Young children's acquisition of the handshape aspect of American Sign Language signs: Parental report findings

1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore Siedlecki ◽  
John D. Bonvillian
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Home Visit ◽  
Ordinal Position ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Parental Report ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Deaf Parents ◽  
Parental Reports

ABSTRACTThe acquisition of the handshape aspect of American Sign Language signs was examined longitudinally in nine young children of deaf parents. In monthly home visit sessions, the parents demonstrated on videotape how their children formed the different signs in their lexicons. According to these parental reports, handshapes were produced accurately in 49.8% of the children's different signs. Accuracy of handshape production typically improved with the children's increasing age and vocabulary size. Four basic handshapes (/5, G, B, A/) predominated in the children's early sign productions. Measures of the children's handshape production accuracy, ordinal position of initial production, and frequency of production were used to describe the order in which handshapes were most often acquired. It was also observed that the part of the hand involved in contacting a sign's location often affected the accuracy of the handshapes being produced.

Young Children's Acquisition of the Movement Aspect in American Sign Language

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 588-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Bonvillian ◽  
Theodore Siedlecki
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Home Visits ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Downward Movement ◽  
Motor Behaviors ◽  
Deaf Parents ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Production Accuracy

The acquisition of the movement aspect of American Sign Language signs was examined longitudinally in 9 young children of deaf parents. During monthly home visits, the parents demonstrated on videotape how their children formed the different signs in their lexicons. The parents also demonstrated how they formed or modeled these same signs. Overall, the children correctly produced 61.4% of the movements that were present in the adult sign models. Although the production accuracy of the movement aspect of signs did not improve over the course of the study, the number and complexity of movements produced by the children did increase as they got older and their vocabularies grew in size. Of the different sign movements, contacting action was by far the most frequently produced. The children were also relatively successful in their production of closing action and downward movement. The order of acquisition for the remaining ASL movements, however, was quite variable, with the exception that bidirectional movements tended to be produced more accurately than unidirectional movements. The relationship between children's early rhythmical motor behaviors and the development of sign movements is discussed.

scholarly journals Real-time lexical comprehension in young children learning American Sign Language

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. e12672 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle MacDonald ◽  
Todd LaMarr ◽  
David Corina ◽  
Virginia A. Marchman ◽  
Anne Fernald
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
American Sign

Differentiating the use of gaze in bilingual-bimodal language acquisition: a comparison of two sets of twins with deaf parents

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. DAYLENE RICHMOND-WELTY ◽  
PATRICIA SIPLE
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Mutual Gaze ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Deaf Parents

Signed languages make unique demands on gaze during communication. Bilingual children acquiring both a spoken and a signed language must learn to differentiate gaze use for their two languages. Gaze during utterances was examined for a set of bilingual-bimodal twins acquiring spoken English and American Sign Language (ASL) and a set of monolingual twins acquiring ASL when the twins were aged 2;0, 3;0 and 4;0. The bilingual-bimodal twins differentiated their languages by age 3;0. Like the monolingual ASL twins, the bilingual-bimodal twins established mutual gaze at the beginning of their ASL utterances and either maintained gaze to the end or alternated gaze to include a terminal look. In contrast, like children acquiring spoken English monolingually, the bilingual-bimodal twins established mutual gaze infrequently for their spoken English utterances. When they did establish mutual gaze, it occurred later in their spoken utterances and they tended to look away before the end.

scholarly journals Learning a language from inconsistent input: Regularization in child and adult learners

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Austin ◽  
Kathryn Schuler ◽  
Sarah Furlong ◽  
Elissa Newport
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Young Children ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Linguistic Input

When linguistic input contains inconsistent use of grammatical forms, children produce these forms more consistently, a process called ‘regularization.’ Deaf children learning American Sign Language from parents who are non-native users of the language regularize their parents’ inconsistent usages (Singleton & Newport, 2004). In studies of artificial languages containing inconsistently used morphemes (Hudson Kam & Newport, 2005, 2009), children, but not adults, regularized these forms. However, little is known about the precise circumstances in which such regularization occurs. In three experiments we investigate how the type of input variation and the age of learners affects regularization. Overall our results suggest that while adults tend to reproduce the inconsistencies found in their input, young children introduce regularity: they learn varying forms whose occurrence is conditioned and systematic, but they alter inconsistent variation to be more regular. Older children perform more like adults, suggesting that regularization changes with maturation and cognitive capacities.

The acquisition of conditionals in American Sign Language: Grammaticized facial expressions

1990 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Snitzer Reilly ◽  
Marina Mcintire ◽  
Ursula Bellugi
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expression ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Deaf Parents ◽  
Manual Signs ◽  
Children First

ABSTRACTAn unusual facet of American Sign Language (ASL) is its use of grammaticized facial expression. In this study, we examine the acquisition of conditional sentences in ASL by 14 deaf children (ages 3;3–8;4) of deaf parents. Conditional sentences were chosen because they entail the use of both manual signs and grammaticized non-manual facial expressions. The results indicate that the children first acquire manual conditional signs, e.g., SUPPOSE, before they use the obligatory grammaticized conditional facial expression. Moreover, the children acquire the constellation of obligatory non-manual behaviors component by component, rather than holistically.

scholarly journals Felicia Bisnath - Wh-questions in the Trinidad and Tobago Signing Community

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicia Bisnath
Keyword(s):  
Trinidad And Tobago ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Deaf Education ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Deaf Parents ◽  
Wh Questions

Signing in Trinidad and Tobago is characterised by variation and multilingualism arising out of deaf education. Two varieties are named for the purposes of this paper: Trinidad and Tobago Sign Language (TTSL) which is an indigenous variety, and Trinidad and Tobago American Sign Language (TTASL) which can be considered a product of contact between TTSL and American Sign Language (TTASL). This paper describes variation in the domain of wh-questions as they are used by three different kinds of consultants: two deaf people who grew up with and without deaf parents and relatives respectively, and a hearing person with deaf parents. Eighteen unique wh-words, one non-manual form and four positions of the wh-word were elicited. These grammatical properties when viewed alongside the backgrounds of the language consultants reveal variation between TTSL and TTASL. Terminological variation in what “TTSL” refers to was also found. This variation is linked to the language background of signers, and shows that the named varieties created by linguists out of convenience do not necessarily reflect the perceptions of all members of a community.

The Acquisition of Question Formation in Spoken English and American Sign Language by Two Hearing Children of Deaf Parents

1979 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Jones ◽  
Stephen P. Quigley
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Dual Language ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Deaf Parents ◽  
Question Formation ◽  
Hearing Children ◽  
Parallel Fashion

This longitudinal study investigated the acquisition of question formation in spoken English and American Sign Language (ASL) by two young hearing children of deaf parents. The linguistic environment of the children included varying amounts of exposure and interaction with normal speech and with the nonstandard speech of their deaf parents. This atypical speech environment did not impede the children’s acquisition of English question forms. The two children also acquired question forms in ASL that are similar to those produced by deaf children of deaf parents. The two languages, ASL and English, developed in parallel fashion in the two children, and the two systems did not interfere with each other. This dual language development is illustrated by utterances in which the children communicated a sentence in spoken English and ASL simultaneously, with normal English structure in the spoken version and sign language structure in the ASL version.

Spatial and temporal dynamics of lexico-semantic processing in American Sign Language

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Leonard ◽  
N. Ferjan Ramirez ◽  
C. Torres ◽  
M. Hatrak ◽  
R. Mayberry ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Dynamics
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