NEW YORK, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- A sign language invented by children at a school for the deaf in Nicaragua has given scientists a glimpse of how languages are born.
Ann Senghas of Columbia University, who published a study of Nicaraguan Sign Language in the journal Science, believes that her findings show that some language skills are hardwired in the human brain.
The school was founded in 1977, and the first children there had no experience with sign language. At the time, their only language experience came from attempts to teach them lip-reading and to speak Spanish.
The children began developing their own system of signs. Senghas says the language was passed on to new students and has become more complex with each generation. It is now considered a separate language on a par with American Sign Language and is used by about 800 people ranging in age from 4 to 45.
Senghas has been studying the students and their language since 1990. She said that one trait the language shares with all others is that complex words are put together from smaller units. For example, the students describing a wheel rolling down a hill have separate signs for rolling and down.
