UC San Diego

Deaf individuals worldwide experience early language development under a wide variety of input situations. This dissertation examines how variation in the timing, quantity and complexity of input affects the development of argument marking devices for this population. In the studies of this dissertation, I analyze signers’ descriptions of simple events. Argument marking devices used in these basic descriptions form the foundation for more complex morphosyntactic constructions. Chapter 3 examines the impact of severely delayed onset of linguistic input on adult signers of ASL. The results demonstrate that the delay in timing of input results in less consistent argument ordering strategies when compared with signers with early input. Chapter 4 and 5 examine the emergence of argument marking in children’s language in a new signing community in Vanuatu. Chapter 4 demonstrates that argument marking devices were not acquired by the children during a short period of contact with Fiji Sign Language. Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate that the children in Vanuatu are developing both ordering and spatial devices of marking arguments despite inconsistent input. These studies show that while children can spontaneously use argument marking strategies, they are not conventionalized across the community during the first five years of peer-to-peer contact. While previous studies of emerging sign languages have compared the argument marking strategies of adults based upon the year they entered the signing community, this dissertation examined the signing of participants as children. The longitudinal description of argument marking devices in children in this setting is a unique contribution of this dissertation and helps to fill the gap between what is known about homesigners argument marking devices and those used by adults in the first cohort of other young sign languages.