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Science

Deaf Children Invent Language 229

Posted by michael from the your-kid-wants-steak dept.
gmuslera writes "According to this story, Nicaraguan deaf kids, without knowing any existing sign language, invented their own language on their own, and it keeps evolving. Is this going in the same way as Varley's The Persistence of Vision?"
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Deaf Children Invent Language More

Deaf Children Invent Language

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  • Yes! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Fjornir ( 516960 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:00AM (#10289693)
    I must go to Nicaragua and study this so I can become a neurolingquistic hacker and control all of you with just a few gestures... Muahahahah!

  • Yawn... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:02AM (#10289700)


    Ancient news, and contrary to the unending hype no one has ever rigorously established that none of the kids had any prior exposure to sign language. The argument actually boils down to "we don't know of any prior exposure for any of the kids involved".

    • Re:Yawn... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:23AM (#10289746)
      People wil invent a language, a way to communicate, where none exists. There is *no* hype - languague is a natural instinct for humans in the same way as fighting & fucking. See Steven Pinkers "The Language Instinct" for a beautiful essay on it all.
      • There is *no* hype - languague is a natural instinct for humans

        Yeah, but people who aren't deaf use a rudimentary system of signs and gesture when communicating. So its not like they had to come up with the concept of sign language, which the blurb sorta implies. If you're part of human society, you have examples of languages presented to your language-absorbing brain every day.

        Anyway, every generation of teenagers invents its own language variant. This is certainly interresting, but I do think there's s

        • I don't think you get it.... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19, 2004 @02:17PM (#10291627)
          (Note: I didn't RTFA, but I am in linguistics and I have read articles on this subject before.)

          I don't think you understand the point.

          There had been no systematic education of deaf children in Nicaragua prior to 1979. At that point, they sent all of the deaf children in the country to two schools in Managua. Though all of the kids had some rudimentary signs that had been developed independently within each of their families, they did not have a language, really. They had gestures for communication without syntax.

          Though attempts were made to teach these kids spanish finger-spelling (which for various reasons is not regarded as an actual sign language) none were successful. And yet, the teachers saw blatant communication going on between the children: they had adapted signs into a system which they all understood to varying degrees.

          The interesting thing, though, was that whereas the older children, who had gone longer without having access to a linguistically-rich environment rarely linked more than a few signs together and showed only a rudimentary syntax (their signing has been categorized as a "pidgin"), the younger children's language evolved into something much more complex. The language they use includes the use of agreement between subject and object (it has something to do with the placement of the signs in space relative to eachother. I am no expert on sign language, but this is apparently something demonstrated by all other sign languages.)

          The point is that, whereas the older children, who had passed out of their language-acquisition period, spoke in a manner which could almost be compared to the signing of chimps (even if that sounds horrible and the claims of language in non-human primates are dubious), the younger children created a generative, varied system which included a rule-based system of grammar. So whereas the older kids would be limited to sentences like, "pour coffee," the younger ones would be able to create ones like "Damn it, I shouldn't have stayed out all last night partying because now I have to stay up and study. Pour me a cup of coffee, would you?"

          So no, they didn't have to come up with the concept of a sign language, but they did have to come up with the rules from scratch. It's nothing like the fact that teenagers create their own slang.

          • Mod parent up (Score:2, Interesting)

            by gujo-odori ( 473191 )
            Dang, yesterday I had mod points but used them all up on post of relatively little value compared to yours. I majored in linguistics myself, but then went back into IT a few years after graduating (I'd been working in IT for some years before going go college, and majored in linguistics because I loved it; however, it just didn't pay very well and competition was fierce, so I'm back in IT).

            The parent hits the nail on the head with his/her summary: these kids didn't make variations on an existing language,
          • The problem is that the Noam Chomskys and Steven Pinkers of the world are trying to draw extremely biased conclusions on the basis of the evidence you propose here: that "language is hard-wired into individuals" (WTF "hardwired" is supposed to mean is something they hardly ever sit down to think through clearly).

            This is using the example selectively to support their biases. One example of the sort of thing they downplay: the role that bringing these kids together into a community plays. Chomsky's model

            • Ok. Now I'm ready to hear out your explanation for how it is that a person is capable of acquiring language without having a language instinct.

              Chomsky's argument is fairly straightforward: Given a blank slate brain, a language-learner will never have sufficient language learning opportunities to learn a language, roughly because there are too many possible hypotheses to consider.

              Your complaint that the Chomskys and the Pinkers of the world do not give enough consideration to the social environment learne

    • Re:Yawn... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jesrad ( 716567 )
      Besides, the "official" sign language was invented pretty much the same way, IIRC.

      • Re:Yawn... (Score:2, Informative)

        by kjcole ( 781817 )
        There is no "official" sign language. There is American Sign Language, Australian Sign Language, British Sign Language, and any number of other sign languages. Much of American Sign Language actually came from France.

        (Interesting side note for some: The manual alphabet used by Yanks differs from that used by the Brits and Aussies.)

    • I would think that some kinds of signs, such as "pointing at an event or object of interest", and "waving one's hands around due to excitement" are inevitable.

    • Re:Yawn... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Colonel Cholling ( 715787 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @10:01AM (#10290321)
      no one has ever rigorously established that none of the kids had any prior exposure to sign language.

      And how exactly would one rigorously establish this? Follow the kids around with a camera from birth to make sure no-one signs around them?

      First of all, we need to make clear that there is no such thing as "sign language". Rather, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different sign languages, originating wherever there are deaf communities. Secondly, in Nicaragua at the time the schools for the deaf were prohibited from teaching any of the existing sign languages, since it was believed that the deaf should learn to read lips so that they could communicate "normally". This was of course a rousing failure, since so many different phonemes look the same when reading lips. I can imagine this problem is particularly prominent with Spanish, given its relatively small number of vowel sounds compared to English and its lack of the English tendency to close off vowel sounds with a telltale rounding of the lips.

      Anyway, since they weren't able to communicate at all via lip-read Spanish, these children needed some means to communicate with each other and with their parents. It is true that sometimes these children would learn a few pantomimed gestures from their parents, but this is not the same thing as a signed language-- first, because none of the pantomime gestures necessarily resemble any of the accepted symbols in an existing sign language, and second, because these were only a few individual signs with no overriding structure. Claiming these children learned a "sign language" from their parents would be like claiming my dog knows English. Furthermore, prior to the reforms which led to the schools of the deaf being founded in Nicaragua, deafness was attached a social stigma. Deaf children were kept isolated from the rest of society and treated as if they were mentally incompetent, with no attempts being made to teach them.

      At any rate, the most any one deaf child was likely to learn were a few made-up gestures, and these were unique to each deaf individual and his or her family, since before the opening of the schools for the deaf the deaf children had no opportunity to socialize with one another. When the deaf schools did open, the children forged their own pidgin out of the few gestures they knew, making up more symbols of their own. When this pidgin was passed to new students below the critical age for language learning, it became a fully grammatical language, a creole.

      The symbols and structure of Nicaraguan Sign Language are different enough from those of other sign languages, and the opportunity for the children to be exposed to them is small enough, that it is extremely unlikely that other signed languages contributed any role to the formation of NSL.

      • Re:Yawn... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by magefile ( 776388 )
        This has been one of the constant debates - teach lip reading and other "learn to survive" traits, or signing only. The former has been overdone in the past, the argument supposedly being that signing would be a step backwards for the deaf kids. The latter is somewhat prevalent among less tolerant members of the deaf community (IMHO, at least; basically, they're feeling that their culture is threatened). This is the same group that feels that hearing aids are bad because they stigmatize deafness. Among

  • Not the first time this has happened (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dangerz ( 540904 ) <<ten.soidutsadlit> <ta> <ffuts>> on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:02AM (#10289702) Homepage
    In Pysch class, we were told about these towns in Germany. They were two neighboring towns and both spoke german. The maids/slaves or whatever they were, on the other hand, were from all over the world, so none of them knew how to communicate. After the maids were released, they all met up in one location. Because they all spoke a different language, they tried to make up their own language.

    As time went on, they had children in this new town. Childrens brains are adapted more to learning languages, so the children actually solidified this language.

    I'm pretty sure that's how the story went. This was Psych class from almost 2 years ago.

    • Re:Not the first time this has happened (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nads2k ( 464029 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:17AM (#10289732)
      There is a big difference here. The story you relay has happened many times before all over. But andn this is a BIG BUT, the people involved already knew some language, and those rules probably influenced the language they created.

      In this case, these kids knew NO LANGUAGE at ALL. They just made one up out of THIN AIR. This is a very big difference.

      • Vindicates Chomsky (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I do believe that this is NOT the first time it has happened, however since its 17 years since I sat in a Linguistics and CogSci lecture I can't remember the details of the example I have to admit. I do remember the _point_ of the example given however - in the context of debating whether language is indeed an intrinsic phenomenon, as proposed by Chomsky (yes, in addition to his political rants he is/was actually a cognitive scientist at one time).

    • Re:Not the first time this has happened (Score:5, Informative)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:41AM (#10289783)
      This phenomenon is so common that such languages have a name: Creole.

      The old Lingua Franca was on the verge of becoming such a creole language before being superceded by the Lingua Francais, and there are a number of creoles spoken by millions, such as Swahili.

      Or English.

      KFG
      • This phenomenon is so common that such languages have a name: Creole.

        It's true that these kids' language is going through the usual creolization process. But that's not the significant part of the story. The really interesting part is that these were children with no language at all, and they've invented one on their own.

        This is a major nail in the coffin of the old "tabula rasa" concept. It's good supporting evidence to the conjecture that humans are born with a builtin competency for language. They
        • The really interesting part is that these were children with no language at all, and they've invented one on their own.

          So you're saying that these kids didn't speak with their parent(s) at home, and just grunted and pointed until they worked out this language?
          • In retrospect, I realize that you might be talking about the kids referred to in the story, and not those that your post's grandparent metioned.
          • As near as I can tell from the various reports, that's essentially true. Except that the pointing and working out signs happened mostly at the school. The kids made signs to each other and with the school personnel, and worked out some signs with common meaning. It wasn't entirely the kids' work, because their teachers contributed to the basic signs. The story seems to be mostly about the way that the kids (with apparently little input from the teachers) worked out an increasingly sophisticated syntax an
    • Linguists have known for a long time about this, and contrary to the countless posts here, Stephen Pinker didn't discover this.

      Mix two languages and you get pidgin in the first generation and creole in the second.
      • Pinker goes to great lengths to point out that "The Language Instinct" is an attempt to make Chomsky's work accessible, and that Pinker himself is not claiming authorship over most of the ideas. Rather his book is more of a "popular science" work that takes abstract domain-specific concepts and sumarizes them into terms like "mentalese" (i.e. the "language" used by your brain in abstract thought).
    • I agree, this doesn't seem to be anything new at all. From my Psych textbook (Invitation to Psychology, 3rd Edition, Carole Wade and Carol Tavris):

      Deaf children who have never learned a standard language, either signed or spoken, have made up their

      own sign languages, and across cultures these languages show similarities in sentence structure (Goldin-Meadow & Mylander, 1998; Senghas & Coppola, 2001).

      So this type of study not only has been done in the past, it has been done enough times to notic

    • In Hawaii we have Pidgin English which was created by the migrant plantation workers. It is a mix of English, Japanese, Chinese, Philipino and Hawaiian. There are some Samoan curse words thrown in there too for flavor.

      It's funny, I grew up with it and assumed it's obvious to understand. But, apparently not since all the tourists and out of towners ask me what the hell people are saying.

  • Wasn't this covered in Brenda Laurel's book? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:05AM (#10289713)
    Something like this was covered a long time ago in "The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design."

    The particular article dealt with stages of language. There's rough communication (usually done by adults in a foreign country that don't speak the language). There's pidgin, which is invented by the children and is a blend of the original and native tongues. Then there's a real language that pops, usually created by kids listening to the pidgin.

    I guess it happened again, so it's reproducable now and could be considered a "fact."

    It's been years since I've read the above book. It's a classic in the field, but is probably long in the tooth by now.
    • As others have pointed out, the difference in this case is that these kids did not already know one language. They did not grow up listening to language (since they are deaf) or seeing language (since no one there spoke sign language). In most cases of children raised without language exposure, they are alone or in very small groups, and fail to develop a language on their own.
    • Close, but the pidgin is the words and constructions used by the parents in an environment, where they need to communicate. They bring words together until they communcate their information.

      The children under the primary language learning period then take these most independant words and structures and produce a creole from them.

      Oddly, these creoles share a lot of traits with English usually. Although it's generally accepted that English is not a creole.

  • Not news (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lars Clausen ( 1208 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:17AM (#10289733)
    This is a well-known occurrence, and is very well covered in "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker, which I can highly recommend for anyone interested in language.

    -Lars

  • Wow... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:20AM (#10289739)
    This news is so old, it's discussed in Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" published in 1995, which I've just been reading. He cites this as one of many examples establishing a biological basis for language. He specifically discusses the fact that a limited, pidgin sign language was originally developed by adults, but that the children who came to the school and learned it in their critical early years developed it independently into a full-fledged, grammatical language with all the subtlety and nuance of other sign languages and spoken languages. The grammatical usage of the language would essentially appear to come out of nowhere, including things like rules for establishing case and sentence word roles and the like that weren't built into the original sign language. And that the grammatical rules became rapidly consistent within the young deaf population.
    • Actually, the reason it appeared on Slashdot (am guessing) is because it just showed up on Boingboing. You can see the BoingBoing article [boingboing.net].

      Lately, a lot of Slashdot submissions seem to be those that appear in Boingboing, and then on Slashdot a while later. And since I've Slashdot customized to show Boingboing and Memepool on the right panels, it becomes really redundant.

      I wonder why, news is slow I suppose. Or maybe the editors figured that Boingboing gets better and more geeky news than Slashdot ;-) Eithe
      • Actually, the reason it appeared on Slashdot (am guessing) is because it just showed up on Boingboing. You can see the BoingBoing article.

        ...but BoingBoing evidently got it from either Reuters or the article in Science Magazine. I also heard it on NPR - who probably got it from Reuters - who pretty much report that they heard it from Science Magazine - who published a paper by one of the original scientists who did the study.

        To claim that Slashdot got the story from one specific source or another is h

    • Re:Wow... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by robbyjo ( 315601 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @06:26AM (#10289868) Homepage

      Not only that, some even claims that language is human's nature and part of human evolution. The motive was that humans are social cretures. Check here for a short tutorial on "Origins of Language" [upenn.edu]

  • Gesture communication is a common language tool (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LordChaos ( 2432 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:51AM (#10289803) Homepage
    Obviously the children are going to need to develop some way to communicate with the world around them. Almost all deaf children (and young hearing children) develop some form of gesture language before "proper training" is given. Think a young hearing child who walks to their parents holding their arms up in the air wanting to be picked up for a hug, it's the same principle.

  • Don't take their word for it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tgv ( 254536 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:53AM (#10289809) Journal
    This study doesn't prove anything of the kind. As reported, it only shows that people can learn language. Of course that includes the capability of developing language constructs. How else did we ever start speaking? It also shows that you don't need to be able to talk or hear in order to develop language skills, and that's not really new either.

    Anyway, the New Scientist article http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 96411 [newscientist.com] had more details. But notice that some of the people in the study have other agendas and hope that acceptance of this study can help them further their own views http://mcneilllab.uchicago.edu/topics/gp.html [uchicago.edu].

  • "Languages" are already 'personalized' (Score:5, Interesting)

    by endlessoul ( 741131 ) <endlessoul@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Sunday September 19, 2004 @06:10AM (#10289837)
    In being taught sign language, the deaf community still have adapted ASL (American Sign Language) to their own needs, as it were.

    Sign language is unique in the fact that some of the language is what some people would guess, correctly, what it was. Like sticking out your thumb and pinkie and holding up to your ear for "phone".

    Speaking from personal experience, and having being taught sign language as my first language, English being second, I find that the deaf and hard of hearing have their own ways of saying things. Personally, I haven't been taught in the "offical" way, but taught by my mother. In that, I find that when you know someone, you often tend to bend the sign to fit what the both of you know.

    I know "ghetto sign language", as it were.
    • That applies to all languages -- spoken languages are idiosynchratic, too. You develop your own 'favorite expressions', and you also align with your interlocutor in many ways.

    • 32 dialects of ASL (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dark Coder ( 66759 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @10:35AM (#10290510)
      I bet you didn't know that there are way too many regional dialect of American Sign Language.

      Most animated ones are the one-hander New York/NJ (it isn't the Bronx, thats for sure) dialect of which the signer keeps one hand in their pocket and conduct the entire conversation with their other hand. It was cool for a veteran ASL to STILL be able to understand them flawlessly without a hitch.

      Studies have been made to show that environment is a largest driven factor in the development of sign language, followed by personality.

      Naval SEAL also developed their own dialect as well to conduct underwater missions (demo anyone?)

      Various elite US Army and Marine has their own as well (team-snipers, recon).

      Iowan Deaf farmers also have their own structure that is closer to English syntax (as opposed to the usual French grammer, verb first, subject last). Some of you in Deaf Studies academic circles will quickly surmise that this is PSE (Pigeon Signed English) but I assured you, that is far from it.

      The most disserviced group of the ASL community are some department heads of languages at various universities who are clueless to enforce a god-like edict to implement PSE as their main driving force for teach such a broken and stunted language to our deaf children. The correct language is ASL. Not Exact English, not PSE. We don't teach Ebonic to Black children, thus we shouldn't teach anything but ASL to Deaf children.

      Dipolmatic Deaf corps also have their own nuances to ensure a smoother dialoge and less misunderstanding across international borders. That language is called G.... guess anyone?

      Personalized is just another subset under regional dialect.

      It gets more interesting as you travel from one microsociety to another.

      Try it! You'll never know that it may save your life. The US Army/Navy/Marine can't be wrong.

      • ... we shouldn't teach anything but ASL to Deaf children...

        Before the Parent gets flamed for this, I should point out a key syntax choice here. There are also many diverse subgroups within the deaf community, one of which is the Deaf (capital D) subgroup. Members of this group tend to be particularly oriented on ASL as a means of communication. Most people incorrectly assume the Deaf subgroup represents all members of the deaf population since it is very vocal (figuratively speaking) and highly visible.
        • I have heard one of the problems with signed English is that it's actually rather tiring to the signer -- ASL is more streamlined in that regard.

          Not being deaf myself (I have a deaf cousin, but I don't know much about his day-to-day life), I can't presume to speak, but I would think that it's best to teach both approaches -- ASL as the "native" language, with some teaching of how to communicate with the non-deaf world.

          As a last note, this was an issue on an episode of ER a number of years ago -- Benton, i

          • ...prefering to try to fix the child's deafness...

            This is yet another potential flame inducer, but it illustrates that the general public has no idea that deaf population does not speak with one voice on the issue of communication and disability.

            If you are interested in the debate over oral (often with a cochlear implant) and sign you should check out the critically acclaimed documentary Sound and Fury [pbs.org]. The linked website also has all sorts of related information.

  • Not only is this an old news... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by novakyu ( 636495 ) <novakyu@novakyu.net> on Sunday September 19, 2004 @06:17AM (#10289847) Homepage
    ...but everything in the article is so obvious that it's hard to believe anyone can get paid either writing this article or conducting research done by these researchers.

    As for the origin of sign language, it's as old as the origin of Native American tribes. Anyone who has taken an ASL course would know that Native American tribes used signs as a sort of inter-tribal language among themselves.

    Even after that, it is not rare for an isolated group of people to develop a language of their own. That is exactly how sign language developed [about.com] (Somebody didn't just make up a system of sign language out of pity for the deaf who couldn't possibly communicate on their own). Even now, a small group of people often come up with their own system for basic communication needs (i.e. mother and baby, a deaf person without formal education and his close family, etc.) Also, twins are known to come up with their own languages--this is a very well documented [tripod.com] case.

    This article falls short of other details that might have been interesting. It says,

    That method of communicating now shows similarities to other languages, researchers say in Thursday's issue of the journal Science.

    What similarities? That it is used to communicate (isn't it how one defines language)? Knowing the diversity of modern languages, I find it difficult not to find any similarity to other languages. Do they tend to put the subject in front of everything else? Every language does that (for obvious reasons...). Do they tend to omit the subject? I know Korean does that regularly, whereas in English it's done only when brevity is paramount. Do they sometimes put the object first? Find any inflected language and you can do that there as well (usually means emphasis on the object, though). Tell me when the children have matured enough to learn multivariable calculus on their own and they happen to use the inverted capital delta for their "del" operator. Then I will be astonished at the similarity. Frankly, I doubt that this new language thing will go far (same case with twin language--for the twins to live in the world, they have to learn the language of their society, the process which inevitably all but destroys their own language). Or, if it is to "evolve" to show a parallel structure, well, expect to have generations of isolated (hereditary) deaf children for a century or a millenium.

    Even the article's sidenotes about similarity among existing languages is trivial.

    The mothers in every country reported that their children learned significantly more nouns than other types of words. The researchers said this held true regardless of whether the language emphasized nouns, as does American English, or verbs, as does Korean.

    Might as well say, "The mothers in every country reported that their children learned significantly more words related to food or household item than words used to describe linear vector spaces or binary operation structure." Of course they know more nouns! That's what the mothers teach most, because it's the easiest thing to teach ther children. And, I'll bet, among nouns, the children know more concrete nouns abstract nouns. It's not just that. In all the languages I know (and I know more than 2, if you count a few dead languages), nouns comprise the biggest group of part of speech. Also, usually, there is always a way to make a word from any other part of speech (excepting a few specialized parts like conjunctions or articles) into a noun (but not the other way around--for example, how would turn the noun "apple" into a verb?).

    This study reveals nothing new--that is, other than the fact that there are too many (useless) researchers around the world with too much time on their hands (even then, that's not new either, eh?).

    • ...at least in English.

      You haven't appled somebody recently?

      I went appling with my wife yesterday.

      He used to use Windows, but trying OS X totally appled him.

      Usage #2 would probably be the most easily understood.

      And BTW, every verb does have its own nounification.

      -Lars
      • Whoopeediippin' doo. You slapped some terminators on a noun. That didn't create a new word. #1 and #3 were nonsense, and #2 is no where unique (went berrying), just implied picking.

        Nounification. More nonsense. Failes your point, m'thinks.
    • ...how would turn the noun "apple" into a verb?

      (That sounds like a challenge... I'll bite, but I hope you can excuse the sophomoric tone...)

      I would verbify it, and, like the tree did to Newton, I would apple anyone who got in the way of my fruition.

      If I were feeling particularly naughty (and a bit omnipotent), I might even applize the person who beliefed you couldn't verbify and then gift it to my English teacher.
      • Ummm, slapping terminators onto it does not cut it. You need definitions that make enough sense to someone to get them used. Just what is "appling" someone, or "applizing" the person?

        "beliefed", sheesh. No wonder you thought it would be easy. Maybe that explains the F's she gave you?

  • Amazing (Score:2, Funny)

    by bryan1945 ( 301828 )
    that cavemen didn't create an evolving language like a billion years ago.

    oh, wait.
  • My home tutor (ex now) once had two students (twins) who spoke their own language. Their parents never corrected their poor English and it evolved to the point where no one knew what they were saying.

    Now think of how much of a nightmare it is for them to communicate with others, since no one but them understands the language they can't teach others it.

    Wouldn't the same apply here?
    • There's an immense difference between degenerated English and a language created from scratch with no prior knowledge of words, grammar, etc. That is why some people are very suspicious as to whether this really is a case of evolution from "nothing".

      But, relating to your comment, I recently read about neglected Norwegian five-year-olds who communicated by banging their heads in the wall. One child spoke a dialect she learnt from TV, because her parents hardly ever spoke to her. Tragic cases, which the chil

  • Similarities in species learning languages.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by innerweb ( 721995 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @07:19AM (#10289941)
    Check out this link [64.233.179.104] for yet another study showing another species (non-primate, African Grey Birds) and the similarities to human language development/learning.

    Studies like this have an important impact on learning why children have learning disabilities. This one imparticular has had some very serious positive impact.

    The fact that the birds tend to learn physical skills followed by language skills the same as normal children do suggest a lot about the development of not just language, but the integration of language as a whole into the learning experience (for certain animals and humans).

    Whether or not the children in this study were tainted by a knowledge of gestures from an outside source, the study is important for the development of language skills. It would be interesting to know what adult contact they had in the beginning of the group, as I am sure (from being a parent amongst parents) that they would have received some signing skills there. Think of how most adults communicate with their pets. Signs and words.

    Unfortunately, it does appear that (see post here) the results are interpreted in an interesting manner to fulfill some peoples' individual goals for research and such. I hope that continuous peer review sheds more light on these interesting theories.

    InnerWeb

  • Arrr... (Score:5, Funny)

    by levell ( 538346 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @07:37AM (#10289963) Homepage
    But does this here new language have Pirate Slang? If not they'll never be good ship-mates [talklikeapirate.com]. Arrr.

  • The deaf have missed out.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nblender ( 741424 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @08:06AM (#10289998)
    I realize this is tangential to the article.... But the world-wide deaf community really lost out... They had the opportunity to create a global sign language (with local modifications of course) but no, we have ASL, GSL, ISL, one-finger spelling, etc... A global sign-language would have become the defacto cross-cultural communication method and ultimately, it wouldn't be quite so much a pain in the ass to live in a world dominated by the hearing. I took an ASL course and practiced a fair bit. I taught my 8 month old (now 3 years) ASL. For 6 months, that was his principal method of communication... An 8 month old that can ask for more milk is an impressive thing.
  • Drunk people have been doing this for years...
  • This is roughly akin to saying the human brain, as wetware, comes with language ROMs pre-assembled and built in, which was Noam Chomsky's There-Oughta-Be-A-Nobel-Prize-For-This assertion thirty years ago. Watch, though. The Sapir Whorf nazis will be along any minute now to assert that's what's happening is really language acquisition driven by cultural factors hitherto unrecognized. SWH idiots believe human language transcends the gross material world and descends (as culture) from spiritual heights. No

  • A better article (Score:3, Informative)

    by sesquipedalian_one ( 639698 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @09:41AM (#10290247)
    The AP story linked in the article isn't particularly informative. It picked up on the old features of the story. Linguists have been studying Nicaraguan Sign Language for over a decade now. The interesting thing about NSL is that older signers use it as a pidgen (no consistent grammar), but younger signers use it as a creole (i.e., they have created a fully-formed language with consistent grammatical structures.) This transition point has generally passed by the time scientists get around to studying the language. This story from the economist: http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm? story_id=2441743 [economist.com] gives more details of the actual study, which apparently involves some tests of syntactic ability in older signers in comparison to younger ones. It's not ground-breaking stuff, but it does help fill out the big picture.

  • Feh. What would be newsworthy is if they hadn't! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by feloneous cat ( 564318 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @12:00PM (#10290933)
    Man, I'm truly amazed at the amount of freakin' ignorance there is about the Deaf and Deaf culture. (I'm not an expert, just worked several years on my American Sign Language and have a wife who worked on her masters in anthropology with a slant towards communication).

    o Deaf children of hearing parents will frequently create home signs to communicate to their parents.

    o Human beings are hard wired for language.

    o Creation of an informal language (hey, like slang!) to be used amongst others is neither new (my wife studied her masters in the 80's) nor "surprising". Apparently it is "news" because the children were Deaf (which DOESN'T make them stupid!).

    BTW American Sign Languange is a great language to learn. Very expressive. There is slang the kids use, jokes that TRULY don't translate into English, and a whole culture that is the same yet very different from the Hearing.

    And most of them HATE these stupid stories about "those amazing Deaf people".
    • First of all, I attend RIT (but am not deaf myself), with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf [rit.edu] right there on campus, so I have interacted with actual deaf people, and do so on a daily basis in one way or another. I did IT work at NTID last summer with a deaf co-worker, and he was one of the most fun people to be around that i've met in a long time.

      That said:

      Man, I'm truly amazed at the amount of freakin' ignorance there is about the Deaf and Deaf culture.

      Then the deaf need to get out and edu
      • Yup, I've had a lot of interaction as well. I'd go into it, but let's cut to the chase and just pull out a ruler and measure.

        Many (but by no means all) deaf people i've seen tend to stick to themselves and not communicate much with the hearing in their daily lives.

        Much like those who speak Chinese gravitate to other Chinese speakers, those who speak German gravitate to others who speak German, etc. Hmmm, I think I see a pattern here...

        It is very human to want to be in association with a group of people
        • It is very human to want to be in association with a group of people like yourself. People who don't have to go out of their way to communicate with you.

          What you are arguing is that the Deaf are to be faulted for being human.

          Not at all. What i'm arguing is that if there's a frustration at the ignorance of their culture, then it seems that the deaf need to share that culture with the rest of us in daily life, not stay clustered by themselves constantly. If you have a way for people to really understand de
    • I'm not deaf, but I have been exposed to the community a certain amount (I wear hearing aids, so I participated in a panel for parents of deaf/hard-of-hearing kids, and I've taken ASL classes). So I am somewhat familiar with these frustrations, as well as the prejudices that some deaf people have against hearing aid users.

      I also have a non-hearing-related physical disability. Trust me, *all* of us are sick of "those amazing disabled people" stories.

  • IAAL (I AM a linguist) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xylix ( 447915 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @12:27PM (#10291065)
    IAAL (I AM a linguist - linguist as in the study of langauges, not "person who speaks multiple languages.)

    As others have already pointed out, this case is given a good treatment in Steven Pinkers very readable book THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT.

    In the study of langauge acquisition there is the fact that language is underdetermined. Also called the poverty-of-stimulus arguement. Basically, the input that a child is presented with is not enough to "teach" them the langauge. This fact was noted by Noam Chomsky, from which he came up with the influential Universal Grammar theory. Steven Pinker expands on this and adds in a twist - that langauge is something evolved (like the trunk on an elephant is an evolutionary feature). Basically they claim that there is a langauge module in the brain.

    Chomsky has updated his theory and lots of others (people in pure linguistics, applied linguistics, cognitive theory, second language acquistion researchers etc) have extended his work. If I remember correctly, the basic take on the theory these days is that there are principles and parameter of language syntax that are thought to be innately present in the brain. (I am doing research right now looking for evidence of UG in language acquisition.)

    The case of the children in Nicaragua is old news .... but it IS used as an arguement for the presence of Universal Grammar. The langauge did NOT (as a poster above gushed) "appear out of thin air". Those kids did have some exposure to a pidgen sign langauge used by parents (not a full language). This is akin to the spoken-language phenomena whereby language goes from being a pidgen ... to a creole (fully syntactic langauge). This has happened many times in many places (Hawaii for example). The people in the universal (or generative) grammar camp say that grammar (principles) are in the brain, so language WILL develop unless actively prevented. (There are cases of that too - like a girl named Genie who was kept locked up for 13 years or so .... and could never become fluent after.)

    • The older kids had each had a "home sign" which they developed with their parents; each different, without grammar, small vocabulary. From these they formed a pidgin at school, and the younger kids learned it as a creole. The novel thing is that there weren't any fully-formed languages that this creole was descended from. Usually, a pidgin is formed by a group of fluent speakers of different languages.

      Aside from this data, it would be theoretically possible that all languages have common features because t

  • This is not that far from ASL's roots (Score:4, Informative)

    by magefile ( 776388 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @12:43PM (#10291119)
    American Sign Language is heavily based off of French Sign Language. A French monk (can't recall his name - Pierre somebody, I think) worked at a monastery that offered to take "useless" deaf children off their parents' hands and give them "a godly life".

    When he started trying to communicate with them, he noticed that they had already developed a method of communicating with their hands, which he developed into a more consistent language with a slightly richer vocabulary called French Sign Language. Eventually, he opened a school for the deaf. Rich Americans sent their deaf kids there, and local (French) deaf kids attended for free. Eventually, a school was opened in the US, and the language was imported (I believe the original Gallaudet had something to do with it).

    One of the interesting things about ASL is how dynamic it is. Phrases and names (i.e., "Joe") can be assigned to gestures by the user as they speak, much like a macro or a
    #define GESTURE_1 Joe;
  • Does this story remind anybody else of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome [imdb.com]?

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