Young Children’s Acquisition of the Formational Aspects of American Sign Language: Parental Report Findings
Temas
Detalles
This article examines the course of young children’s acquisition of the sign language formational aspects of location, handshape, and movement. We confess, however, that we did not initially intend to study how children learn to form signs. Rather, our interest in this topic grew out of another research undertaking, which was a longitudinal study of sign language vocabulary acquisition. That research involved visiting the homes of deaf parents and videotaping them interacting with their young children (Bonvillian, Orlansky, and Novack 1983). But during the first round of home visits, it became clear that we were witnessing another very interesting phenomenon: The young children often did not make many of their signs in exactly the same way as their parents, yet the parents in most instances appeared to understand their children’s productions.