Abstract

Universal Grammar offers a set of hypotheses about the biases children bring to language-learning. But testing these hypotheses is difficult, particularly if we look only at language-learning under typical circumstances. Children are influenced by the linguistic input to which they are exposed at the earliest stages of language-learning. Their biases will therefore be obscured by the input they receive. A clearer view of the child’s preparation for language comes from observing children who are not exposed to linguistic input. Deaf children whose hearing losses prevent them from learning the spoken language that surrounds them, and whose hearing parents have not yet exposed them to sign language, nevertheless communicate with the hearing individuals in their worlds and use gestures, called homesigns, to do so. This article explores which properties of Universal Grammar can be found in the deaf children’s homesign systems, and thus tests linguistic theory against acquisition data.