The Acquisition of American Sign Language

Abstract

American Sign Language (ASL) is a fully grammaticized language, not a pantomimic communication system, and it displays the various grammatical characteristics typically found in spoken languages of the world, despite the apparent potential for a different type of organization offered by the visual-gestural modalities. Unlike English, ASL is a morphologically complex language, perhaps most comparable to polysynthetic spoken languages. The study of ASL acquisition may shed unique light on language acquisition processes more generally: comparisons of the acquisition of American Sign Language with the acquisition of spoken languages may help to delineate those aspects of acquisition which are universal over languages of varying types, and those aspects of acquisition which are specific to certain linguistic and modality-related typologies. Before reviewing the literature on the acquisition of ASL, this chapter describes the structure of the language.