From Gesture to Language in Hearing and Deaf Children

CHAPTER 11 The Early Development of Deixis in American Sign Language: What Is the Point?

CHAPTER 11 The Early Development of Deixis in American Sign Language: What Is the Point? E. PIZZUTO Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to provide evidence on the early development of deictic or"pointing" expressions in childrenexposed to a gestural-visualorsigned language, and to compare this information with analogous information available on hearing children exposed to vocal-auditory or spoken language. This will hopefullycontribute to the understanding ofboth universal and particularfactors underlying the process ofdevelopment in the signed and in the spoken modalities. The paper explores the development of nonlinguistic deictic gestures (~O) and linguistic pronominal signs in the communicative and linguistic productive repertoire ofone deafchild who is learning American Sign Language (ASL), the signed language ofthe deafcommunity in the United States. Previous studies on the acquisition of corresponding deictic expressions in hearing children have evidenced specific, seemingly universal developmental patterns at both the gestural (Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1979; Bruner, 1975a; Caselli, Ossella, & Volterra, 1983; E.V. Clark, 1978) and the linguistic levels This paper is based on a study conducted by the author at the Salk Institute, Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Studies, and supported in part by a Fulbright Fellowship and by National Institutes of Health Grant No. NS15175 to Dr. Ursula Bellugi at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La JolJa, CA. The author gratefully acknowledges the multifaceted and substantial help received from the whole staffduring her stay at the Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Studiesofthe Salk Institute. Ursula Bellugiand Ed Klima provided theirrich and experienced adviceand criticism. Ben Bahanand Venita Driscoll gave invaluable help for the transcription and analysis of the data. I am indebted to Laura Petitto for many stimulating discussions over the ideas expressed in the present work. Special thanks to Dr. Michele Migliore of the Istituto per Ie Applicazioni Interdisciplinari della Fisica, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Palermo, and to Gianni Crivello for their help in preparing the graphs shown in Figs. 1-4. A preliminary version ofthis paper was prepared for the 1980 Boston University Conference on Language Development; an extended summary containing the data sets, the major conclusions and the interpretational framework appeared in the conference handbook (Pizzuto, 1980b). A modified version was submitted to Sign Language Studies in December 1982 and accepted for publication, pending referees' suggested revisions, in February 1983; but the work was never completed for publication. The paper in its present form adheres substantially to this earlier version improved by the suggestions ofone unknown referee, to whom the author wishes to express her thanks. One important methodological question regarding the distinction between deictic "gestures" and "signs," also raised by the careful referee, is not addressed in the present work as being more appropriate, in the author's opinion, for a separate investigation which should be undertaken along with a critical review ofother, related studies. The Early Development of Deixis in American Sign Language 143 (Charney, 1980; E.V. Clark, 1978; Huxley, 1970; Strayer, 1977). In particular, as regards the patterns ofacquisition ofdeictic pronominal expressions it has been suggested that they reveal the existence ofwhat Bruner (1975, p. 273) has called a "locution dependent reciprocal concept"; this allows hearing children to overcome the major difficulty posed by such requirements as that of shifting reference according to the shifting of the basic discourse roles in ordinary conversation. The question arises whether the above patterns can be extended to ASL, and can thus be characterized as truly universal, independent from both languagerelated and modality-related features, or whether they are limited to one or the other developmental modality and must thus be characterized as modalitydependent patterns. The evidence that is currently available is not sufficient to answer this question: some studies ofdeafASL children have explored a rather advanced stage ofdevelopment, when deictic expressions have alreadyappeared in the child's language (Hoffmeister, 1978a, 1978b), while others have provided preliminary, suggestive evidence that some patterns identifiable in the early stages are modality free. But this evidence is limited either to the earlieststages of communicative and linguistic development (Petitto, 1980; Pizzuto, 1980a), or to the comprehension of a few pronominal signs at one point in time (Pizzuto & Williams, 1980). Longitudinal evidence on the development of the child's communicative and linguistic productive skills is much needed. A briefdescription of the DG and pronominal signs under investigation is necessary. The present study is restricted to (a) the most typical kind of DG, produced with the index finger extended, closed fist, to draw someone's attention toward objects, points in space or events...