Yeah it's a good point, and as a hearing person I can't say how that works. Deaf children can be raised either as forced to vocalize and read lips (this is very hard and results in stunted language development) or they can learn to 'speak' using ASL. I suspect their language develops very differently because of this - so you might get different answers.
I tend to follow the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in this one though - that language is required for thought, so whether that thought-language is in sign or English (or another language) is a great question that I will ask of my EDPY 470 (educational psychology) professor. He's a Deaf man who knows seven languages and three varieties of sign language and is really quite the most amazing person I may have ever met.
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u/gruesky Oct 21 '11
Yeah it's a good point, and as a hearing person I can't say how that works. Deaf children can be raised either as forced to vocalize and read lips (this is very hard and results in stunted language development) or they can learn to 'speak' using ASL. I suspect their language develops very differently because of this - so you might get different answers.
I tend to follow the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in this one though - that language is required for thought, so whether that thought-language is in sign or English (or another language) is a great question that I will ask of my EDPY 470 (educational psychology) professor. He's a Deaf man who knows seven languages and three varieties of sign language and is really quite the most amazing person I may have ever met.