The case of the development of Nicaraguan Sign Language
Introduction
Nicaraguan Sign Language emerged spontaneously in a community of deaf children in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Researchers say that before its emergence, deaf children used what is known as "home" sign language, which was a set of common gestures used within individual families.
This significantly complicated communication between hearing impaired, who spent their lives in public isolation, which exacerbated existing traditional superstitions and stigma of mental retardation associated with this deficiency.
Around the 1950's education for hearing impaired children in Nicaragua was limited to elementary school. Children got to and back from school by special buses, limiting their contact with the outside world. They were taught lip sync by “oral method” , with occasional common gesture signs like pointing, writing and mimetic signing - anything that helped to get points across. However, thi method had very limited results but education authorities resisted the implementation of true sign language, believing that the hearing impaired need to communicate to the rest of society in the way that people without impairment will be able to understand.
After the Sandinista revolution in 1979 new education authorities decided to focus on including as much of the population as possible into the workforce. Centro Ocupacional para los Discapacitados (COD) was formed as a new occupational training center “for mentally deficient”, teachers goal was to make deaf and dumb employable, not so much to improve on the way of teaching and communication. This resulted in structure adherence to the “oral method”, the low results it gave was deemed sufficient.
Но образование центра подготовки так же дало и несколько основных преимуществ, которые стали краеугольным камнем для появления сообщества глухих и своеобразного никарагуанского языка жестов:
However, few major benefits that become a cornerstone for the emergence of the Deaf community and Nicaraguan Sign Language come about:
First, children and teenagers were treated as adults at the COD, with strict discipline, large classes and extension of education period. They would have to use a public transportation system that gave the hearing impaired and their families more freedom and acceptance in the society. Many graduate when they turn twenty and get employed at low skill jobs. Most importantly, def children started to socialize with each other, forming friendships with peers and adults. That led to group gatherings outside school and work.
Second, COD as an organization was to reach out outside the country. The Hearing impaired participated in the Olympics, met people who taught and learned sign language in different ways, that way additional knowledge was introduced into Nicaragua.
Evolving community has developed its own way to communicate, drawing from different sources and adopting better ways to use signs by trial and error and constant feedback and reference to the de facto leader or elders, who introduced new adopted concepts. Reinforced by the help of Nicaragua’s government institutions, a subculture of the hearing impaired has formed with a distinct code of conduct, ways of passage and communication.
The development of the SNL-carrying community has developed social structure and met the same barriers that characterized the development of any groups or teams.
Environment of sign language in Nicaragua
Sign languages differ significantly from each other unlike the spoken languages. American Sign Language is very different from British Sign Language. Unlike Americans and Britons who can communicate vocally without too much difficulty, users of sign language can’t understand each other. NSL has distinct and unique characteristics, although it spontaneously emerged, has basic structures that are similar to other sign languages. It hasn't developed in the vacuum.
Not all children who are exposed to incomplete language will nativize it. I have discussed some cases in which child learners have systematized their input, but not to the degree that a full language will be created. In the extreme, feral children do not develop any system of language. Homesigners develop little more than a small lexicon and basic word ordering strategies (Goldin-Meadow and Feldman, 1975). An important component missing in these cases is the dynamic interaction of a peer group whose constant attunement allows the members to converge upon a new grammar. Without a peer group of language users, a rich language does not emerge.
An interesting exception is the case of Simon, the child of late-learning signers, who surpassed the unsystematic input of his parents (Singleton & Newport, 1987; Singleton, 1989). Simon did not have a community of fellow creolizers with whom to converge upon a grammar. However, he had fragments of the language of such a community. The pieces of ASL to which Simon was exposed had been nativized by previous generations of signers.
Simon's parents were too old to detect the regularity of form embedded in their own language production. Simon, however, was young enough to analyze these forms as a set across which to extract underlying regularity.
The case of the emergence of a sign language in Nicaragua makes it clear that such rich fragments are not crucial for the emergence of a new language, provided that the learners can generate their new language as a dynamic, interacting community.
Senghas, A., Children's Contribution to the Birth of Nicaraguan Sign Language (Dissertation) - A. B., French Studies Smith College, 1986, Massachusetts Institute of Technology September, 1995, WEB 2024
There were reasons for it - pieces from different systems, communication of deaf people from other countries, neighboring and distant. Several volunteer American and Swedish teachers visited Nicaragua between 1988 and 1993. An educator from Finland worked at the General Directorate of the Department of Education in 1992-93, advocated for the use of sign language and participated in the activities of the Nicaraguan Association of the Deaf.
Prerequisites for the emergence of a group language
One of the major factors that form language groups is the necessity to communicate.
Gloria Minero has been the head of professional workshops at the Employment Center for the Disabled in Nicaragua, since 1983. Her daughter Morena was born deaf and attended regular school, and had difficulty adjusting with her peer group. Gloria heard Morena talking in her room and walked in to find Morena talking to herself in the mirror; When asked what she was doing, Morena replied that since no one else was talking to her, she would talk to herself.
Gloria decided that since Morena could not make friends among hearing people, she would make sure that Morena could make friends among deaf youth. In 1983, Gloria invited several of her COD students to meet at her home to socialize (Blunden 2014).
These meetings, as described by author Laura Polich, demonstrated group dynamics that are usually hidden from straight forward analysis. Synergy, that happens in groups after some period of work and communication, usually has to be connected to some kind of extrinsic factor that arose organically in this case.
Two-thirds of normal spoken language consists of descriptions of social relationships and interactions (Dunbar 2001). Gossip (a concept that was inaccessible to deaf people due to their isolation) has been and remains a fundamental social activity in every culture throughout history, contributing to social cohesion and the basic evolution of language. In this sense, social and linguistic development have linked and reinforced each other through the accumulation of social ties.
But at the point where a sufficient number of deaf persons find that not only is social agency through oral means not the only avenue, but that an alternate language form could do just as well, a deaf community will form and its members will become social agents within that group. They will use the group as a bridge to wider active social participation. At the periphery of the deaf community, a subset of bilingual individuals will form and become intermediaries for individual deaf members with the society of the oral majority. Thus, participation in the deaf community will offer these individuals ample opportunities to be social actors within the subculture, and through the subset of bilingual individuals, participation as a social agent in the wider society will also be possible.
Polich, Laura. “The emergence of the deaf community in Nicaragua” Gallaudet University 2005, WEB 2023 p.6
What seems to have transpired is opposite to expected group dynamic: because the physical barrier of communication that had to be overcomed with non-verbal way, every member of the group had to participate to develop agreement on how to interpret signs, modifiers, Inflections and so on (Senghas 1994), before they could communicate on the level of complex concepts. No one in that group had a clear idea of what language is or how it needed to be structured, or how to approach the process of developing new non verbal “language”. A group of determined individuals had to be formed to articulate collective will to overcome unifying barriers. It’s safe to assume, that like in any group, there were people who were more active than the rest, and more active members took initiative in the definitions of group communication. However this process seems to be in contrast with the top-down approach of teaching in the classroom by the authority figure.
The sign language had to have been developing, changing from a shared system of home signs and mime to one with an underlying grammar and common vocabulary, because while no sign language was evident in 1979, it was in 1986. Realistically, we will never be able to say at exactly what point this happened: We are looking at a “fuzzy” system (as in fuzzy logic), not a binary one. There was likely no particular day when the communication system in use at the meetings at Gloria’s house was not language, while on the following weekend it was. Thus, the communication system during the meetings at Gloria’s house was probably a system that started out simultaneously with a lot of home sign and gesture (which we generally consider nonlinguistic) and a weakly developed grammar (which is seen as linguistic), and over a period of time shifted to a system with a little bit of home sign and gesture and a stronger grammar. The work of Ann Senghas points out that this shift is not yet complete. Signers who learned the language at an older age tend to remain moored to the “little linguistic and lots nonlinguistic” end of the spectrum, whereas earlier language learners tend to take better advantage of the grammaticization that is going on, and show usage more toward the “lots linguistic and little nonlinguistic end.” Senghas’s work also proves that Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) did not spring forth fully formed grammatically (Senghas, Sotaro, and Özyürek 2004). The grammaticization of the language continues and can be expected to continue into the indefinite future. As a language, it is still very young.
Polich, Laura., The emergence of the deaf community in Nicaragua - Gallaudet University Press Washington, D.C. 2005, pp. 85-86
This anarchy was a major factor that helped crystallize the basis of the accepted communication system, that at first united participants at the same level, then created a natural group hierarchy based on the complexity of the input.
This hierarchy is “natural”, because in the case of the Nicaraguan group it developed on the basis of the evolutionary framework that resembled the evolutionary development of language by our species. This group started to socialize and had to talk not only to one another but also about other members. Individual expressions had to be constrained to a shared understanding of sentence structure that created NSL syntax.
The unique and startling contribution of Goldin-Meadow is that by bringing a team of skilled linguists armed with video recorders into the homes of these children, she was able to discover within the children’s developing gesture systems a linguistic structure. Only one of the 10 subjects (David) exhibited all of the structures described, but the others exhibited significant steps towards such a structure. According to Goldin-Meadow’s somewhat generous analysis, this structure included segmentation of gestures into stable units (words) and the concatenation of these units into sentences, according to stable structural rules; a consistent morphology governing the composition of signs into words; the structural differentiation of noun-like, verb-like and adjective-like gestures; some basic syntactical rules governing word order, omission of subject and branching. Although no representation of tense was found in the children’s gesturing (they could however indicate the immediate future and immediate past), utilising the resources of their immediate environment, they were able to use their gesture system to make requests, comments and questions about the here-and-now, communicate about the non-present, future and hypothetical, and make generic statements, talk to themselves and talk about their own and others’ gestures. Although the children did appropriate their parents’ emblematic gestures, there is no evidence that the structure of spoken English was the source of any of their structure, and even the appropriated gestures are transformed by their inclusion in the child’s system.
Blunden, A., The Invention of Nicaraguan Sign Language - ethicalpolitics.org 2014, WEB 2024
Moreover, the Group in Gloria Minero's house was able to reach a consensus that they needed representation and a center for mutual aid. They took the initiative to register the association in Nicaragua and formed a core of founders.
At some point in 1984 or 1985, Gloria suggested […] that if deaf young adults wanted to have an impact on anything or improve their futures, they would need to organize themselves formally into a self-help group that could advocate for the improvement of the lives of deaf people. The political philosophy of the Sandinista government encouraged formation of grassroots organizations, not only as ways of encouraging communal volunteer activities (e.g., vaccination campaigns, literacy campaigns), but also as channels for special interest groups (e.g., AMNLAE (women’s organization), UNAG (agricultural and cattle growers and workers), ANDEN (teachers’ union), etc.). Gloria believed that an association of deaf persons could work for more education and increased jobs for its members.
Gloria, Rúthy, and Yadira started to work on a legal structure for the group by writing a constitution and bylaws, a process that took about two years to accomplish. The bylaws appear to have been written with little input from the deaf youths, although they were certainly in agreement with the plan (but probably not skilled enough in written Spanish to participate much in the process). It was not an easy task for the hearing teachers, either. Rúthy remembers that they worked on the documents for hours, often finishing so late at night that she slept at Gloria’s house because it was too late to find transportation home.
Polich, Laura., The emergence of the deaf community in Nicaragua - Gallaudet University Press Washington, D.C. 2005, pp. 80-81
At the inception of NSL, only a small number of deaf people participated in it. A much larger number of people gathered at the special schools but sign language did not appear there. No amount of children interacting on the playground or on the school bus developed a new sign language or formed stable groups. Only when people started to self organize, meet regularly, develop purpose and goals, SNL started to emerge.
Subculture of the deaf in Nicaragua was able to start forming due to thee major environmental factors:
Necessity;
regular users;
political (social) opportunity.
However, children played a major role in the development of the NSL, like a collective arrangement to a simple tune. Children become catalysts of rapid sign language evolution, restructuring it and adding new gestures. The topic of the evolution of NSL is fascinating on its own, multidisciplinary research in this area is ongoing.
In following these changes, we appear to have captured two tipping points in the emergence of LSN. The first, with the first cohort, entailed the selection of a small number of potential non-manual markers from the variety of facial gestures that accompanied spoken questions in the local non-signing community. As the nonmanuals were adopted into LSN, their relative frequency and use did not correspond to their use as facial gestures by the non-signers. They were less differentiated, not reflecting the variability of their source. At the same time, the non-manuals became more separate, rather than co-articulated with the wh-word in the sentence.
The second tipping point occurred when the second cohort took up LSN, and a subset of the non-manuals started to dominate. This change is particularly interesting in light of differences between adult and child learners when presented with certain kinds of variability in their input. Research using artificially created languages in the laboratory has found that when the input includes several alternative forms whose use is undifferentiated, child learners will acquire a smaller set of forms, and apply them more systematically (Hudson Kam and Newport 2005). Adult learners are not as quick to reorganize a language under the same conditions (Hudson Kam and Newport 2009). This particular solution of narrowing and systematizing appears to be an imprint of typical child learning on LSN.
Wh-Questions in Nicaraguan Sign Language (Study) - Languages 2022, WEB 2024
The emergence of an Opinion Leader - Javier Lopez
Javier Lopez, an unanimously recognized arbiter, had contacts with volunteers from different countries. He acquired knowledge and literature that he disseminated among his peers. He had exposure to different sign languages and different cohorts of deaf people in Nicaragua, hence used signs more often in a variety of situations than the average person and probably was able to deduce organically which order of gestures make sense in which context, and require less effort to express. Acting as liaison between international signs and different generations in his community, Javier was able to secure authority in the eyes of his peers. The most important tool that established that was regular meetings of the deaf association.
Many members of the deaf association, including Edda Salguera and Juan Carlos Alemán who attended the early meetings, agree with Gloria that the sign language was evolving. In a 1997 interview, Juan Carlos remembered that communication at the meetings was “through fingerspelling and gestures.” (He was specifically commenting on the first meetings he attended in 1985, when he was fifteen years old.) He continued, “There really wasn’t a sign language per se. It was the same way that we communicated at the [Managua Special Education] school, which was a mixture, mostly gestures, but some signs. Little by little, [we] started learning the sign language, but it was the “old” sign language, based on gestures, most of which has [now] been discarded. [Over time] the mixture changed to more signs and a little gesture. What we use now [in 1997] is completely different.”
It is not just Juan Carlos and Edda who have this impression. Gioconda Cardosa remembers that she had used some signs at CNEE, but it was at the meetings at Gloria’s house that she expanded her knowledge of sign language; although she stated that the signing was still “primitive” until after Javier was elected president in 1990, at which time signing was finally “taken seriously.”
...
Exactly how Javier “taught” all the others the sign language, as Julio Garcia and Juan Leiva relate, is also not clear, but it is a claim commonly heard from deaf adults who attended the formational and early meetings of the deaf association. Ann Senghas (various personal communications, 1997–2004) can list multiple characteristics of Javier’s signing that place him within the older group in the first cohort (centered on members born during the 1962 rubella epidemic) of signers; and Yolanda Mendieta, who often acts as his NSL/Spanish interpreter, can also describe multiple characteristics of Javier’s language use that place him apart from the signers who predated the first cohort, as well as the younger members of the first cohort (born during the 1978–1980 rubella epidemic). Javier is, thus, a key figure in the first group to use a standardized sign language as their major mode of communication. How he managed to learn the language first while simultaneously teaching it to the others is difficult to explain.
Perhaps taught means that he was more enthusiastic about signing, used it more consistently, was patient about teaching what he knew to those less fluent, and took on the role of “language police,” demanding that others conform to what was considered the “correct” version of signs. Both Ann Senghas and Richard Senghas, who attended one of the “rescue” workshops, noted a highly prescriptionist attitude toward language use, which was common in 1989–1994 at the deaf association (multiple personal communications with Ann and Richard Senghas 1994–2003). In 1997, I observed regular instances in which confusion over the “correct” version of a sign was referred to Javier for arbitration. His decisions were accepted with no dispute. Javier, in a sense, is identified as the “apostle” of NSL by older deaf adults. I had many informants tell me that Javier was the first to learn the language (how they don’t know) and that he transmitted it to the rest of the deaf community, including themselves.
Polich, Laura., The emergence of the deaf community in Nicaragua - Gallaudet University Press Washington, D.C. 2005, pp. 85-86, 89, 91
The core of the Initiative individuals has formed a base subcultural structure that contained a stable group with traditions, unique ways of communication, tools that improve and clarify language and consolidated collective will of the participants.
Base subcultural structure have formed by the process of:
The emergence of a sense of belonging;
Self-organization of the initiative group;
The emergence of an Opinion Leader;
Standardization of concepts;
Formulation of common goals;
Need for superstructure;
Birth of the NSL/SNL Subculture
Socio-economic factors had played a major role in the formation of the subculture of the deaf in Nicaragua. Deaf were bundled up with mentally retarded, lack education, had very low employment and social participation, in one of the poorest countries of South America. These people were extremely marginalized, unable to develop a sense of belonging that is usually available to people without impairments.
Political climate of Nicaragua at the time allowed the deaf to recognize themselves as working class people - separate groups with severely limited economic opportunities, working low skill jobs for low wages.
By the late 1980s, the great majority of deaf people involved with ANSNIC were married and raising a family. They were still extremely poor, many working at exploitative wages in the Free Trade Zone, mostly in unskilled jobs, but nonetheless, they were part of the community, and through their organisation, they are now able to influence the government, intervene in the country’s education policies and overturn the oral method and work to bring their younger Deaf brothers and sisters out into the world. Alas, older deaf people, with very few exceptions, have not been touched by this project, a
Blunden, A., The Invention of Nicaraguan Sign Language - ethicalpolitics.org 2014, WEB 2024
The development of “class consciousness” gave the Nicaraguan deaf community access to societal mechanisms and ways to affect government institutions as well as the ability to formulate common goals. As in every other country in the world, the physically impaired are usually low-income population that share common problems, such as neglect, isolation, poor health and malnutrition. By developing class identity, deaf population of Nicaragua attracted international attention from groups with similar problems that widened their social outreach and invited people to come and share solutions to common problems, language and values.
Anthropologists have recognized the global nature of culture and social relations, especially with regard to nationalism or socioeconomics [Wolf 1982, Appadurai 1991; cf., Foster’s review (1991)]. Deaf communities have been particularly affected by these relationships, especially given the international transmission of deaf pedagogies (Lane 1984, Plann 1997, Monaghan 2003, Monaghan et al. 2003), which are so often linked to government policies on education. The 1880 Congress of Milan is the most well-known historical example. This meeting marked the inception of a worldwide campaign promoting oralist pedagogies and the active suppression of sign languages. At this conference of educators and pedagogues of deaf special education, deaf participants were procedurally excluded from participating in a vote which ultimately supported a policy proposal that promoted oralism and discouraged the use of sign language in deaf education. The same year, however, was also when the first national conference of deaf people in the United States was held in Cincinnati, Ohio. Delegates to this meeting roundly denounced the Milan proceedings, showing that both the suppression of and support for signing were international (Lane 1984, pp. 386ff, 394–95).
A number of recent ethnographic works highlight the complex relationships between larger sociocultural, political, and economic trends and local sociocultural phenomena. Bagga-Gupta & Domfors (2003) discuss how Sweden’s reforms in the deaf education system were directly influenced by American sign language researchers, including Stokoe. R. J. Senghas (1997, 2003), in turn, shows how the Swedish National Association of the Deaf affected the Nicaraguan d/Deaf community during the early stages of its formation. Pursglove & Komarova’s (2003) work on Russia and Aarons & Reynolds’ (2003) on South Africa show how larger national reforms such as Perestroika and the end of apartheid affect local d/Deaf communities.
Senghas R. J., Monaghan L., SIGNS OF THEIR TIMES: Deaf Communities and the Culture of Language - Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2002. 31:69–97, WEB 2024
Sociological algorithm for the emergence of a subculture using the example of NSL/SNL
Subculture always takes root when marginalized start to form stable groups. Often, this process happens out of sight of “normal” life, where forces that reinforce social conformity are weakest. Marginalization and group formation happens at every level of society and always follows the same basic path: society imposes limits on the individual, individual meets like-minded peers, they start to communicate about common problems. Subculture starts to form as a result of communication, when people develop group identity through jargon, appearance (clothes, hairstyle, etc.) and code of conduct. This happens spontaneously and organically due to the human psyche that evolved to be social in nature. Scientific societies, youth communities, criminal organizations - all of them going through thesame growth process and life cycle.
...The potential of marginality is determined by the nature of liminality (liminal here is understood as a transitional state between two stages of human development - Note by I.L. Vikentyev), the situation of being outside of existence. Conditions of ambivalence and uncertainty, blurred sociality, stimulate an energetic search for a new fundamental community. “I may not be alone” - and now the embryo of a subculture has developed.”
…
Turner called this undifferentiated community communitas. We are talking about a structureless community, whose members are deprived of status characteristics. Therefore, communitas can only be realized in a liminal situation. It is the experience of fundamental unity, equality and belonging.
Tulchinsky G.L., Posthuman personology. New prospects for freedom and rationality - St. Petersburg, Aletheia, 2002, p. 132-134. Source: Vikent.ru, WEB 2024
However, the forces that govern this life cycle are more often ignored when people try to recreate it in goal-oriented implementations such as community formation, human resource management or government, to name a few. For example: deaf in Nicaragua learned at a different rate, some of them never had developed enough proficiency to utilize NSL and be an active part of the community. As researches had found out, there were limits based on the “age of entry”, meaning that younger children were able to achieve greater fluency, compared to older children and adults (Senghas 1995).
This item is a part with group formation mechanisms such as entry filters, that play a very important role in the formation of the group core at the first quarter of the life cycle curve, where development is slow and not very eventful. However, the whole life cycle of the group or large organization could be affected by decisions that were made at that time. Existence and quality of selective entry processes, also play a major role.
In the development of subculture, we can identify eight points of the life cycle that can be plotted on the regular S-shape curve that correspond with the quantity of members involved at the time. Each point represents an opportunity to influence this cycle to direct it into the desired way. This in a sense can be used as an algorithm to solve or prevent a variety of social problems, and in the case of the NSL community, give an opportunity to completely change the way of life.
Identity, group and communication tools provide disadvantaged groups the way to develop in a unique way. Change of self perception and communication technology opened deaf community to opportunities to realize its potential in the common social structure. First perceived as mentally retarded, NSL developers demonstrated that Non-verbal language and deaf community organization could provide many opportunities to overcome individual conditions as well as to society at large. As professor Judy Shepard-Kegl demonstrated with her work with deaf children of Nicaragua, the whole strata of brain power are locked behind the physical barrier of deafness, awaiting to be released.
Within Deaf cultural groups, deafness is generally not considered a condition that needs to be fixed. Instead, Deaf people are viewed as members of a linguistic minority group whose preservation is of paramount importance.
“Deaf Gain” is a term often used by Deaf people to highlight the benefits of being Deaf rather than the perceived losses reflected in outdated terminologies, such as “hearing loss.” Inherent to the Deaf Gain perspective is the notion that physical and cognitive differences are essential elements of human diversity.
Deaf people have unique perspectives and perceptions that differ from those of the hearing majority. For example, they tend to have spatial awareness, facial recognition, peripheral processing, and image detection skills that are unmatched by their hearing counterparts. There is also a rich history of Deaf art and innovation, particularly in the areas of poetry and storytelling. Thus, the term Deaf Gain refers not only to what an individual has to gain through membership in the Deaf community but to the wider contributions of the Deaf community to the world at large.
et. al., Deaf Culture and Sign Language - ALTA Language Services, Inc. 2024, WEB 2024
Conclusion
The story of the development of Nicaraguan SIgn Language demonstrates that social convention and outdated institutions were one of the main obstacles for realization of the potential of hearing impaired people. Because they were marginalized, numerous disadvantages existed for people to participate in society and take control of their lives. They had to form their own groups and find their own way to realize the need to communicate and socialize. This happened spontaneously, no community organization processes were applied. The evolution of the NSL subculture demonstrated that the process of its formation is not unique. It corresponds with a basic social group life cycle curve and can be applied purposefully as an algorithm.
Traditional social institutions hinder the evolution of societies;
Various types of social needs are not currently realized;
There are no reliable social technologies to solve marginalization;
There's an algorithm for the formation of a subculture.
Sources
“The Invention of Nicaraguan Sign Language” (Article) Andy Blunden 2014, WEB 2023
“The Development of Nicaraguan Sign Language via the Language Acquisition Process” (Research paper) Boston University, Ann Senghas 1994, WEB 2023.
“How Deaf Children in Nicaragua Created a New Language” (Article), Shoshi Parks 2018, WEB 2023.
“The emergence of the deaf community in Nicaragua” Gallaudet University 2005, WEB 2023, Polich, Laura.
“Sign Of Their Times: Deaf Communities and the Culture of Language” - Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2002., WEB 2024 Senghas R. J., Monaghan L.
“From Seed to System: The Emergence of Non-Manual Markers for Wh-Questions in Nicaraguan Sign Language”, Languages. 2022; 7(2):137. Kocab A, Senghas A, Pyers J.https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020137, WEB 2023.
“Posthuman personology. New prospects for freedom and rationality” - St. Petersburg, Aletheia, 2002 Tulchinsky G.L.
Evolution Series Show, The Mind's Big Bang, PBS 2001, WEB 2024
