Non-Verbal Language Acquisition

Paper Summary:

This paper is composed of annotated bibliographies and a literature review of ten different research articles dealing with the acquisition of nonverbal, gestural, or sign languages. It addresses non-verbal language as a first language and a second language, as well as non-verbal language and symbolic communication systems in non-human primates and prehuman ancestors.

From the Paper:

"Sharon Begley's main point in this article is that "the human brain is wired for gestural communication" just as it is for spoken language, from a nativist perspective. She draws on examples from apes who have learned signed languages, deaf-mute children who have invented their own languages in the absence of an established sign language, and the fact that blind people gesture at the same rate as sighted people. She cites studies of wild bonobos who use symbolic gesture to communicate with each other, and deaf children who created a signed language with more complex grammatical structures than the spoken language in their environment."

More papers on Non-Verbal Language Acquisition:

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• Essay # 87838 : "Chimpanzee Talk"

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