NOUNS AND VERBS IN A SELF-STYLED GESTURE SYSTEM - WHATS IN A NAME

A distinction between nouns and verbs is not only universal to all nat ural languages but it also appears to be central to the structure and function of language. The purpose of this study was to determine wheth er a deaf child who was not exposed to a usable model of a conventiona l language would nevertheless incorporate into his self-styled communi cation system this apparently essential distinction. We found that the child initially maintained a distinction between nouns and verbs by u sing one set of gestures as nouns and a separate set as verbs. At age 3:3, the child began to use some of his gestures in both grammatical r oles; however, he distinguished the two uses by altering the form of t he gesture (akin to morphological marking) and its position in a gestu re sentence (akin to syntactic marking). Such systematic marking was n ot found in the spontaneous gestures produced by the child's hearing m other who used gesture as an adjunct to speech rather than as a primar y communication system. A distinction between nouns and verbs thus app ears to be sufficiently fundamental to human language that it can be r einvented by a child who does not have access to a culturally shared l inguistic system. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.