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 Researchers have long wondered why certain fundamental characteristics
of grammar are present in all languages, and now a team of scientists
at the University of Rochester has found evidence that these properties
are built into the way our brains work. The report, recently published
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examines deaf
individuals who have been isolated from conventional sign, spoken, and
written language their entire lives, and yet still developed a unique
form of gesture communication.
"Our findings suggest that certain fundamental characteristics of
human language systems appear in gestural communication, even when the
user has
never been exposed to linguistic input and has not descended from previous
generations of skilled communicative partners," says Elissa L. Newport,
George Eastman Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics
at the University of Rochester. "We examined a particular hallmark
of known grammatical systems and found that these signers also used this
same hallmark in their gestured sentences. They designed their own language
and wound up with some of the same rules of grammar every other language
uses."
For eight years, Newport and Marie Coppola, a post-doctoral student at
the University of Chicago, studied three deaf Nicaraguan boys who had no
exposure to any sign formal language. They were linguistically separated
from spoken language by virtue of their complete deafness since birth;
separated from knowledge of Nicaraguan Sign Language because they’d never
had contact with another signer; and separated from written Spanish since
they had little or no formal education. This isolation forced each of the
three boys to develop their own gestural-based language, called ‘home sign
systems’ in the field of sign language research. These three isolated languages
gave Coppola and Newport a window into how the brain creates language.
from the University of Rochester
At first we thought this was real science. Then we read it. There
is a very simple explanation for the observed phenomena which has nothing
to do with brain development. The researchers forgot the basic fact that
any language, be it sounds or gestures, is developed two or more individuals
in the course of communication. The deaf kids didn’t invent their languages
by themselves. They developed them in conjunction with, and to
communicate with, brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. Who in
every case, according to the study, were NOT deaf.
We know this to be the case because our wife, the lovely Norma Yvonne,
speaks one of these micro languages. Her brother Bolivar has been
deaf from birth, and they, brother and sister, have their own language
of gestures. Bolivar never learned standard sign language, and
can’t read or write Spanish. None of Norma’s six sisters or one
other brother knows the language, nor does her Mom.
But the fact that these micro languages are invented by at least TWO people,
at least one of whom can hear and already knows a conventional language, easily
explains why these gesture languages feature syntax similar to spoken
language. Rochesterians are famous for overlooking the obvious…
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