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and beyond, speaking and signing children exhibit the identical stages of languageacquisition. These include the (a) "syllabic babbling stage" (7-10 months, approx.) as well asother developments in babbling (e.g., "variegated babbling," ages 10-12 months, and "jargonbabbling," ages 12 months and beyond; Petitto, 1984, 1987a&b; Petitto & Marentette,1991a), (b) "first word stage" (11-14 months, approx.; e.g., Petitto, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1992,1993b; Petitto & Marentette, 1991b; Petitto, Costopoulos, & Stevens, in preparation), and(c)"first two-word stage" (16-22 months, approx.; Petitto, 1987a; Petitto & Marentette,1991b). Though some researchers have claimed that "first signs" are acquired earlier than"first words," subsequent analyses have revealed that the claim is wholly unfounded1.Surprising similarities are also observed in deaf and hearing children's timing onset and useof gestures. Signing and speaking children produce strikingly similar pre-linguistic (9-12months) and post-linguistic communicative gestures (12-48 months; e.g., Petitto, 1984,1987a, 1992). They do not produce more (or more elaborate) gestures, even though linguistic"signs" (identical to the "word") and communicative gestures reside in the same modality,and even though some signs and gestures are formationally and referentially similar. Instead,deaf children consistently differentiate linguistic signs from communicative gesturesthroughout development, acquiring and using each in the same ways observed in hearingchildren (see Petitto, 1992). Signing children exhibit highly similar patterns of latergrammatical development as well (ages 22-36 months, approx., and beyond), includingsystematic morphological and syntactic developments (e.g., "over-regularizations," negation,question formation, and so forth; e.g., Petitto, 1984, 1987a; see also Newport & Meier,1985). Throughout development, signing and speaking children exhibit remarkably similarcomplexity in their utterances. For example, analyses of young ASL and LSQ children'ssocial and conversational patterns of language use over time, as well as the types of thingsthat they "talk" about over time (its' semantic and conceptual content, categories, andreferential scope), have demonstrated unequivocally that their language acquisition followsthe identical path as is observed in age-matched hearing children acquiring spoken language(Charron & Petitto, 1991; Petitto, 1992; Petitto & Charron, 1988). (ii) Hearing childrenexposed to both signed and spoken languages from birth (e.g., one parent signs and the otherparent speaks) demonstrate no preference for speech whatsoever, even though they can hear.Instead, they acquire both the signed and the spoken language to which they are beingexposed on an identical maturational timetable (the timing of the onset of all linguisticmilestones occurs at the same time in both the signed and spoken modalities). In addition,such children acquire the signed and spoken languages to which they are being exposed (e.g.,ASL and English, or, LSQ and French) in the same manner that other children acquire twodifferent spoken languages from birth in a "bilingual" home, for example, one with spokenFrench and spoken English (Petitto, 1985, 1986, 1993b; see especially, Petitto, 1993a, andPetitto, Costopoulos, & Stevens, in preparation). (iii) Hearing children who are exposedexclusively to signed languages from birth through early childhood (i.e., they receive little orno systematic spoken language input whatsoever), achieve each and every linguisticmilestone (manual babbling, "first signs," "first two-signs," and so forth) in signed languageon the identical time course as has been observed for hearing children acquiring spokenlanguage and deaf children acquiring signed language. Thus, entirely normal languageacquisition occurred in these hearing children (a) without the use of auditory and speechperception mechanisms, and (b) without the use of the motoric mechanisms for theproduction of speech (Petitto, a & b; Petitto, Costopoulos, & Stevens, in preparation).10© 2008 Dr. Catherine CollierAll Rights Reserved
Significance of biological studies of early signed and spoken languageacquisitionDespite the modality differences, signed and spoken languages are acquired in virtuallyidentical ways. The differences that were observed between children acquiring a signedlanguage versus children acquiring a spoken language were no greater than the differencesobserved between hearing children learning one spoken language, say, French, versusanother, say, Finnish. Such findings cast serious doubt on the core hypothesis in very earlyspoken language acquisition: that the maturation of the mechanisms for the production and/orperception of speech, exclusively determines the time course and content of early humanlanguage acquisition. These findings further challenge the hypothesis that speech (and sound)is critical to normal language acquisition, and they challenge the related hypothesis thatspeech is uniquely suited to the brain's maturational needs in language ontogeny. If speech,alone, were neurologically set or "privileged" in early brain development, then, for example,the hearing infants exposed to both speech and sign from birth might be expected to attemptto glean every morsel of speech that they could get from their environment. Faced implicitlywith a "choice" between speech and sign, the very young hearing infant in this context mightbe expected to turn away from the sign input, favoring instead the speech input, and therebyacquire signs differently (e.g., later). Similarly, deaf and hearing infants exposed only tosigned languages from birth should have demonstrated grossly abnormal patterns of languageacquisition. None of this happened. What is most interesting about these research findings isthat the modality "switch" can be "thrown" after birth regarding whether a child acquireslanguage on the hands or the language on the tongue. Such findings have led me to propose anew way to construe human language ontogeny (see especially Petitto, 1993a&b). Speechand sound are not critical to human language acquisition. Instead, there appears to be astunning, biologically-based equipotentiality of the modalities (spoken and signed) to receiveand produce natural language in ontogeny (Petitto, 1994). The only way that signed andspoken languages could be acquired with such startling similarity, is if the brain's of allnewborns possess a mechanism that is sensitive to aspects of the structural regularities ofnatural language, irrespective of the input modality. Rather than being exclusively"hardwired" for speech or sound, our species appears to "hardwired" to detect aspects of thepatterning of language (specifically, aspects of its structural and prosodic regularities; seePetitto, 1993a&b). If the environmental input contains the requisite patterns unique to naturallanguage, human infants will attempt to produce and to acquire those patterns, irrespective ofwhether the input is signed or spoken. (For a discussion of the specific neural substrates thatunderlie this capacity in ontogeny, as well as their possible roots in phylogeny, see especiallyPetitto, 1993a&b.) In summary, the present findings prove wholly false assumptions aboutthe "biological inferiority" of signed languages relative to spoken languages. Signed andspoken languages are acquired in the same ways, and on the same maturational time course.With regard to the brain and human biology, this indicates that signed and spoken languagesengage the same brain-based mechanisms in very early language acquisition.© 2008 Dr. Catherine CollierAll Rights Reserved11
Page 2 and 3: "Those who arrive by age 12 or 13 m
Page 5: Article I.2 Are Signed Languages "R
Page 8 and 9: Biological analyses of the status o
Page 12 and 13: Conclusion: Are Signed Languages Re
Page 14 and 15: Article I.3 The Interpreter: Has a
Page 16 and 17: A few weeks earlier, I had called F
Page 18 and 19: “We struggled even getting to the
Page 20 and 21: herself by strapping a cassette rec
Page 22 and 23: In 1998, after nine years as the ch
Page 24 and 25: momentary burst of excitement that
Page 26 and 27: can shape core grammar. Because the
Page 28 and 29: The authors compared animal and hum
Page 30 and 31: monkey moved. He followed it with h
Page 32 and 33: delight, fear, laughter, and surpri
Page 34 and 35: Piipaío in a hut: Pirahã huts typ
Page 36 and 37: LEP students, and equitable organiz
Page 38 and 39: 4. Second language development crea
Page 41 and 42: curriculum or "teaching to the test
Page 43 and 44: portfolio work was scanned and stor
Page 45 and 46: experiences of many groups of stude
Page 47 and 48: While not disagreeing that interpre
Page 49 and 50: sound educational practice, however
Page 51 and 52: arises from the efforts to abstract
Page 53 and 54: Article II.2 Cross-Cultural Communi
Page 55 and 56: males who can serve as positive rol
Page 57 and 58: Understanding another culture is a
Page 59 and 60: Pets and AnimalsWhich animals are v
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to teach standard English is reflec
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Asking personal questions of a pers
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Using Cross Cultural Communication
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Why Do Nonstandard English-Speaking
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Before beginning to teach standard
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• Negative attitudes toward low p
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New standardized tests and assessme
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Each of the behaviors listed above
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Article II.3 Hard Work Hypothesis:
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each point higher in SES, students
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This case does not provide strong s
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Article II.4 Language Acquisition a
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1992, p. XI). These researchers, wh
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comprehend a word within a specific
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more to the truthfulness of the chi
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This idea of “semilingualism” c
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Article III.1 A Brief Description o
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take different lengths of time to c
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example, should involve the same co
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As with all stages of BICS acquisit
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Assessment techniques at stage 3 ca
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different. Therefore, the social di
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integrative motivation. Basically,
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(Ellis, 1985; Hakuta, 1986). Howeve
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that sociocultural processes have o
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Article III.3 How Children Acquire
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phonetic units (unique to signed la
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Article III.4 Toward a Sociocultura
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emember is that the fundamental goa
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The best practices models can be th
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By focusing on the dialectic betwee
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intergenerational wisdom shared by
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Daily Realities RecappedThe above v
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traditions. At a time in our histor
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We will now look at two examples of
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Speakers communicate fluently, main
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question the effects of such attitu
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Article IV.3 Culture Change: Effect
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and psychological characteristics o
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Contraryto what wewere expecting, t
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Article V.1 Assessment in ESL & Bil
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vocabulary does the student lack?Is
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whether they are LEP and to provide
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Fourth, ESL and bilingual program s
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competent reader/writer. All versio
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Table 1Comparison of Recent Accultu
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unilinear model, which measures the
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an English-only instructional progr
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Article V.3 Assessment of English L
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8. Change answers only for a very g
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Riles, 1979; Jose P. v Ambac, 1983)
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proficiency is often underestimated
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Finally, when second language reade
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for their decisions, noting issues
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As mentioned above, when the transi
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ather than generic adjectives and t
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their imagined points of view. Ther
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English texts and demonstrate progr
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using inter-district teams). In the
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