Sign Languages: Evidence for Language Universals and the Linguistic Capacity of the Human Brain

SIGN LANGUAGES: EVIDENCE FOR LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS AND THE LINGUISTIC CAPACITY OF THE HUMAN BRAIN Victoria A. Fromkin University of California Los Angeles It is not the want of organs that [prevents animals from making].. .known their thoughts...for it is evident that magpies and parrots are able to utter words just like ourselves, and yet they cannot speak as we do, that is, so as to give evidence that they think of what they say. On the other hand. men who. being born deaf and mute.. .are destitute of the organs which serve the others for talking, are in the habit of themselves inventing certain signs by which they make themselves understood. Rene Descartes DiscourseonMethod For thousands of years, philosophers and scientists have attempted to understand the nature of human language, motivated by the historic assumption that language is a 'mirror of the mind' or that "Speech is the only window through which the physiologist can view the cerebral life," as was suggested by Fournier in 1887.1 The quotation from Fournier refers to speech, since there has been a persistent, though incorrect, view which equates speech with language. Speech (production and perception) is behavior, the use or performance of those who know a spoken language. Language is the abstract mental cognitive system which permits one to speak and understand. Language also underlies the ability of a deaf person to 'sign' and to visually perceive and understand the gestures of a signing person. 1 Sections of this paper have appeared in somewhat modified versions in Fromkin, 1988. 1985. and Fromkin and Rodman 1988. @ 1988 by Linstok Press, Inc. 115 ISSN 0302-1475 see note inside front cover 116 Language Universals &the Linguistic Capacity of the Brain SLS 59 To equate speech with language is to obscure what is the nature of the linguistic systems which form the bases for all spoken languages and for all the signed languages used by communities of deaf persons throughout the world. As long as researchers concerned themselves only with spoken languages there was no way to separate what is essential to the linguistic cognitive system from the constraints imposed, productively and perceptually, by the auditory-vocal modality, that is, to discover what is the genetically, biologically determined linguistic ability of the human brain. The human brain seems to be uniquely suited for the acquisition and use of language. As noted by Geschwind (1979) The nervous systems of all animals have a number of basic functions in common, most notably the control of movement and the analysis of sensation. What distinguishes the human brain is the variety of more specialized activities it is capable of learning. The preeminentexample is language (my emphasis). Note that Geschwind speaks of language, not speech. We now know, through the work of linguists conducting research on these signed languages, first initiated by Stokoe's seminal work in 1960, that their basic similarities to spoken languages are greater than their differences, that they are subject to the same constraints on their structures, and relate forms and meanings by means of the same kinds ofrules. This therefore suggests that the human brain is organically equipped for language in any modality, and that the kinds of languages which can be acquired are not determined by the motor or perceptual systems but by higher order brain mechanisms. If this is so, then one can seek and find language universals which pertain to all human languages, a view accepted by Roger Bacon in the 13th century when he wrote He that understands grammar in one language, understands it in another as far as the essential properties of Summer 1988 Grammar are concerned. The fact that he can't speak, nor comprehend, another language is due to...the accidental properties of grammar. While these accidental properties may prevent a speaker of English from understanding a speaker of Arabic, or a user of American Sign Language (ASL) from understanding a signer of Chinese Sign Language, Bacon was correct in that the more we look at all human languages the more they appear to be governed by the same universal principles and constraints, thereby supporting the view that the human brain seems to be uniquely suited for the acquisition...