Editing Nicaraguan Sign Language (section)

=== When it became language ===
Researchers disagree regarding at what stage in the development of ISN it became a full-fledged language.

* Coppola argues that isolated family-signed systems in Nicaragua contained components that can be called linguistic (but that does not mean she equates home sign with language). 
* Kegl argues that following an intermediate stage when deaf contact gesturers came together and developed a communication sufficient to make young children think their input was a language to be acquired, the first generation of young children acquired a language as complete and rich as any human language known to date; subsequent changes constitute an expected process of historical change. 
* Senghas argues that once ISN came into being, it became more and more complex over successive cohorts of young acquirers.