Homesign as a way-station between co-speech gesture and sign language: the evolution of segmentation and sequencing
Homesign as a way-station between co-speech gesture and sign language: the evolution of segmentation and sequencing
This chapter takes segmentation and combination to be a fundamental feature of modern languages, bringing to bear on the evolution of this feature evidence derived from some newly emergent linguistic systems. The systems at issue are the homesign systems used by Nicaraguan and Turkish children, and the emerging Nicaraguan Sign Language. It focuses on how these emerging systems express motion events, a domain that presents rich possibilities for both holistic and segmented representational formats. It describes an indirect relation between present-day language emergence and language evolution. This view forms a sobering corrective on accounts in which inferences to language evolution from data about restricted linguistic systems such as pidgin languages and homesign, amongst others, are drawn in too facile a manner.
Keywords: modern languages, language evolution, homesign systems, Nicaraguan Sign Language, motion events
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