Sign Language versus Spoken Language

Abstract

In the debate over continuities vs. discontinuities in the emergence of language, sign language is not taken to be the antithesis but is presented as the antecedent of spoken languages. Several recent elucidations of face-to-face behavior microscopically observed show the importance of expression by gestural signs (gSigns) of the infant's developing communicative needs. They also show smooth transition of the communicational synchrony achieved by very young infants in their performance of communicative actions (and in some instances of reflexive body movements) into the kind of behavior to be discerned in adult language competence. The ease of learning conferred by iconic gSigns leads to early lexicosemantic mastery when speech is not the major channel. Various parts of the grammar of a contemporary sign language (ASL), particularly its verb and pronoun systems, give convincing evidence that such grammar cannot have derived from the grammars of spoken languages; rather that the continuity is from cognitive activity expressed in gSigns toward linguistic organization both of the expressive material and the semantic, and thence into spoken language.

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