ASL for infants

[Terry Janzen]

Dan,

I'm not aware of any claims that specifically suggest signed *languages* are
the evolutionary precursors to spoken languages. Got a reference for me?

Terry Janzen
____________________________
Terry Janzen, Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics
252 St. Paul's College
University of Manitoba
70 Dysart Road
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Canada R3T 2M6

janzent at cc.umanitoba.ca
204-474-7081 (voice/TTY)

----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Parvaz <dparvaz at UNM.EDU>
To: <SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA>
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2001 11:11 AM
Subject: Re: ASL for infants


> > 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.