ABSTRACT
The recent explosion of work on the acquisition of sign languages has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of the general processes by which children acquire a generative symbolic function. Several interesting issues have come to light as the literature on sign language acquisition has expanded. One such issue is related to the potential effects of modality of linguistic input on the course of language development and on differences that may exist between children acquiring a sign language and children learning a spoken language. We now know that signing and speaking children acquire language in much the same general fashion (Newport & Meier, 1985), moving from single-element utterances to two-element combinations, and then gradually to more complex, and adult-like, forms. What is not clear, however, is whether signing and speaking children follow this path at the same pace.
