On pages 54 and 55 Fox talks a little about Chomsky’s argument against language as a learned behavior. Chomsky makes a compelling case for the existence of an inborn linguistic blueprint. It seems almost impossible that language is strictly a learned behavior. Also, on page 63 Fox mentions, “no tribe of hearing people has been found in which a signed language has arisen as the primary means of communication.” To me this means that if one can hear and speak, then there is an innate tendency to develop language in the vocal-auditory channel. Yet, we cannot downplay the effect the environment will have on a developing child. So, my question is, if a child capable of speaking and hearing is born to deaf parents who communicate strictly through the manual-visual channel, will that child develop language through that same channel or will he/she use the vocal-auditory channel?
Comments (2)
I guess it depends on whether the child is exposed to spoken language or not. Let's say there is no spaeaking people around so that language faculty is activated, then we will expect that the child would have some lnguage difficulty or impairment. It is crucial being exposed to spoken language especially in the critical period. Yet, I don't expect the hearing child to completely lose ability to speak. Most commonly, a hearing child born to deaf parents would be exposed to spoken language by hearing members of his/her community; in this case the child would be able to communicate in the spoken as well as in the Sign language, just as the case with Al-Sayyid village.
Posted by Hussein | April 18, 2008 4:20 PM
Posted on April 18, 2008 16:20
I like this question a lot and really appreciate the mention of Chomsky, which makes this very interesting. Language is a tool of necessity and to that end a child will learn and use whatever means possible to achieve communication. If the child is simply born into a household with two deaf parents there is no reason to not believe that the child will become bilingual (learning sign at home and speech elsewhere) just like children in Canada would learn French and English together. The trick to this is that they both are learned during the critical period. But, in the case of a hearing child being born into a deaf community and culture, there would be no benefit of learning to speak. Not only that, but who would teach it and who would listen? Since I'm assuming this is a very rare situation, most children born into deaf families within a speaking society will undoubtedly become "bilinguals".
Posted by Vincent Donofrio | April 22, 2008 11:21 AM
Posted on April 22, 2008 11:21