The Alphabetic Principle & Fingerspelling

Examination of a profoundly deaf child’s fingerspelling in more than 100 hours of interaction videotaped at intervals over six years reveals a gradual acquisition of the rules for fingerspelling and knowledge of the relation of fingerspelling to signs and to printed and spoken words. Some similarity is found to the (written) spelling of pre-school children who develop their own orthography (Read 1975). This case study of finger-spelling development may provide clues to the role of hearing in language and to the acquisition of a spoken-written language by those who cannot hear it.