Sign language acquisition in context

For many deaf children, acquiring a signed language occurs outside the home, in a school setting, and not from their parents. Often deaf children are not exposed to a signed language at all during the critical early years. While some family contexts support a deaf child creating their own form of signed communication - so-called homesign, for other families the child’s exposure to a signed language does not happen until later childhood, or even adolescence, or perhaps not at all. This creates unique primary language-learning environments that inform language science about the language-making capacity (or resilience) of the child as well as the quality and frequency of the linguistic input needed for acquisition. This chapter discusses signed language acquisition across language socialization contexts that vary in whether native signers, nonnative signers, peers, and teachers are language models. Delayed, inconsistent, or imperfect language input has implications for language outcomes. Case studies of deaf children demonstrate how they can draw from both internal and external resources when faced with imperfect language input. We close with a discussion of how early childhood classrooms with deaf children can foster language acquisition in a manner that is more consistent with primary, or family-based, language acquisition.