Action bias in describing object locations by signing children

Abstract

This study investigates the role of action bias in the acquisition of classifier constructions by deaf children acquiring Turkish Sign Language (TİD). While classifier handshapes are morphologically complex and iconic, deaf children (aged 7-9) were found to prefer handling classifiers (reflecting the actions performed by agents) more than signing adults, even in contexts requiring entity classifiers (reflecting the visual properties of their referents). The findings reveal that children’s frequent use of action-based lexical signs for nouns influenced their classifier preferences, suggesting a cognitive bias toward motoric representations. Furthermore, our results suggest the use of handling classifiers in intransitive contexts - even by adult signers - thus indicating a new type of variability in classifier use, which has not been reported for other sign languages before. These results provide new insights into how iconicity and lexical context shape the developmental trajectory of classifier constructions in sign language acquisition.