Sign Linguistics & Language Acquisition Lab

What makes the human mind ready for language? Our lab addresses this question from a variety of angles.

We know there are thousands of languages around the world with many notable differences between them. Yet, there are significant similarities among the world’s languages known as universals. These universals are a fascinating component of linguistic research.

Most knowledge about the universals of language comes from studying spoken languages, but sign languages must be considered as well, in order to have a complete picture of the true universal properties of language. In some cases, sign languages show the effects of proposed linguistic universals; but there are also differences between spoken and sign languages which must be taken seriously.

Our research often addresses these major questions by investigating the timecourse of language development by young children.