Practice question · Put in order
Arrange the stages by which Nicaraguan Sign Language emerged.
- Deaf children use home-made gesture systems in isolation
- A full language with consistent agreement and spatial syntax is in use
- A shared but irregular system develops among the first cohort
- A new school brings hundreds of deaf children together
- Younger children arriving later regularise its grammar
Hints
- The starting point is isolation, not a school.
- The regularisation comes from the cohort that arrived second, not the first.
Show the answer
- Deaf children use home-made gesture systems in isolation
- A new school brings hundreds of deaf children together
- A shared but irregular system develops among the first cohort
- Younger children arriving later regularise its grammar
- A full language with consistent agreement and spatial syntax is in use
Why
The order is the argument. Had the first cohort produced the regular grammar, the case would show what adults can build; because the youngest arrivals did it, it shows what children do to an irregular input, which is why the case bears on acquisition rather than on invention.
Practise Signed Languages
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