Deaf, signing parents will "babble" to their infants in sign, just as hearing parents do orally; this is how the child learns language, in a dialogic fashion. The infant's brain is especially attuned to learning language in the first three or four years, whether this is an oral language or a signed one. But if a child learns no language at all during the critical period, language acquisition may be extremely difficult later. Thus a deaf child of deaf parents will grow up "speaking" sign, but a deaf child of hearing parents often grows up with no real language at all, unless he is exposed early to a signing community.
( Oliver Sacks )
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