Squib: On Phonology and prelexical mechanisms of the language acquisition

Phonology is traditionally defined as the description of the grammatical competence of native speakers concerning the sound patterns of their language (Chomsky and Halle 1968). The field has subsequently been broadened to account for the abstract properties of phonology that are not specific to spoken language, but extend to the manual-visual modality in sign languages. A lot of attention has thus been devoted to the properties of the sensory-motor system of grammar - i.e. phonology - that are not specific to the auditory modality, that is, to spoken language, but extend to the visual modality. Abundant literature has explored this issue and showed that Sign Languages share many grammatical properties with spoken languages (among others, Brentari 1998; Nespor and Sandler 1999, Wilbur 1999; Sandler and Lillo-Martin 2006). This body of research has shown that parallel segmental and suprasegmental representations exist in the two linguistic modalities -- the auditory and the visual.DOI: 10.17074/2238-975X.2015v11n1p