Once Is Not Enough: Standards of Well-Formedness in Manual Communication Created over Three Different Timespans

Singleton, Jenny L.; Morford, Jill P.; Goldin‐Meadow, Susan

doi:10.2307/416883

Cited by 113 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Our finding that children have difficulties in processing handshape, and small changes in handshape form through internal movements, concurs with a wide range of previous studies (Brentari 2006;Schembri, 2005;Singleton, Morford, & Goldin-Meadow, 1993). Why this is the case is perhaps linked both to the bigger phonological repertoire for handshape that exists compared with other sign parameters (Orfanidou et al, 2009), as well as the added motoric difficulty in articulating the small articulators involved in forming handshapes.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…Children who learn to sign late have difficulties mastering this aspect of signing (Singleton, Morford, & Goldin-Meadow, 1993), handshape comes up as consistently different when comparing gesture and sign (Schembri, 2005) and in studies of sign perception in gesturers and signers, handshape stands out as difficult for nonsigners (Brentari 2006). Different handshapes vary with respect to their phonetic complexity.…”

Section: Handshapementioning

confidence: 99%

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The Acquisition of Sign Language: The Impact of Phonetic Complexity on Phonology

Mann

Marshall

Mason

et al. 2010

Language Learning and Development

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This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link AbstractResearch into the effect of phonetic complexity on phonological acquisition has a long history in spoken languages. This paper considers the effect of phonetics on phonological development in a signed language. We report on an experiment in which non-word-repetition methodology was adapted so as to examine in a systematic way how phonetic complexity in two phonological parameters of signed languages -handshape and movement -affects the perception and articulation of signs. 91 Deaf children aged 3-11 years acquiring British Sign Language (BSL), and 46 hearing non-signers aged 6-11, were tested. For Deaf children, repetition accuracy improved with age, correlated with wider BSL abilities, and was lowest for signs that were phonetically complex. Repetition accuracy was correlated with fine motor skills for the youngest children. Despite their lower repetition accuracy, the hearing group were similarly affected by phonetic complexity, suggesting that common visual and motoric factors are at play when processing linguistic information in the visuo-gestural modality.Nonsense sign repetition 3

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Handshapementioning

confidence: 99%

The Acquisition of Sign Language: The Impact of Phonetic Complexity on Phonology

Mann

Marshall

Mason

et al. 2010

Language Learning and Development

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“…However, hearing infants are unlikely to have observed the use of such sign-phonetic segments used in a linguistic way, although they may have seen the actual handshapes in gestures produced by nonsigning people. Research from the literature on gesture has shown that the gestures hearing people produce along with their talk are qualitatively different from the signs that deaf signers produce (Goldin-Meadow, 2003;Goldin-Meadow, Mylander, & Butcher, 1995;McNeill, 1992;Singleton, Morford, & Goldin-Meadow, 1993). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Insights Into Old Puzzles From Infants' Categorical Discrimination of Soundless Phonetic Units

Baker

Golinkoff²,

Petitto

2006

Language Learning and Development

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For 4 decades, serious scientific debate has persisted as to whether infants' remarkable capacity to detect and categorize phonetic units is derived from language-specific mechanisms or whether this capacity develops out of general perceptual mechanisms. The heart of this controversy has revolved around whether the young human brain is specialized to detect the underlying contrasting patterns in language or whether it simply processes general auditory perceptual features of sound that, over time, become utilized for language learning. This article takes a novel look at this question by using soundless phonetic units from a natural signed language as a new research tool. Research finds that 4-month-old hearing infants categorize soundless phonetic units on the basis of linguistic category membership, whereas 14-month-old infants fail to do so-thereby exhibiting the identical initial capacity and classic developmental shift in infant categorical discrimination of native and nonnative (foreign language) phonetic units in speech. These results suggest a novel testable hypothesis: Infants may begin life with the capacity to detect specific patterned units with alternating contrasts unique to natural language organization and to categorize them on the basis of linguistic category membership.Out of the chaos of sights and sounds in our world, all infants discover the finite set of phonetic units that forms the basis of their specific native language by around 10 months of age. For 4 decades, heated scientific debate has centered on how infants come to have this remarkable capacity. Some have argued that this capacity reflects the neural superiority of the human brain to process specific properties of natural language, whereas others have argued that this capacity is built up from mechanisms of general perception. Here we take a new look at this decadesold puzzle by examining hearing, English-exposed infants' discrimination of nonnative (foreign language) phonetic units that are articulated on the hand in natural signed language. The use of soundless phonetic units allows us to pull apart whether infants have only discrimination for sound, or for language, be it from the mouth or on the hands. The use of two ages (4 and 14 months) that straddle the developmental time when nonnative contrasts in speech are first discriminated and then not discriminated gives us a window into whether the same developmental processes are at work when nonnative phonetic units are on the hands, as well as new insights into the universal nature of these processes in development.

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“…In particular, they failed to develop a system of internal contrasts in their gestures. When incorporating handshape information into their action gestures, they rarely used the same handshape to represent an object, unlike the deaf child whose handshapes for the same objects were consistent in form and in meaning (Singleton, Morford, and Goldin-Meadow 1993). Thus, a system of contrasts in which the form of a symbol is constrained by its relationship to other symbols in the system (as well as by its relationship to its intended referent) is not an immediate consequence of symbolically communicating information to another.…”

Section: 4mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They also use their gestures to refer to their own or to others' gesturesfor metalinguistic purposes (Singleton, Morford, and Goldin-Meadow 1993). And finally, the children use their gestures to tell stories about themselves and others-to narrate (Phillips, Goldin-Meadow, and Miller 2001).…”

Section: Language Usementioning

confidence: 99%

When Gesture Is and Is Not Language

Goldin‐Meadow

2006

BLS

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Once Is Not Enough: Standards of Well-Formedness in Manual Communication Created over Three Different Timespans

Cited by 113 publications

References 18 publications

The Acquisition of Sign Language: The Impact of Phonetic Complexity on Phonology

The Acquisition of Sign Language: The Impact of Phonetic Complexity on Phonology

New Insights Into Old Puzzles From Infants' Categorical Discrimination of Soundless Phonetic Units

When Gesture Is and Is Not Language

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