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Acquisition of the Handshape in American Sign Language: A Preliminary Analysis

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Part of the Springer Series in Language and Communication book series (SSLAN,volume 27)

Abstract

This is a report of an unpublished pilot study (Boyes Braem, 1973) in which hypotheses about stages of acquisition of the handshapes of American Sign Language (ASL) are proposed and are tested against data from one deaf child. The data come from a videotape made by Dr. Ursula Bellugi at Salk Institute (San Diego, Ca.) of a congentially deaf daughter of deaf parents fluent in ASL. The child was 2; 7 years old at the time of this taping and is called Pola in this study.

Keywords

  • Index Finger
  • American Sign
  • Deaf Child
  • Individual Finger
  • Hand Shape

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Braem, P.B. (1990). Acquisition of the Handshape in American Sign Language: A Preliminary Analysis. In: Volterra, V., Erting, C.J. (eds) From Gesture to Language in Hearing and Deaf Children. Springer Series in Language and Communication, vol 27. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-74859-2_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-74859-2_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-74861-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-74859-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive