nouns vs. verbs in sign languages

[Morgan, Gary]

We have worked on this question explicitly in British Sign language
Acquisition.  1. no effects of iconicity for the lexicon during the first 3
years and 2. marked preference for nouns over verbs up to 2;4.  In fact
contrary to your suggestion that iconicity might make verb acquisition
quicker we report that verb acquisition in BSL (and ASL) is a particularly
long process.  We have two papers on first verbs, one is a published working
paper, we are waiting to hear from  'first language' with the other.  We
also have a paper on later verb constructions in JCL

Hope this is useful

Gary Morgan

Morgan, G., R. Herman & B. Woll (2002). "The development of complex verbs in
British sign Language." Journal of Child Language 29: 655 - 675

Morgan, G., Barriere, I. & Woll, B. (2003). First verbs in British Sign
Language development. 	Working Papers in Language and Communication
Science, vol 2 pp 57 66

Morgan, G., Barriere, I. & Woll, B. The development of verb agreement
morphology in BSL: why so slow?. Submitted to First Language.




-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Gasser [mailto:gasser at cs.indiana.edu]
Sent: 17 January 2004 19:22
To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
Subject: nouns vs. verbs in sign languages


I'm sure many of you are familiar with issues in the debate over the
acquisition of verbs vs. nouns: whether verbs are universally harder, if
so why, if not, what it is about languages like Japanese that makes them
relatively early.

But does anyone know of work on the acquisition of nouns vs. verbs in sign
languages?  I'm interested in this especially because of the possible role
that iconicity might play in verb acquisition.

Thanks.

Mike Gasser
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN, USA
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