Section 1 introduces how linguists have been able to observe the formation of a new sign language in Nicaragua. Ann Senghas has been studying how this language has developed over time among deaf children. Section 2 discusses how Senghas has observed the gestures in Nicaraguan Sign Language evolving to become more sophisticated, with younger signers developing separate signs for concepts once expressed by a single sign. Section 3 demonstrates how older early users of the language were unable to distinguish left from right in conversations, showing the language did not initially develop those signs, raising questions about how language relates to thought.

1. Signs of Success
Deaf people are making a profound contribution to the study of language.
Section I
Just as biologists rarely see a new species arise, linguists rarely see a new language
being born. You have to be in the right place at the right time, which usually you are
not. But the past few decades have seen an exception. Linguists have been able to
follow the formation of a new language in Nicaragua. The catch is that it is not a
spoken language, but rather a sign language which arose spontaneously in deaf
children. Ann Senghas, of Columbia University, in New York, one of the linguists who
has been studying this language, told the AAAS conference in Seattle about her
discoveries. And Susan Goldin-Meadow, of the University of Chicago, who studies the
spontaneous emergence of signing in deaf children, filled in the background by
showing how such children use hand signals in a different way from everybody else.
Section 2
The thing that makes language different from other means of communication is that it
is made of units that can be combined in different orders to create different meanings.
In a spoken language these units are words. In a sign language these units are gestures.
Dr. Senghas has been studying the way those gestures have evolved in Nicaraguan
Sign Language (NSL).The language emerged in the late 1970s, at a new school for
deaf children. Initially the children were instructed by teachers who could hear. No one
taught them how to sign: they simply worked it out for themselves. By conducting
experiments on people who attended the school at various points in its history. Dr.
Senghas has shown how NSL has become more sophisticated over time. For example,
concepts that an older signer uses a single sign for, such as rolling and filling, have
been unpacked into separate signs by youngsters.
Section 3
Early users, too, did not develop a way of distinguishing left from right. Dr. Senghas
showed this by asking signers of different ages to converse about a set of photographs
that each could see. One signer had to pick a photograph and describe it. The others
had to guess which photograph was being described. When all the photographs
contained the same elements, merely arranged differently, older people, who had
learned the early form of the language, could neither signal which photo they meant,
nor understand the signals of their younger partners. Nor could their younger partners
teach them the signs that indicate left and right. The older people clearly understood
the concept of left and right, they just could not converse about it—a result that bears
on the vexing question of how much language merely reflects the way the brain thinks
about the world, and how much it actually shapes such thinking.
Section 4
For a sign language to emerge spontaneously, though, deaf children must have some
inherent tendency to tie gestures to meaning. Spoken language, of course, is frequently
accompanied by gestures. However, as a young researcher, Dr Goldin-Meadow
suspected that deaf children use gestures differently from those who can hear. In a 30-
year-long project carried out on deaf children in America and Taiwan, whose parents
can hear normally, she has shown that this is true.
Section 5
Even deaf children who have no deaf acquaintances use signs as words. The order the
signs come in is important. It is also different from the order of words in both English
and Chinese. However, it is the same, for a given set of signs and meanings, in both
America and Taiwan.
Curiously enough, the signs produced by children in Spain and Turkey, whom Dr

2. Goldin-Meadow is also studying, while similar to each other, differ from those that
American and Taiwanese children produce. Dr Goldin-Meadow is not certain why that
is. However, the key commonality is that their spontaneously created languages
resemble fully-formed languages.
Section 6
This result, if confirmed in other studies, could have profound implications. Another
much-argued question in linguistics is whether there is some sort of grammatical
template that acts as part of a language instinct and is wired into the brains of newborn
children. Such a template would help a child to learn a language quickly. However,the
different grammars of actual languages suggest it cannot, assuming that it does exist,
be imposing itself too strongly. In spite of this, the sign languages of Dr Goldin-
Meadow's children are entirely self-invented. If there is a deep structure, they are
surely drawing on it directly. The order of their signs may, thus, be a direct reflection
of what that structure is. For now, Dr Goldin-Meadow is cautious. However, it may
turn out that the truth comes not out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, but from
their hands. (779 words)
Choose the most suitable heading for each section from the list of headings (A-1)
below. Write the appropriate letters (A-1) in the space provided after questions 1-
6.
N.B. There are more headings than sections, so you will not use all of them.
List of Headings
A Different signals B Gestures in units and order C Dubious existence of
built-in grammar D Different meanings of gestures E The creation of a new
language F The comparison of sign language and normal language G The
language in relation to thinking H Validated language template I
Conceptualised thinking
1. Section 1 E
2. Section 2 B
3. Section 3 G
4. Section 4 D
5. Section 5 F
6. Section 6 C