Baby Signs

[Kanae Igarashi]

At 11:44 PM 1/12/99 -0700, Carolyn Buck-Gengler wrote:
>Greetings,
>
>I have a question for you language acquisition experts.
>
>There is a product out there, a book called "Baby Signs" that claims that
>not only can babies learn sign earlier than speech, but that it can help
>in their acquisition language (at least, that is my understanding of the
>claim).  I assume the book gives parents hints on types of things to try
>signs for, if not the specific signs to try.  (I've seen the book, but
>never looked at it that closely; I keep hearing about it from non-linguist
>friends and relatives.)

        This reminds me of the role of "formulaic expressions" in
second/foreign language acquisition.  Formulaic expressions memorized as a
whole enable learners who still have virtually no proficiency in the target
language to participate in the target language speech community.  Social
interaction generates more comprehensible input and needs for
comprehensible output, which may trigger 'acquisition.'
        With the signs, a baby can be, or at least pretned to be having a
"conversation" with adults.  If language is acquired thorugh "social
interaction," it should be "a good" thing.

Kanae Igarashi
Dept. of Modern Languages
Carnegie Mellon Unviersity
(412)268-4236
kanae at andrew.cmu.edu(日本語読めます)