Signed or spoken: are there non-modal differences?

Many of the differences between signed and spoken languages can be attributed to their different modalities: one makes use of our visual-gestural system, and the other of our aural-oral system. Differences in dexterity, processing time and other factors combine to create different modes of expression. I looked at these differences in my previous post on sign languages.

However, sign languages differ from languages like English in various other ways too. Most of these differences are sociolinguistic: social factors have a large impact on how we use language, and sign languages are no exception.

Signed or spoken: how does modality affect language?

There are quite a few misconceptions about sign languages, and how they relate to other forms of human communication. Today's post is a comparison of the two modalities of language: signed, and spoken.
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What are the origins of the Ideal Language? Part 1

This post is in response to Martin Eden's question:"What is it about human psychology / language / current culture that makes people so convinced about the absolute rightness or wrongness of certain things in language?"


The aim of linguistics as a scientific discipline is to describe what people do, not what they should do.

Now, ultimately, it would be nice if that led to us describing how to do it better, the way that knowledge of biology leads to better medicine, and that's part of my aim with this blog: figuring out how knowledge of linguistics can aid us in communicating.

But most people encounter not the scientific discipline of descriptive linguistics, but the you're-failing-to-meet-standards society of prescriptive linguistics.
And though we draw the line in different places, we pretty much all have words, grammar or pronunciation which set our teeth on edge and make us cry: "You are doing it wrong!"

Why?

How do infants know where word boundaries are?

When you listen to a foreign language, it sounds like one continuous stream of speech. Why don't foreigners put breaks between words?

As it turns out, neither do speakers of your language, but you've had years to develop quite sophisticated strategies to recognise where the word boundaries fall.

So how do infants figure it out?