ABSTRACT
This chapter considers homesign systems, which are self-generated linguistic systems created by deaf children. It looks at a few basic characteristics of homesign systems in both young and adult homesigners. Homesigned systems are linguistic systems based on gestures produced by Deaf people with little to no input from a source language. Homesigns are gestural components of a self-generated linguistic system used for communication by Deaf children who have no or little accessible exposure to another existing language, signed or spoken. Children of hearing parents frequently create their own gestural system in the absence of linguistic input, i.e., they use homesigns. Both young and adult homesigners produce a lexicon in which the homesigner develops a mental list of gestures consistently used for a particular item. When an adult homesigner's system is studied, the question arises as to whether their system distinguishes a particular noun phrase functioning as a subject, i.e., a distinct grammatical category that all mature, formal languages have.
