Video 1

This video documents the signs for ‘girl’ produced by various users of a homesign system, a gestural communication system created by a deaf individual who does not interact with other deaf people or learn existing sign languages. Homesign systems are among the earliest stages of (signed) language emergence, and thus served as the ‘real-world’ inspiration for the current experiment and computational model.

 

Video 2

This video includes an example of how a quad of participants in the experiment conventionalize and reduce signs for “goat.”

While the experimental and homesign videos show signs for different objects, they both show that in the beginning stages of creating words, people use ‘iconic’ gestures representing objects’ size and shape, typical actions, and typical affordances (for human interaction).