A word about Baby Sign

Here's something Laura Ann Petitto had to say in 2000 (p. 456, citation below):

Our intensive study of these hearing babies acquiring only signed languages in early life surprised us. These babies achieve all linguistic milestones on a normal maturational time table. If early human language acquisition were wholly determined neurologically by the mechanisms for speech production and reception, then these hearing babies raised without systematic spoken language stimulation should show atypical patterns of language acquisition. Instead, all of these groups of hearing babies produced manual babbling, first signs, first two-signs, and other milestones, at the same time as is seen in all other children, be they hearing acquiring speech or Deaf acquiring sign.

What are the ramifications for teaching hearing babies of hearing parents sign language? There is quite a buzz these days about it, with the argument stated that babies acquire sign more rapidly than speech. So what gives? Let's do a little thought experiment to think about it.

Let's say your baby is exposed to spoken English every day, all the time. The parents speak English, the radio chatter is in English. People at the grocery store speak English.

But let's say, you know a dozen words in Swahili. Words like: milk, cracker, mommy, hungry, diaper, more. And let's say you carefully expose your child to these words, which are unusual for you to articulate, taking extra special care in pronouncing them.

I am willing to bet you an "I love my daddy" bib that your child will acquire those words more easily and more quickly than they do the equivalent words in English. But why?

It comes down to exposure of easily identifiable and repeatable symbols of communication. I do not doubt that hearing infants of hearing parents exposed to a spare few signs will acquire those signs more readily, or possibly devise their own forms of home sign. My one-year-old sometimes extends his arm fully, holding his thumb and forefinger together, while making eye contact. This seems to mean [give] or something to that effect. What makes it stick is an appropriate response from us.

The same thing can be said for spoken words. An infant babbles. Sometimes the babbling takes a form recognizable to adults: ma... bbbbbbb.... maba...ma.... "Yes," we say, "mommy.... mmmmoooommmyy." The child enjoys the interaction, and eventually repeats the sounds in more and more specific contexts.

Of course, [mommy] to the infant could mean "milk" or "breast" or "warm snuggle" or on occasion "mommy". The word becomes acquired by attaching context and content to the arbitrary symbol. A baby acquiring baby sign has the advantage of a highly constrained set of symbols, which are only presented in rarified contexts.

If it is useful for you, do it. Think about the process, and try to apply it more broadly. Who knows, maybe your baby will like learning a little Swahili too.