Analysis of the communicative skills of a nine-year-old deaf boy with minimal schooling showed pantomiming and gestures to be his major mode of communication. Certain semantic patterns prevailed. Use of left or right hand also had semantic correlates. Formal and idiosynacratic signs were discovered in the boy's vocabulary. (Author/PJM)

Discusses the modifications in the direction of simplified and more linear language (American Sign Language) used by deaf mothers with their deaf children. (EKN)

Describes and analyzes features of teletypewriter (TTY) conversations, including patterned errors, openings and closings, and compensatory devices. Depicts several relationships among the characteristics of TTY users and relates features of their conversations to symbolic interactionist literature. (EKN)

Examination of two native American Sign Language signers' use of negative headshakes found that negative headshakes (1) were used syntactically to indicate negation; (2) could be accompanied by other nonmanual behaviors; (3) could accompany a negative lexical item; and (4) were synchronized generally with syntactic constituents. (Author/CB)

Studies the developmental stages deaf children pass through in acquiring the adult forms of pronominal classifiers in American Sign Language. Data were obtained on production, comprehension, and imitation from nine children aged 3 to 11. Complexities of classifier usage influence the learning strategies used. (PJM)

The performance of two sign language interpreters in interpreting and transliterating two English texts in 1973 and again in 1985 was analyzed. Both interpreters significantly increased their use of four linguistic features of American Sign Language: classifiers; rhetorical questions; noun-adjective word order; and nonmanual negation. (Author/CB)