Duality of Patterning in Signed & Spoken Language: A Psychological Perspective

Duality of patterning is a linguistic principle used as a primary criterion for determining if a system is a language. It notes that the smallest meaning-carrying units are made up of meaningless smaller units. Considered psycholinguistically and neurologically, duality may be found in the processes that facilitate language acquisition, which requires at the same time a language environment accessible to the acquirer’s senses with dual feedback: kinesthetic, from the performing muscles, and auditory or visual, from the language-receiving sense.