ASL for infants

[Allen Gardner]

Please could you help a busy colleague with the title of the journal or
book of your references to Newport and Meier (1990) and Petitto (1994).

I know an article in Science 1991 by Laura Petitto on this subject.
Could it be the same article?

On Mon, 19 Mar 2001 Adam.Schembri at bristol.ac.uk wrote:

> It seems so far that there is little agreement with Petitto (1994) who
> suggests that claims about the earlier appearance of signs compared to
> words were based on an overinterpretation of manual babbles as first
> signs. I don't have the reference handy but I'm sure Virginia Volterra
> has also made this point in the literature somewhere.
>
> I think the Newport & Meier (1990) argument about the earlier development
> of the motor control system is interesting and I look forward to the
> forthcoming paper that Christian mentioned, but this argument of course
> rests on the assumption that we have sufficient evidence to claim that
> the first signs appear before the first words - is there no-one on
> SLLING-L who shares Petitto's scepticism about this? Is there any
> evidence for the sign advantage in signed languages other than ASL?
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> Adam Schembri
> Centre for Deaf Studies
> University of Bristol
> 8 Woodland Road
> Bristol BS8 1TN
> United Kingdom
>
>
> > Richard Arnold wrote:
> >
> > > In a message dated 3/18/01 9:14:37 AM Central Standard Time,
> > > rathmann at MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU writes:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >> the sign advantage can be explained by
> > >> the earlier development of the motor control system for the manual
> > >> articulators
> > >> compared with the development of the motor control system for the
> > >> vocal
> > >> articulators. This does not mean that the development of language is
> > >>
> > >> different in the two modalities, only that the _expression_ of the
> > >> language may start slightly earlier in the signed modality.
> > >>
> > >
> > > I agree. It seems to be a more physiological reason for this
> > > phenomena. It is
> > > simply the ease of use rather than linguistic ability.
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > There's another explanation for the apparent disparity between the
> > appearance of the first spoken word and the first signed word, and that
> > is the eyes and the ears of the beholder.  Because of the phonological
> > variability in early child speech, it is often difficult for the
> > layperson to distinguish the commonalities that could constitute a
> > "word" for the child.  Signs being so much larger provide more ability
> > to distinguish meaning in noise.
> > Susan Fischer
> >
> >
> > --
> > Susan Fischer                                e-mail:
> > fischer at mail.rit.edu
> > NTID/RIT  HLC-2420                   phone: 1-716-475-6558 (v/TTY)
> > Dept. Of  Research                        fax: 1-716-475-7101
> > 96 Lomb Memorial Drive              web: http://www.rit.edu/~sdfncr
> > Rochester, NY 14623-5604           (under perpetual construction!!)
> >
> >
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> This mail was sent through SilkyMail v1.0
>