Languages are highly complex systems and yet most children
seem to acquire language easily, even in the absence of formal instruction. New
research on young children’s use of British Sign Language (BSL) sheds light on
one mechanism – iconicity – that may play an important role in children’s
ability to learn language.
For spoken and written language, the arbitrary relationship
between a word’s form – how it sounds or how it looks on paper – and its
meaning is a particularly challenging feature of language acquisition. But one
of the first things people notice about sign languages is that signs often
represent aspects of meaning in their form. For example, in BSL the sign EAT
involves bringing the hand to the mouth just as you would if you were bringing
food to the mouth to eat it.