FROM HERE AND NOW TO THERE AND THEN - THE DEVELOPMENT OF DISPLACED REFERENCE IN HOMESIGN AND ENGLISH

An essential function of human language is the ability to refer to inf ormation that is spatially and temporally displaced from the location of the speaker and the listener, that is, displaced reference. This ar ticle describes the development of this function in 4 deaf children wh o were not exposed to a usable conventional language model and communi cated via idiosyncratic gesture systems, called homesign, and in 18 he aring children who were acquiring English as a native language. Althou gh the deaf children referred to the nonpresent much less frequently a nd at later ages than the hearing children, both groups followed ed a similar developmental path, adding increasingly abstract categories of displaced reference to their repertoires in the same sequence. Caregi vers in both groups infrequently initiated displaced reference, except with respect to communication about past events. Despite the absence of a shared linguistic code, the deaf children succeeded in evoking th e nonpresent by generating novel gestures, by modifying the context of conventional gestures, and by pragmatic means. The findings indicate that a conventional language model is not essential for children to be able to extend their communication beyond the here and now.