Goldin-Meadow S, Mylander C
Monogr Soc Res Child Dev. 1984;49(3-4):1-151.
We previously reported that deaf children of hearing parents can develop a gestural communication system with some of the observed properties of early child language. In the present study, this phenomenon of gesture creation was replicated in four deaf children aged 1-4 to 3-1 at the time of the first interview. Each child, despite his atypical language-learning conditions (in particular his lack of usable conventional linguistic input, either oral or manual), developed a gesture system comparable in semantic content and structure (specifically, constructional ordering of elements, differential probabilities of production of elements, and recursive concatenation of semantic relations) to the gestural systems of the six deaf children of hearing parents in our original study and comparable as well to the spoken and sign systems of children acquiring conventional languages under typical learning conditions. This phenomenon suggests that the human child has strong biases to communicate in language-like ways. Nevertheless, it is possible that the deaf child's hearing parents, and not the child himself, were responsible for the emergence of the child's structured (yet idiosyncratic) gesture system. To investigate this possibility, we considered three possible parental influences on the child's sentence structures. First, we entertained the hypothesis that the children's sign sentences were merely imitations (perhaps even uncomprehending imitations) of a hearing adult's immediately preceding gestures. Second, we considered the possibility that the regularities underlying the deaf children's structured sign sentences were induced from their hearing parents' gestures taken in toto. Finally, we considered the possibility that the deaf children's sign sentences had been shaped by their parents' responses to those sentences. We found no evidence to support any of these hypotheses. The data reported in this series of studies confirm that deaf children lacking a conventional linguistic input can develop a gestural communication system that shows some of the structural regularities characteristic of early child language. The results suggest that communication with a number of language-like properties can develop in a markedly atypical language-learning environment, even without a tutor's modeling or shaping the structural aspects of the communication. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that the deaf child himself plays a seminal role in the emergence of the structural aspects of these communication systems.
我们之前报道过，听力正常的父母所生的聋儿能够发展出一种具有幼儿早期语言某些观察到的特性的手势交流系统。在本研究中，这种手势创造现象在首次访谈时年龄为1岁4个月至3岁1个月的4名聋儿身上得到了重现。每个孩子，尽管其语言学习条件不典型（特别是缺乏可用的传统语言输入，无论是口语还是手语），但都发展出了一个在语义内容和结构上（具体来说，元素的构建顺序、元素产生的不同概率以及语义关系的递归连接）与我们原研究中6名听力正常的父母所生的聋儿的手势系统相当，并且也与在典型学习条件下习得传统语言的儿童的口语和手语系统相当的手势系统。这一现象表明人类儿童具有以类似语言的方式进行交流的强烈倾向。然而，聋儿的听力正常的父母而非孩子自身，有可能是孩子结构化（但独特）的手势系统出现的原因。为了探究这种可能性，我们考虑了父母对孩子句子结构的三种可能影响。首先，我们提出这样的假设，即孩子的手语句子仅仅是对听力正常的成年人紧接之前的手势的模仿（甚至可能是不理解的模仿）。其次，我们考虑了聋儿结构化手语句子背后的规律是从他们听力正常的父母的全部手势中归纳出来的可能性。最后，我们考虑了聋儿的手语句子是由他们父母对这些句子的反应塑造而成的可能性。我们没有发现支持这些假设中任何一个的证据。这一系列研究中报告的数据证实，缺乏传统语言输入的聋儿能够发展出一种显示出幼儿早期语言某些结构规律特征的手势交流系统。结果表明，即使没有教师对手势交流的结构方面进行示范或塑造，在明显非典型的语言学习环境中也能发展出具有许多类似语言特性的交流方式。这些数据与聋儿自身在这些交流系统结构方面的出现中起关键作用这一假设是一致的。
