# The Creation and Enhancement of Language

> **NIH NIH R01** · BARNARD COLLEGE · 2020 · $283,595

## Abstract

Our research seeks to uncover the psychological and linguistic factors that give rise to
the structure of natural human language, within individuals and across a language
community. Our primary objective is to discover the abilities all humans apply to acquire
and use language, by capturing how those abilities create and shape language over
generations, particularly when language exposure is initially incomplete. The recent
emergence of a new sign language among Deaf children and adolescents in Nicaragua
provides an opportunity to examine how grammatical systems develop without a pre-
existing, complete language model. Over the past four decades, deaf Nicaraguans have
been creating a new sign language. An initial cohort started with the gestures available
in their environment and began to shape them into a new, grammatically complex
system. Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) has continued to develop and change ever
since, as new cohorts of children enter the community and learn the language from older
peers. Now with archived video data of NSL going back two decades, and comparable
data from other sign languages, we have the opportunity to tease apart certain factors
that led to the developments we have observed in NSL. Accordingly, our research aims
first, to characterize the influence of learners on the emerging linguistic structure of NSL.
We will systematically compare sequential age cohorts, at multiple points in time, from
earlier in NSL’s development (from our archives) to present-day, focusing on the word
order and spatial devices for indicating who-does-what-to-whom, and the creation of
categorical expressions for spatial relations and semantic transparency in the lexicon.
We will also test whether NSL changed diachronically as predicted by biases in the
motor system and acuity constraints in the visual system, by comparing lexical signs and
narratives collected across decades of NSL, and comparing NSL to matching data in our
archive from the older British Sign Language (BSL). In the process, we will continue to
build and share the archive of video and written documentation of NSL. This growing
archive is the first and only recording of a language from its origin. We are making use of
it in the present grant, and are sharing it with other research laboratories carrying out
other work, such as testing models of community, language growth and change.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9929579
- **Project number:** 5R01DC005407-14
- **Recipient organization:** BARNARD COLLEGE
- **Principal Investigator:** ANN SENGHAS
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $283,595
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2002-07-01 → 2022-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9929579

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9929579, The Creation and Enhancement of Language (5R01DC005407-14). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9929579. Licensed CC0.

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