The study investigated 14 school-age deaf children's responses to a listener's indication of communication breakdown and examined whether responses were related to syntactic or semantic abilities and/or typical mode of communication. Most revisions involved changes in sentence constituents. The frequency of revisions, repetitions, and no responses…

Analyzes the written syntax of a group of profoundly deaf English children aged 10 to 11 years, utilizing a controlled elicitation sampling method used earlier with a single child. Demonstrates and describes the structured nature of deaf children's syntax, which shows similarities with 2 to 2 1/2-year-old hearing children's syntax. (Author/MES)

The study evaluated narrative production in seven severe to profoundly hearing impaired adolescents in an attempt to determine whether syntactic prowess would predict which subjects would be more adept at narrative production, in terms of the story grammar conventions used, and the cohesive devices used when narrating a story to a naive listener.…

The study evaluated characteristics of instructional bimodal communication in classrooms for the hearing impaired using Signing Exact English or Signed English. Findings indicated some teachers accurately and proficiently encoded semantic information in their instruction. A requirement of 80% or better voice-to-sign ratio ability is suggested for…

Forty children (ages 5-18) with mild to severe hearing losses were administered a battery of speech and language tasks. Misarticulation, syntactic, and pragmatic errors indicated a consistent pattern of oral communication behavior that reflects the reduction of acoustic input such children experience. (Author/DB)

The acquisition of past tense inflectional suffixes using the written and fingerspelling modes were studied with 24 prelingually deaf children (ages 8 to 15 years) randomly assigned to fingerspelling, writing, and control groups. (PHR)

Building on the visual orientation of individuals with deafness, and employing such techniques as visualization and directionality, a computer-based method of communicating syntactic knowledge to deaf students was designed. "The Question Game" was designed to model and help students build yes-no questions and WH questions (who, what,…

This digest uses a question-and-answer format to summarize basic information about the use of English-based sign systems with children who are deaf or hard of hearing. English-based sign systems are explained as using the vocabulary of American Sign Language (ASL) with the grammatical and syntactical features of English. These systems include…

This book is written primarily for those studying linguistic topics in the area of sign language, but also can be useful to sign language teachers who want to understand more about American Sign Language (ASL). Pen-and-ink illustrations allow the reader with no knowledge of sign language to follow the discussion. The hypothesis examined in this…

The aim of this paper is to advance understanding of the theoretical basis for the difficulties many children who are deaf or hard of hearing face when learning spoken English grammar. The association between learning syntactical grammar and pre-verbal social interactions is explored and related to the effects of prelingual hearing loss. We…

This report is a cross-linguistic study that compares the sequence of emergence of semantic relations in English with the sequence of emergence of these relations in the acquisition of American Sign Language. American Sign Language (ASL) differs from English in modality (it is a visual-gesture language rather than an auditory-vocal one) and in the…