How deaf Nicaraguan children invented their own sign language

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7 pointsssudler2 comments

Not wanting to overstate it but are not all deaf languages invented by the deaf? I appreciate the ur-language may not have been, but they have dialects, they are acquired by the language centres of the brain, all languages are owned by the speakers and adjust to language change as a function of speakers changing how language is parsed.

Isn't this just normal Chomsky grammer LAD stuff?

What is unique about Nicaraguan sign is that the entire process of evolving from a loose invented communication system with lots of pantomime and little regular linguistic structure into something with grammar and visual "phonemes" and a fixed core vocabulary was observed in real time over several generations of speakers.

As successive group of users were introduced to it as new native speakers they evolved it adding more and more structure, it doesn't start out fully language like at first. I can't think of any other case where that process has been documented in action.

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