Editing Nicaraguan Sign Language (section)

=== Evidence for innate language capacities ===
[[William Stokoe]], known by many as the father of American Sign Language linguistics, disagreed that the emergence of ISN is evidence of a [[language acquisition device]]. Stokoe also questions assertions that the language has emerged entirely without outside influence from, for example, Spanish or ASL.<ref>{{cite web |last= Stokoe |first= William |title= Letter to the Editor, Magazine |url= http://gupress.gallaudet.edu/Stokoeletter.html |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20151222134728/http://gupress.gallaudet.edu/Stokoeletter.html |archive-date= Dec 22, 2015}}</ref> There is so far no final evidence available to resolve the controversy surrounding nativism v. cultural learning, and the dispute reaches far into theoretical linguistics, the approaches of which may conceptualize grammar in different and incompatible ways. Even if the evidence collected seems to indicate a lack of access to Spanish and ASL in the early emergence process, the possibility remains that the development of ISN is facilitated by the speaker's exposure to more general communicative strategies in early infancy.

Alternatives to theories proposing a language acquisition device have been presented by [[Michael Tomasello]] (among others).{{Citation needed|date=April 2012}} Tomasello argues that the process of acquiring a first language is boosted by non-linguistic communication, as in the establishment of joint intentional frames and in the understanding of communicative intentions.<ref>{{cite book |last=Tomasello |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Tomasello |year=2014 |title=A Natural History of Human Thinking |publisher=MIT Press}}</ref>

In any case, once ISN came into being, like other languages, it actively engaged in contact with languages in its environment.