(Press-News.org) Humans favor speech as the primary means of linguistic communication. Spoken languages are so common many think language and speech are one and the same. But the prevalence of sign languages suggests otherwise. Not only can Deaf communities generate language using manual gestures, but their languages share some of their design and neural mechanisms with spoken languages.
New research by Northeastern University's Prof. Iris Berent further underscores the flexibility of human language and its robustness across both spoken and signed channels of communication.
In a paper published in PLOS ONE, Prof. Berent and her team show that English speakers can learn to rapidly recognize key structures of American Sign Language (ASL), despite no previous familiarity with this language.
Like spoken languages, signed languages construct words from meaningless syllables (akin to can-dy in English) and distinguish them from morphemes (meaningful units, similar to the English can-s). The research group examined whether non-signers might be able to discover this structure.
In a series of experiments, Prof. Berent and her team (Amanda Dupuis, a graduate student at Northeastern University, and Dr. Diane Brentari of the University of Chicago) asked English speakers to identify syllables in novel ASL signs. Results showed that these non-signing adults quickly learned to identify the number of signed syllables (one vs. two), and they could even distinguish syllables from morphemes.
Remarkably, however, people did not act as indiscriminate general-purpose learners. While they could easily learn to discern the structure of ASL signs, they were unable to do so when presented with signs that were equally complex, but violated the structure of ASL (as well as any known human language).
The results suggest that participants extended their linguistic knowledge from spoken language to sign language. This finding is significant because it shows that linguistic principles are abstract, and they can apply to both speech and sign. Nonetheless, Dr. Berent explains, language is also constrained, as not all linguistic principles are equally learnable. "Our present results do not establish the origin of these limitations— whether they only result from people's past experience with English, or from more general design properties of the language system. But regardless of source, language transcends speech, as people can extend their linguistic knowledge to a new modality."
### END
Language by mouth and by hand
2013-04-04
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
On-and-off approach to prostate cancer treatment may compromise survival
2013-04-04
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Taking a break from hormone-blocking prostate cancer treatments once the cancer seems to be stabilized is not equivalent to continuing therapy, a new large-scale international study finds.
Based on previous smaller studies, it looked like an approach called intermittent androgen deprivation therapy might be just as good as continuous androgen deprivation in terms of survival while meanwhile giving patients a breather from the side effects of therapy. In fact, researchers believed intermittent therapy might help overcome treatment resistance that occurs ...
Researchers find potential map to more effective HIV vaccine
2013-04-04
DURHAM, NC – By tracking the very earliest days of one person's robust immune response to HIV, researchers have charted a new route for developing a long-sought vaccine that could boost the body's ability to neutralize the virus.
The research team, led by Barton F. Haynes, M.D., director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, and John Mascola, M.D., acting director of the NIH Vaccine Research Center, have for the first time described the co-evolution of antibodies and virus in a person with HIV whose immune system mounted a broad attack against the pathogen. Findings are ...
Thin clouds drove Greenland's record-breaking 2012 ice melt
2013-04-04
MADISON — If the sheet of ice covering Greenland were to melt in its entirety tomorrow, global sea levels would rise by 24 feet.
Three million cubic kilometers of ice won't wash into the ocean overnight, but researchers have been tracking increasing melt rates since at least 1979. Last summer, however, the melt was so large that similar events show up in ice core records only once every 150 years or so over the last four millennia.
"In July 2012, a historically rare period of extended surface melting raised questions about the frequency and extent of such events," says ...
Brain cell signal network genes linked to schizophrenia risk in families
2013-04-04
New genetic factors predisposing to schizophrenia have been uncovered in five families with several affected relatives. The psychiatric disorder can disrupt thinking, feeling, and acting, and blur the border between reality and imagination.
Dr. Debby W. Tsuang, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and Dr. Marshall S. Horwitz, professor of pathology, both at the University of Washington in Seattle, led the multi-institutional study. Tsuang is also a staff physician at the Puget Sound Veterans Administration Health Care System.
The results are published in ...
Satellite tagging maps the secret migration of white sharks
2013-04-04
Long-life batteries and satellite tagging have been used to fill in the blanks of female white sharks' (Carcharodon carcharias) lifestyles. Research published in the launch edition of BioMed Central's open access journal Animal Biotelemetry defines a two year migratory pattern in the Pacific Ocean. Pregnant females travel between the mating area at Guadalupe Island and nursery in Baja California, putting them and their young at risk from commercial fishing.
White sharks are pelagic much of their time, living in the open ocean. However they are also philopatric, in that ...
A fingerprint of exhaled breath
2013-04-04
Bodily fluids contain lots of information about the health status of a person. Medical doctors routinely have blood and urine analysed in order to obtain hints for infectious and metabolic diseases, to diagnose cancer and organ failure, and to check the dose of medication, based on compounds present in these body fluids. Researchers at ETH Zurich and at the University Hospital Zurich now propose to extend such analyses to breath, and in particular to take advantage of modern high-resolution analytical methods that can provide real-time information on the chemical composition ...
Baldness linked to increased risk of coronary heart disease
2013-04-04
Male pattern baldness is linked to an increased risk of coronary heart disease, but only if it's on the top/crown of the head, rather than at the front, finds an analysis of published evidence in the online journal BMJ Open.
A receding hairline is not linked to an increased risk, the analysis indicates.
The researchers trawled the Medline and the Cochrane Library databases for research published on male pattern baldness and coronary heart disease, and came up with 850 possible studies, published between 1950 and 2012.
But only six satisfied all the eligibility criteria ...
Low testosterone levels may herald rheumatoid arthritis in men
2013-04-04
Low testosterone levels may herald the subsequent development of rheumatoid arthritis in men, suggests research published online in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
Sex hormones are thought to play a part in the development of rheumatoid arthritis, and both men and women with the condition tend to have lower levels of testosterone in their blood than healthy people. But it is not clear whether this is a contributory factor or a consequence of the disease.
The researchers based their findings on participants of the Swedish Malmo Preventive Medicine Program (MPMP), ...
NIH scientists, grantees map possible path to an HIV vaccine
2013-04-04
In an advance for HIV vaccine research, scientists have for the first time determined how both the virus and a resulting strong antibody response co-evolved in one HIV-infected individual. The findings could help researchers identify which proteins to use in investigational vaccines to induce antibodies capable of preventing infection from an array of HIV strains. Previously, a study of antibody genetics enabled scientists to deduce the step-by-step evolution of certain broadly neutralizing antibodies—those that can prevent infection by the majority of HIV strains found ...
Shark tooth weapons reveal missing shark species in Central Pacific islands
2013-04-04
The Gilbert Island reefs in the Central Pacific were once home to two species of sharks not previously reported in historic records or contemporary studies. The species were discovered in a new analysis of weapons made from shark teeth and used by 19th century islanders, reported in a study published April 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Joshua Drew from Columbia University and colleagues from the Field Museum of Natural History.
Sharks were culturally important to the Gilbertese Islanders; historic records indicate a complex ritual system surrounding shark fishing ...