A distinction between nouns and verbs is not only universal to all natural languages but it also appears to be central to the structure and function of language. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a deaf child who was not exposed to a usable model of a conventional language would nevertheless incorporate into his self-styled communication system this apparently essential distinction. We found that the child initially maintained a distinction between nouns and verbs by using one set of gestures as nouns and a separate set as verbs. At age 3:3, the child began to use some of his gestures in both grammatical roles; however, he distinguished the two uses by altering the form of the gesture (akin to morphological marking) and its position in a gesture sentence (akin to syntactic marking). Such systematic marking was not found in the spontaneous gestures produced by the child's hearing mother who used gesture as an adjunct to speech rather than as a primary communication system. A distinction between nouns and verbs thus appears to be sufficiently fundamental to human language that it can be reinvented by a child who does not have access to a culturally shared linguistic system.

中文翻译：

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自式手势系统中的名词和动词：名字中有什么？

名词和动词之间的区别不仅适用于所有自然语言，而且似乎也是语言结构和功能的核心。这项研究的目的是确定一个没有接触过传统语言的可用模型的聋童是否会将这种明显的基本区别纳入他自封的交流系统中。我们发现孩子最初通过使用一组手势作为名词和一组单独的手势来区分名词和动词。在 3:3 岁时，孩子开始在两种语法角色中使用他的一些手势；然而，他通过改变手势的形式（类似于形态标记）及其在手势句子中的位置（类似于句法标记）来区分这两种用法。这种系统的标记在孩子听力正常的母亲自发的手势中没有发现，她使用手势作为语言的辅助手段，而不是作为主要的交流系统。因此，名词和动词之间的区别似乎对人类语言来说足够重要，以至于无法使用文化共享语言系统的儿童可以重新发明它。