The resilience of language : what gesture creation in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language / Susan Goldin-Meadow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Goldin-Meadow, Susan.

Series:

Essays in developmental psychology

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language acquisition.

Gesture.

Deaf children--Means of communication.

Deaf children.

Physical Description:

xxi, 262 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York, N.Y. : Psychology Press, 2003.

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 child de 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 gesture creation in deaf children can show us the way that children themselves have a large hand in shaping how language is learned.

Contents:

Accompanying Website of Video Clips xv

Part I The Problem of Language-Learning

Chapter 1 Out of the Mouths of Babes 3

Chapter 2 How Do Children Learn Language? 13

Chapter 3 Language-Learning Across the Globe 21

Chapter 4 Language-Learning by Hand 31

Chapter 5 Does More or Less Input Matter? 41

Part II Language Development Without a Language Model

Chapter 6 Background on Deafness and Language-Learning 55

Chapter 7 How Do We Begin? 65

Chapter 8 Words 71

Chapter 9 The Parts of Words 83

Chapter 10 Combining Words Into Simple Sentences 97

Chapter 11 Making Complex Sentences out of Simple Ones: Recursion 115

Chapter 12 Building a System 125

Chapter 13 Beyond the Here-and-Now: The Functions Gesture Serves 137

Chapter 14 How Might Hearing Parents Foster Gesture Creation in Their Deaf Children? 151

Chapter 15 Gesture Creation Across the Globe 163

Part III The Conditions That Foster Language and Language-Learning

Chapter 16 How Do the Resilient Properties of Language Help Children Learn Language? 185

Chapter 17 When Does Gesture Become Language? 199

Chapter 18 Is Language Innate? 213

Chapter 19 The Resilience of Language 221.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-250) and indexes.

ISBN:

1841690260

OCLC:

50773202