ASL for infants

[Dan Parvaz]

> What do others on SLLING-L think of this claim? Is there much
> evidence for it?

I wonder whether or not there is a flavor of the whole ontogeny-phylogeny
business; if (as some have claimed) SLs are the evolutionary precursors of
spoken language, couldn't they be acquired earlier en route to picking up
spoken language? This may also explain why there seems to be no strong
ties between infants' use of signs and acquisition of spoken language
later on, just as a toddler's ability to walk is not particularly
influenced (based on personal observation, anyway -- do correct me if I'm
wrong) by whether or not they spent much time crawling.

Just some random Sunday-morning thoughts.

Cheers,

Dan.


____________
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.. .   D A N  P A R V A Z  --  Geek-in-Residence
 U    University of New Mexico Linguistics Dept
 -    dparvaz@{unm.edu,lanl.gov}   505.480.9638