first signs

[Morgan, Gary]

Dear info-childes, a great discussion and the last comment from Ann Peters about 'whole cloth' prompted me to respond about children exposed to a natural sign language (ASL, British Sign Language etc) and their first signs.
 
First a growing body of cross linguistic research is showing that these children's first signs appear around 12 months and have common semantic characteristics (mum, dad, everyday objects, cat, dog, milk etc). They exhibit interesting 'child forms' e.g. the handshapes are usually unmarked ones even when the parent's input to the child was a more marked handshape.  The handshape in the sign DAD in BSL is a fist with the index and middle finger  extended out (like a two finger point). The hands come together and the extended fingers tap on each other twice (you will have to look at a BSL dictionary to really appreciate this).  In child forms at 12 months the handshape is normally much less marked so the child might use two whole hands with outstreached fingers (like waving at someone)  which touch each other several times.  Repetition and inhibition of repetition is a common factor in children's first signs - Richard Meier has written about first signs in ASLL and I have done similar work for BSL.
 
In the 1980s there was some noise in the language acquisition field about the 'sign advantage' - this claim was that 6 month olds were using sign language.  Virginia Volterra was able to show that these first signs were gestures that excited deaf parents were interpreting as first signs. So the sign MILK in ASL and BSL often is made with a repetitive open and closing of a fist hand.  This is a common gesture in hearing children with no exposure to sign language (Volterra and Erting 1990). The same criterion for deciding what are first words have to be used for first signs.
 
Finally the 'whole cloth' comment. There is sometimes an assumption that 'homesigns' as in Susan Goldin-Meadow's work would be examples of children inventing signs themselves. I think Ann's comment would apply to these communication situations where the deaf child  TOGETHER with the parent creates an idiosyncratic form that persist until something comes along to replace it.
 
Best
 
Gary Morgan
http://www.dcal.ucl.ac.uk/ <https://outweb3.city.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.dcal.ucl.ac.uk/> 
http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/g.morgan <http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/g.morgan> 

________________________________

From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org on behalf of Ann Peters
Sent: Thu 14/09/2006 03:00
To: Deborah Gibson; info-childes
Cc: Ann Peters
Subject: first words



Hello Deb,
First of all, a lot of people have addressed the question of how one
recognizes a child's first "words" (3 names that pop into my mind: Charles
Feguson, Lise Menn, Marilyn Vihman). And lots of terms have been proposed
such as phenetically consistent forms. And criteria such as some sort
ofphenotic consistency plus some sort of environmental consistency.
The angle I have been thinking about concerns the social nature of
"language" and the negotiability of meanings (cf. Vygotsky). I have been
studying the emergence of language in a young visually impaired child
(Seth) who had, in his father (Dad), an extremely empathetic
primary-caregiver. At around 18 months Seth had quite a number of
"idiosyncratic words". These were phonologically consistent forms that
were reinforced and perpetuated by Dad's recognition of them. E.g. Seth
would say /ihi/ as he patted  his father's head, /baba:/ when he wanted to
eat, /ntu/ when he wanted to be put down, /nu:/ when he threw something.
Some forms had histories that reflect their phonological origin, e.g.
/i-i:t/ when he wanted to eat, /shisha:/ when he was thirsty, /gaga:/ when
he wanted a cookie, /kokowk/ when he touched something cold, /chI/ when he
wanted to be picked up (derived from Dad saying "come up on Daddy's
chest"). Some of these forms were ephemeral, some persisted for months. In
every case I am sure they would NOT have persisted had Dad not somehow
validated them for Seth. On the other hand, Dad never seems to have forced
such forms to persist by "freezing" them into Seth's vocabulary. Therefore
they were "free" to be replaced by more adult forms when Seth was ready. I
suspect that it is hard for a child to invent a "word" out of whole cloth.
It is certainly much easier with the cooperation of someone else. "It
takes two to talk" - at least at first.
ann


****************************
Dr. Ann M. Peters, Professor Emeritus
Graduate Chair                      http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/
Department of Linguistics
University of Hawai`i               email: ann at hawaii.edu
1890 East West Road, Rm 569         phone: 808 956-3241
Honolulu, HI  96822                 fax:   808 956-9166
http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/faculty/ann/



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