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Information about Home Sign

Home sign (or kitchen sign) is the gestural communication system developed by a deaf child who lacks input from a language model in the family. This is a common experience for deaf children with hearing parents who are isolated from a sign language community.

While not developing into a complete language (as linguists understand the term), home sign systems show some of the same characteristics of signed and spoken languages, and are quite distinguishable from the gestures that accompany speech. Words and simple sentences are formed, often in similar patterns despite different home sign systems being developed in isolation from each other. Comparisons are often made between home sign and pidgins.

Linguists have been interested in home sign for the insights it offers into our capacity to generate, acquire and process language in general — particularly exploring such questions as the origins of language; notions of linguistic universals; a critical period for language acquisition; children's natural tendency to invent language (language acquisition device), and the relationship between gesture and language. The experience of home signers is contrasted with that of feral children who, with no human social interaction, develop no language at all.

Home sign and sign languages

Nancy Frishberg set out a framework for identifying and describing home-based sign systems in 1987. She states that home signs differ from sign languages in that they:
  • do not have a consistent meaning-symbol relationship,
  • do not pass on from generation to generation,
  • are not shared by one large group,
  • and are not considered the same over a community of signers.
However, home sign is often the starting point for new deaf sign languages that emerge when deaf people come together. For example, following the establishment of the first deaf schools in Nicaragua in the 1970s, the previously isolated deaf children quickly developed their own sign language, now known as Nicaraguan Sign Language, from the building blocks of their own diverse home sign systems.

Home sign also played a part in the formation of American Sign Language, which is a blend of home sign, Old French Sign Language, Martha's Vineyard Sign Language and Plains Indian Sign Language.

Prominent studies of home sign

  • Susan Goldin-Meadow has published a number of articles on home sign systems. She found that the home sign gestures of American deaf children are not acquired from modelling the gestures of their hearing parents — they more closely resemble the gestures of the Chinese deaf children halfway across the globe. They are structured communication systems that include gestures that function as words, which are combined to form sentences, and are used to describe situations beyond the here-and-now.
  • Adam Kendon published a celebrated study of the homesign system of a deaf Enga woman from the Papua New Guinea highlands, in which he investigated the notion of iconicity in language and gesture.

See also

References

  • Frishberg, N. 1987. Home sign. In J. Van Cleve (ed.), Gallaudet encyclopedia of deaf people and deafness (Vol. 3, pp. 128-131). New York: McGraw Hill.
  • Goldin-Meadow, Susan, 2003, The Resilience of Language: What Gesture Creation in Deaf Children Can Tell Us About How All Children Learn Language, Psychology Press, a subsidiary of Taylor & Francis, New York, 2003
  • Van Deusen-Phillips S.B., Goldin-Meadow S., Miller P.J., 2001. Enacting Stories, Seeing Worlds: Similarities and Differences in the Cross-Cultural Narrative Development of Linguistically Isolated Deaf Children, Human Development, Vol. 44, No. 6
  • Kendon, A. 1980a. A description of a deaf-mute sign language from the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea with some comparative discussion. Part I: the formational properties of Enga signs. Semiotica 31(1/2): 1-34.
  • Kendon A. 1980b. The description of a deaf-mute sign language from the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea with some comparative discussion. Part II: the semiotic functioning of Enga signs. Semiotica 32 (1/2):81-117,
  • Kendon A. 1980c. A description of a deaf-mute sign language from the Enga Province of Papua NewGuinea with some comparative discussion. Part III: aspects of utterance construction. Semiotica 32 (3/4):245-313.
  • Morford, Jill P 1996. Insights to language from the study of gesture: A review of research on the gestural communication of non-signing deaf people. In "Language and Communication", 16 2, pp 165-178
  • Torigoe, Takashi, and Takei, Wataru. 2002, A Descriptive Analysis of Pointing and Oral Movements in a Home Sign System, in "Sign Language Studies" - Volume 2, Number 3, Spring 2002, pp. 281-295
Communication is a process that allows organisms to exchange information by several methods. Communication requires that all parties understand a common language that is exchanged with each other.
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deaf is used differently in different contexts, and there is some controversy over its meaning and implications. In scientific and medical terms, deafness generally refers to a physical condition characterized by lack of sensitivity to sound.
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sign language (also signed language) is a language which uses manual communication, body language and lip patterns instead of sound to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to
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See Language (journal) for the linguistics journal.


A language is a system of symbols and the rules used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon.
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For the journal, see .
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. Someone who engages in this study is called a linguist.
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gesture is a form of non-verbal communication made with a part of the body, used instead of or in combination with verbal communication. The language of gesture allows individuals to express a variety of feelings and thoughts, from contempt and hostility to approval and
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pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups who do not share a common language, in situations such as trade. Pidgins are not the native language of any speech community, but are instead learned as second languages.
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The origin of language (glottogony) is a topic that has attracted considerable speculation throughout human history. The use of language is one of the most conspicuous and diagnostic traits that distinguish Homo sapiens from other species.
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A linguistic universal is a statement that is true for all natural languages. For example, All languages have nouns and verbs, or All spoken languages have consonants and vowels.
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In general, a critical period is a limited time in which an event can occur, usually to result in some kind of transformation. A "critical period" in developmental psychology and developmental biology is a time in the early stages of an organism's life during which it displays a
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The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a postulated "organ" of the brain that is supposed to function as a congenital device for learning symbolic language (ie. language acquisition).
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gesture is a form of non-verbal communication made with a part of the body, used instead of or in combination with verbal communication. The language of gesture allows individuals to express a variety of feelings and thoughts, from contempt and hostility to approval and
..... Click the link for more information.
See Language (journal) for the linguistics journal.


A language is a system of symbols and the rules used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon.
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feral child (feral, - wild or undomesticated) is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no (or little) experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language.
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19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1950s  1960s  1970s  - 1980s -  1990s  2000s  2010s
1984 1985 1986 - 1987 - 1988 1989 1990

Year 1987 (MCMLXXXVII
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Anthem
Salve a ti, Nicaragua


Capital
(and largest city) Managua

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Nicaraguan Sign Language (or ISN, Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua or Idioma de Signos Nicaragüense) is a signed language spontaneously developed by deaf children in a number of schools in western Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s.
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American Sign Language (ASL; less commonly Ameslan) is the dominant sign language of the Deaf community in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in parts of Mexico.
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Old French Sign Language is a term that loosely describes the language of the Deaf community in 18th century Paris at the time of the establishment of the first deaf schools.
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Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) is a sign language (now extinct), once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, U.S., from the early 18th century to the mid 20th century.
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Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL) is a sign language formerly used as an auxiliary interlanguage between Native Americans of the Great Plains of the United States of America and Canada.
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Adam Kendon (born 1934 in London, son of Frank Kendon) is one of the world's foremost authorities on the topic of gesture. He initially focused on sign systems in Papua New Guinea and Australian Aboriginal sign languages, before developing a general framework for understanding
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Enga may refer to:
  • Enga Province
  • Enga language
  • Enga people
  • Vålerenga I.F. Fotball
  • EngA bacterial GTPase

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Motto
Unity in diversity[1]
Anthem
O Arise, All You Sons[2]


Capital Port Moresby

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In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between a form of a sign (linguistic or otherwise) and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness.
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Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language
Signed in: Israel 
Region: Negev
Total signers: 150 deaf signers, many more hearing signers
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Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: sgn
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Adam Kendon (born 1934 in London, son of Frank Kendon) is one of the world's foremost authorities on the topic of gesture. He initially focused on sign systems in Papua New Guinea and Australian Aboriginal sign languages, before developing a general framework for understanding
..... Click the link for more information.


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