We
have talked a little bit about learning a second language and the difficulties
with pronouncing new sounds. There are
many sounds that a native English speaker does use, and so it can be difficult
to learn new languages with differing sounds.
Often, the non-native speaker replaces a difficult sound with one in the
native language that is similar in place or manner. This is fairly straightforward and
intuitive. But what about when someone
is learning a new language and he or she has never spoken a language
before? How does a deaf person learn to
speak?
I have very little experience with this question or with
deaf culture in general, but the small sections in Language Files about signing intrigued me. Unlike learning a second spoken language (or
a second signed language), the student does not have familiarity with making
the sounds of any language. However, all
babies (hearing and deaf) go through a babbling stage in which they produce random
sounds without meaning. In hearing
babies, sounds not used in their home language are removed from speech and can
be hard to relearn later in life. Deaf
babies also babble, but eventually stop producing sounds altogether. Should they choose to relearn these sounds,
there are several approaches that speech therapists use to help the students
learn to (a) produce these sounds and (b) combine these sounds to make speech.
In class, we could attempt to make “foreign” sounds by
looking at their place and manner on the IPA chart. For the sound [ç], we could look on the IPA
table and see that it was similar to [ʃ] but further back in the mouth (in the
palatal region) and try and make an approximation of this sound. Since we are familiar with how [ʃ] feels in
our mouths, we can easily change that shape to get a sound closer to [ç]. This is how hearing learners produce new
sounds, but deaf learners cannot rely on familiar sounds. One way deaf people can learn to produce
sounds was described in an ABC News article. A computer simulation (named Baldi) shows a 3D
representation of precise lip, tongue and jaw positions for different
sounds.
In
addition, deaf learners need to see (as best they can) these sounds in
succession to know the subtle rhythm and pace of natural speaking. Peter Paul discusses a couple of approaches
in his book Language and Deafness. From this, I learned that there are specific
signs associated with different sounds (pictured below).
What
I find interesting about these images and their corresponding meanings is that
the sounds associated with each symbol seems to have nothing to do with the IPA
chart. In image B, /v/, /tH/, /z/ ([v],
[ϴ], [z]) are all fricatives near the front of the mouth, but also grouped in
with them is /k/ ([k]) which is a velar stop – nowhere near the other sounds. This is quite intentional. In the IPA chart, similar sounds are grouped
near each other. However, Paul explains
that each sound needs to be distinguishable from sounds that have the same lip
movements. For example, [p] and [b] are
very difficult to tell apart for a deaf person, so there needs to be different
signs to distinguish them. These signs
are used by speakers to show the deaf person what sound they are
producing. From this, the deaf person
can learn what words are being said and the natural prosody of speech.
Of
course, this is just one way deaf people learn to speak a language. There are other methods used depending on if
the learner has hearing aids or cochlear implants, the technology available to
the speech therapist and learner, and simply depending on on the specific learner’s
personality. I find the differences between what we've learned in class about sounds and what deaf learners learn about sounds very interesting.
Speech and signing seem to have so many difference, but as seen in Language Files, they are actually quite
comparable. It can be very difficult
for a deaf person to learn how to speak, but language is not a foreign
concept. They already know a language,
it just happens to be silent.
This was a really interesting post to read--I'm glad you brought up this topic!
ReplyDeleteI'm curious as to how hearing children born to deaf parents fare on a language acquisition standpoint. The opposite (and more common) situation would be a deaf child born to hearing parents. I would imagine many new parents of deaf children would begin to learn sign language themselves, if they didn't already know how to sign. Would their newness to the language make it more difficult for their child to learn to communicate?
I imagine deaf children born to deaf parents acquire their region's native sign language with the same ease as a hearing child acquires his native spoken language. I would also imagine that if a child is learning as their first language a means of communicating very different from how speaking parents are accustomed, it would delay the language learning process.
This is very interesting, and I can’t say it’s a subject I’ve thought much about. I wonder — how common is it for deaf persons to desire to learn to speak? I don’t personally know any deaf people so I haven’t been able to ask, but I imagine most deaf persons wouldn’t really find it to be a worthwhile pursuit.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I can see how deaf persons would find the chart you bring up particularly useful as a manner of understanding those who can’t use their sign language. After all, I would think deaf persons are better at lip-reading than people who regularly communicate with spoken language, but it is still by no means an easy task. This chart seems like an interesting way for deaf persons not only to learn how to speak but to understand how others produce speech so as to better communicate.
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ReplyDeleteThere has been a lot of fascination with handicapped people accomplishing feats that seemingly only able-bodied people could. For example, there was a lot of discussion around blind painters who still manage to accurately capture spatial relationship and perspective in their work, something that able-bodied artists often flunk at.
ReplyDeleteI do believe the process in which blind people learn to construct spatial perception or deaf people learn to talk without ever hearing a word is inherently different from what able-bodied people go through to acquire the same skills. In the case of deaf people, learning to speak is mimicking the physical process (tongue placement, muscle movement) since they are taught by seeing and feeling how a sound is articulated. This process is not necessary for people who can hear. Speech learning for audible people is mimicking the sound. Infants learn to speak by listening to the adults and reproducing the sounds as best as they can.
This post is interesting in that it draws on the notion that speech and language alike are at their roots symbol manipulation. A symbol is read in some fashion by a language user, it is converted into a thought or stimulus which serves as an input, and the user can then output a symbol based on the initial input and symbolic manipulation.
ReplyDeleteTheoretically, there is no limit to an individual's ability to achieve either the input or output meaning of a language. In the case of a deaf individual, he or she may be unable to produce the same sound as a hearing person, but it seems that the deaf person can still convey the same complexity of meaning, albeit expressed through different symbols, as a "normally" hearing person.
But, what if this interpretation were wrong? What if the symbols of our language themselves have taken on meaning that cannot be replicated through any other language? The use of a word and production in a certain way, fundamentally a symbol to represent some other idea, may very well connote information contained within its symbolic package and independent of its referent. This idea of inherent meaning in symbols intrigues me.
I think this was a very interesting and important post since it serves to remind us that communication is not solely rooted in the verbal realm. Taking a class in linguistics, we focus so much on the building blocks of language it is understandable that we forget these sorts of cases you bring up.
ReplyDeleteI could not help but be reminded of the famous wolf children of India of the early 1920's. Amala and Kemala were two girls that were supposedly raised by wolves and only came into contact with humans much later in their development. And one of the things they never were able to fully develop is speech communication. This serves as proof of the existence of a sensitive period for human acquisition of forms of communication. And I believe this sensitive period holds true for both normal children with no hearing disabilities and children with hearing disabilities. Our brains are easily molded to learning and mastering forms of communication at a certain time -- be it verbal or non-verbal. After that period it becomes a lot more difficult. Hence, I completely agree with your thesis that learning a verbal or non-verbal form of communication is not too far apart and are both rooted in similar developmental and neural pathways.