-LEARNING
How Do the Resilient Properties of Language Help Children Learn Language?	185	(14)
When Does Gesture Become Language?	199	(14)
Is Language Innate?	213	(8)
The Resilience of Language	221	(12)
References	233	(18)
Author Index	251	(6)
Subject Index	257