Sign Language Acquisition in a Mute Autistic Boy

1976 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Bonvillian ◽  
Keith E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Social Behavior ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Semantic Relations ◽  
Vocabulary Test ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Peabody Picture Vocabulary ◽  
Conceptual Progress

A mute autistic boy learned to communicate extensively through American Sign Language. Over a six-month period he produced many spontaneous signs and sign combinations, and analyses of the child’s sign combinations indicated the presence of a full range of semantic relations. Further evidence of conceptual progress was provided by the child’s increased score on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. In addition, parents' and teacher’s reports indicated that the child’s social behavior improved. The extent of the boy’s linguistic progress and associated improvement in social behavior markedly exceeds that usually reported for mute autistic children.

scholarly journals Bilingualism and bimodal code-blending among deaf ASL-English bilinguals

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie Herbert ◽  
Acrisio Pires
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Deaf Community ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Mixed Language ◽  
Delayed Exposure

The audiologically deaf members of the American Deaf community display bilingual competence in American Sign Language (ASL) and English, although their language acquisition trajectories often involve delayed exposure to one or both languages. There is a great deal of variation in terms of production among these signers, ranging from very ASL-typical to productions that seem to display heavy English influence. The latter, mixed productions, coined “Contact Signing” by Lucas & Valli (1992), could be representative of a type of codeswitching, referred to as ‘code-blending’ in sign language-spoken language contexts (e.g. Baker & Van den Bogaerde 2008), in which bilinguals invoke knowledge of their two grammars in concert, or these productions could be more like a mixed language, in which a third grammar, distinct from both ASL and English, constrains them. We argue, based on the analysis of our corpus of naturalistic data collected in an all-deaf sociolinguistic environment, that Contact Signing provides evidence for code-blending, given the distribution of English vs. ASL-based language properties in the production data from the participants in our study.

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 Bioinformatiс properties of sign language motion indicated by fractal complexity

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evie Malaia ◽  
Joshua Borneman ◽  
Ronnie B. Wilbur
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Speech Signal ◽  
Human Motion ◽  
The Other ◽  
Visual Signal ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Frequency Bands ◽  
Visual Characteristics

We make a first attempt at distinguishing information-carrying visual signal by comparing visual characteristics of American Sign Language and everyday human motion, to identify what clues might be available in one but not in the other. The comparison indicated significantly higher fractal complexity in sign language across tested frequency bands (0.01-15 Hz), as compared to everyday motion. A comparison of our results with the work also showing high fractal complexity in the speech signal allows us to suggest the underlying properties of linguistic signals which allow babies to 'tune to' a specific channel, or modality, during language acquisition.

Second language acquisition of American Sign Language influences co-speech gesture production

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-482
Author(s):  
Jill Weisberg ◽  
Shannon Casey ◽  
Zed Sevcikova Sehyr ◽  
Karen Emmorey
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
One Year ◽  
Gesture Production

AbstractPrevious work indicates that 1) adults with native sign language experience produce more manual co-speech gestures than monolingual non-signers, and 2) one year of ASL instruction increases gesture production in adults, but not enough to differentiate them from non-signers. To elucidate these effects, we asked early ASL–English bilinguals, fluent late second language (L2) signers (≥ 10 years of experience signing), and monolingual non-signers to retell a story depicted in cartoon clips to a monolingual partner. Early and L2 signers produced manual gestures at higher rates compared to non-signers, particularly iconic gestures, and used a greater variety of handshapes. These results indicate susceptibility of the co-speech gesture system to modification by extensive sign language experience, regardless of the age of acquisition. L2 signers produced more ASL signs and more handshape varieties than early signers, suggesting less separation between the ASL lexicon and the co-speech gesture system for L2 signers.

Semantic Perspicuity and the Locative Hypothesis: Implications for Acquisition

1982 ◽  
Vol 164 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Paul Gee ◽  
Judy Anne Kegl
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Verbal System ◽  
Semantic System ◽  
Logical Problem

The structure of the grammar of American Sign Language (ASL) has important implications for the theory of universal grammar and the logical problem of language acquisition. A detailed study of the morphology of ASL verbs is presented, showing how all the verbs in the language are built, by rule, from six basic locative/directional verb stems. The ASL verbal system supports the “locative hypothesis,” the view that all or most grammatical and semantic structures in language ultimately derive from spatial notions, and is shown to be “semantically perspicuous,” that is, the morphological structure of ASL mediates a virtual one-to-one map (isomorphism) between its phonetic structure and its semantic structure. This perspicuity gives us a “window” onto semantics, rendering ASL an invaluable resource for the study of lexical (word) semantics. It is argued that each subsystem of ASL grammar represents something approaching “core grammar,” that is, a basic or unmarked structure, and one possibly approximating the structures acquired initially by children acquiring any language, though often obscured in other languages by the accretion of marked structures. The basic verbal system of ASL is compared to characterizations of the initial semantic system of the child crosslinguistically.

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