age 1, month 2, week 3

Referring to things and naming them in new contexts has been growing this week.

Naming referential ASL words in new contexts

The toddler Juli pointed to an object in a new context and identified it by naming it herself. This also showed me how she categorized or perceived things in the world.

For example, outside a familiar building, Juli pointed to the bushes in this new context and produced flower (location below nose, that is on the lips). Though, there were no flowers in this winter season.

Similarly, she pointed to the green plant at Grandma Z's home and uttered flower. She appeared to overgeneralize these green living things.

Juli walked into an empty preschool classroom and took a look around. As I was about to pull her out, a teacher said it was okay for her to wander around.

In this new context, Juli pointed to three relatively large stuffed animals which were not really easy to distinguish from one another and produced bear.

On way back home, flurries began to get heavier. Sitting in the forward-facing seat, Juli pointed and produced snow (production similar to "rain" in ASL).

Juli found a photograph catalog of Russel Wong's work in my storage. The front cover of the catalog showed a black and white photograph of Jackie Chan. Juli brought it and showed me. She pointed to it and produced father (20-handshape) twice or trice.

Pointing to self

Grandma Z pointed to a couple of photographs of Juli and asked who?. Juli pointed to herself. This took place at Grandma's home.

On that same day, Juli later pointed to the same pictures and pointed to herself. It occurred more than a few times. Likewise for the photographs of herself on the fridge at Grandma Z's home.

Responding to a facial note

Lately, I communicated only through my face (e.g. raising eyebrows and head). E.g. "What do you think?" or "Well?" instead of producing a ASL sentence.

Juli appeared to understand as she did respond. For example, she pointed to an image in the book and looked at me. Instead of giving her an answer, I used a facial question to encourage her to answer herself.

Two-word utterance

At one point, Juli pointed and then produced milk cow. She produced "cow" with the two-handed "20" handshape.

Use of ASL words

The following words that Juli had used with references: book, star, flower, rabbit, work (referring to my work paper), cold, snow, bear, break (similar production to "work"), pop-up (toast), eye-glasses, pepper (referring to stuff in the cabinet) and some other regularly used ASL words.

The ASL production book that Juli produced had become a bit more distinguishable. No doubt, she had uttered this in the past weeks but that production was similar to a "clap" which I had the tendency of dismissing it.

But, this week I realized when it became more clear that Juli referred to a book. She pointed to some books on the kitchen table and produced book which was then less similar to the "clap".

The production book has a slightly different movement that deviated from the "clap" movement that I was able to detect with sensitivity.

The Dominance Rule

When an ASL word is one-handed production, Juli is either right-handed or left-handed. It seems normally ambidextrous in infants. By age two or three a preference of handedness is usually well developed.

In ASL linguistics, there is a natural rule that if both hands in a two-handed production have different handshapes, then the passive hand is stationary while the dominant hand moves.

Juli may be ambidextrous in general object manipulation like most infants in their normal development. But, when it comes to linguistic development, it appears that Juli is right-handed that can be identified in dominance-based ASL production.

For example, the emergence of a production of the ASL word rabbit, the passive left-handed ("A" handshape) is stationary while the right-handed ("5 -> 5-claw" handshape) moves.

This is not the first time I noticed this handedness using the dominance rule. I first noticed and discussed when Juli first babbled "work" in which her right hand moved while the other stayed in one place at almost 7 months.

It is something for a future reasarch study to undergo on this. Can linguistic development using the dominance rule (if an infant happens to use one of ASL productions that contain the dominance rule) be determined? Is it something controlled by the brain in the linguistic area that functions differently from general dexterity for manipulating objects?

People

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A bird in our house

".. been teaching my 13 month old hearing daughter to sign since she came into the world. I had no idea children as young as 6 months old could express what they feel and what they want. It has made time spent with my daughter so incredibly gratifying for both of us! She doesn't cry when she wants a drink, she simply asks for it. Books and everyday happenings have tremendous meaning for her because she can "talk" about things she sees and she has control over how many times she hears a word. We've often been caught without a sign for something that she wants to learn about. And your site has filled the bill! It's fun for us to try to find the object or animal she signs to us...she recently insisted that we had a bird in our living room. After a few minutes, we realized it was the angel on the Christmas tree. What a great way to see the world through your baby's eyes! -- Kathryn Doherty, Miami, Florida, USA. December 13, 2000.