Re: Some thoughts on mutli-modal (signing / speech) languages and communication.

----- Original Message ----
> From: Brett Williams <mungojelly@...>
> I've always wanted to,
> but just watching videos online (even now that there's a lot more of
> them!) doesn't have the personal or motivational qualities of knowing
> and conversing regularly with someone. 
> mungojelly
There's also a trend right now of teaching limited-vocabulary sign language to
preverbal infants. The point is to provide a communicative channel for children
old enough to know how their needs might be sated but too young to verbalize.
The basic vocabulary, obviously, is limited to things like "banana," "milk,"
"eat," "diaper icky," "tired," and so on, although some parents go a step
further and use it to build primitive conversations ("Zebra at zoo pretty,
agree?"). While there are guides on what gestures to use, there are also
suggestions to use whatever feels natural for the parent and child, since it is
after all meant to be a transitional idiolect. Also, the general guideline
I've seen is that the adult should always couple the gesture with the spoken
word, to reinforce the connection and simplify the eventual transition to
speech. It will be interesting to see if some significant portion of infants
raised this way will carry those signs into
 their tween years, or even later, if only as a minute instinctive gesture; I
don't know how long the system has been around, whether it's been around long
enough to conduct such inquiries now.

-- Paul

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