The acquisition of the copula and auxiliary "be" forms of "am,""is," and "are" was studied with 16 children. Spontaneous social speech samples were obtained from each child. One child's speech was sampled for approximately one hour per week from age 2;5 through 4;0, and for one-half hour per week from age 4;1 to 5;0. A second child's speech was…

Two possible iconic models of the acquisition of verb agreement in American Sign Language (ASL) are developed and contrasted with a third, morphological account of the acquisition of this aspect of ASL. Additionally, data from spontaneous conversation of deaf children who have deaf parents are considered to test these three models. An iconic model…