Language and Environment

Abstract

The As have observed children who have not been exposed to conventional linguistic input to determine the properties of language that are resilient in the face of such severely degraded input conditions. In previous work, the As have shown that deaf children developed gestural communication systems that were structured in language-like ways. To determine the extent to which the structure in deaf children's gestures is a product of the way in which mothers and children jointly interact in their culture, the As. observe deaf children of hearing parents in a second culture, Chinese culture