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To test whether the language we speak influences our behavior even when we are not speaking, we asked speakers of four languages differing in their predominant word orders (English, Turkish, Spanish, and Chinese) to perform two nonverbal tasks: a communicative task (describing an event by using gesture without speech) and a noncommunicative task (reconstructing an event with pictures). We found that the word orders speakers used in their everyday speech did not influence their nonverbal behavior. Surprisingly, speakers of all four languages used the same order and on both nonverbal tasks. This order, actor--patient--act, is analogous to the subject--object--verb pattern found in many languages of the world and, importantly, in newly developing gestural languages. The findings provide evidence for a natural order that we impose on events when describing and reconstructing them nonverbally and exploit when constructing language anew. gesture | language genesis | sign language | word order

The left hemisphere of the brain dominates acquisition and use of both spoken and sign language. Sign language users with brain lesions on one side show left hemisphere dominance despite the dependence of sign language on visuo-spatial processible rather than temporal information. Both sign and spoken languages are highly structure systems and their neural organization in the hemispheres is identical. This indicates that the left hemisphere dominance is due to a higher-property of the language system rather than its physical characteristics or motor production.

A KEY FEATURE OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT is the regular onset of vocal babbling well before infants are able to utter recognizable words [1]. Vocal babbling is widely recognized as being [...]

Nicaraguan deaf students have created a new sign language, and it has fueled the debate among linguists over how languages are formed When Nicaragua established a school for the deaf [...]

The upper regions of the temporal lobe of the brain are important in hearing and comprehension of spoken language. The regions have been shown to be activated by sign language in congenitally deaf subjects, suggesting that the brain region for hearing could be activated by other sensory modalities, providing evidence of neural plasticity. Sign language was found to activate the 'language' areas, although not primary auditory cortex, and the sign language area was identified as the supratemporal gyri.