Dear all, 
 
I saw a report on the Baby Signing movement some months ago on 
the BBC. It seems to me to be a bit misguided - like giving a kid one of 
those baby walkers instead of letting it crawl and strengthen upper 
body as well as lower body muscles ready for bipedalism. That 
probably sounds very anti-signing, but I don't intend it to, and I'm not 
casting aspersions on sign languages or sign acquisition or cases of 
sign-speech bilingualism. Baby Signing just seems a bit faddy, with 
the possible consequence that children's speech development may be 
delayed for no good reason. Is speech likely to be delayed at all by 
something like this? Does anyone have any more expert views on 
whether or not this is actually a good idea for kids who would 
otherwise be trying to communicate vocally? 
 
 
Mark 
 
Mark J. Jones 
Department of Linguistics 
University of Cambridge 
http://kiri.ling.cam.ac.uk/mark 
mjj13cam.ac.uk

In LINGUIST List 16.1720, Thomas Doukas wrote: 
>>> 
Author and mother Katie Mayne was on Breakfast talking about a 
baby signing book. The primary school teacher and signer has written 
a book called 'The Baby Signing Book'. 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/breakfast/4242941.stm 
<<< 
 
That page is constantly changing -- it begins: 
 
"This is where we put brief reference material about many of the items 
featured on Breakfast each day. 
"We update this page every weekday - and you will find items listed in 
date order (with the most recent at the top)." 
 
The item referred to is very short: 
 
>>> 
Thursday 19 May 
 
Baby Signing 
 
Author and mother Katie Mayne was on Breakfast talking about baby 
signing book. The primary school teacher and signer has written a 
book called "The Baby Signing Book" and is published by Amazing 
Baby. Help with communicating with your baby, this is Katie Mayne's 
website: 
 
http://www.tinytalk.co.uk/ 
<<< 
 
-- Mark A. Mandel