Acquisition of natural language has been shown to fundamentally impact both one’s ability to use the first language and the ability to learn subsequent languages later in life. Sign languages offer a unique perspective on this issue because Deaf signers receive access to signed input at varying ages. The majority acquires sign language in (early) childhood, but some learn sign language later—a situation that is drastically different from that of spoken language acquisition. To investigate the effect of age of sign language acquisition and its potential interplay with age in signers, we examined grammatical acceptability ratings and reaction time measures in a group of Deaf signers (age range = 28–58 years) with early (0–3 years) or later (4–7 years) acquisition of sign language in childhood. Behavioral responses to grammatical word order variations (subject–object–verb [SOV] vs. object–subject–verb [OSV]) were examined in sentences that included (1) simple sentences, (2) topicalized sentences, and (3) sentences involving manual classifier constructions, uniquely characteristic of sign languages. Overall, older participants responded more slowly. Age of acquisition had subtle effects on acceptability ratings, whereby the direction of the effect depended on the specific linguistic structure.

自然语言的习得已被证明从根本上影响一个人使用第一语言的能力和以后学习后续语言的能力。手语在这个问题上提供了独特的视角，因为聋人手语者可以在不同年龄获得手语输入。大多数人在（早期）儿童时期习得手语，但有些人后来才学会手语——这种情况与口语习得截然不同。为了研究手语习得年龄的影响及其与手语者年龄的潜在相互作用，我们检查了一组聋人手语者（年龄范围 = 28-58 岁）和早期（0-3 岁）的语法可接受性评级和反应时间测量。 ) 或更晚（4-7 岁）在儿童时期习得手语。在包括 (1) 简单句、(2) 主题句和 (3) 句子的句子中检查了对语法词序变化（主语-宾语-动词 [SOV] 与宾语-主语-动词 [OSV]）的行为反应涉及手动分类器结构，这是手语的独特特征。总体而言，年龄较大的参与者反应较慢。习得年龄对可接受性评分有微妙的影响，影响的方向取决于特定的语言结构。