Samples of written language were collected from 140 congenitally deaf children at grade levels 3, 5, 7, and 9. The samples were then subjected to error, quantitative, and transformational analysis. Findings suggested a relationship between the order in which the deaf child acquires the rules of his language and the ordering of rules in a theoretical description of the generative process, with rules occurring early in the generative process generally being acquired earlier than rules occurring later. Furthermore, the order in which the deaf child acquired rules seemed similar to that observed in much younger hearing children. In the early stages of language development both hearing and deaf children reduced the frequency of errors in their writing more quickly than in later stages. Other findings suggested that, although the levels of performance of deaf and hearing differed markedly, differences in rate of development were not great. (Author/JD)