Nicaraguan Sign Language is a sign language largely spontaneously developed by deaf children in Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s. It is of particular interest to the linguists who study it, because it offers a unique opportunity to study what they believe to be the birth of a new language.
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It’s not ‘what they believe to be a new language’, it is a new language. As in that’s not under dispute and it’s not rare for new languages to come into being. It’s not amazing as an exception but as proof of a rule: that humans invent language anew even when isolated from linguistic input, in only two short generational hops (pidgin and creole stages). What’s amazing is how easily and determinedly humans do it. Our brains are hard-wired for language. The NSL case allowed linguists to see this happen in almost lab-like conditions and thus prove the theory of language acquisition because of the children’s isolation from linguistic input, due to their deafness.
So the case of NSL is amazing (and it is pretty heartwarming in its particulars it has to be said) but not because it is exceptional, but because of what it shows us about our universal experience. We all did this. Every child acquiring their first language invents it anew. It’s an extraordinary process, and the thing that makes humans human.
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