Sign Language Use of Hearing-Impaired Children Whose Home and School Sign Language is a Manual English System.

This study examined hearing-impaired children's production of Signed English and American Sign Language (ASL) (with vocalization). The home and school sign language of the children was Signed English. Their production of Signed English and ASL (with vocalization) was explored with different conversational partners. The data analyzed for the children's expression of two semantic domains, States, Attributes, and Identity and Locations. States, Attributes, and Identity utterances requiring a copula were examined. Analysis indicated that the copula was most often omitted across conversational partners. When the copola was included to express States, Attributes, and Identity, it most often was a verbally expressed copula. That is, it was expressed without an accompanying sign. The verbally expressed copula was produced in a relationship, although weak, with a verbally expressed syntactic subject. The children expressed the Locations semantic domain through Signed English prepositions or ASL classifiers-signs. Analysis indicated that the production of Signed English prepositions and ASL classifiers-signs was related to the interconstituent environment. The children most often produced Signed English prepositions when the physical distance referenced between the syntactic subject and the location expressed was distal. The children most often produced ASL classifiers-signs when the physical distance referenced between the syntactic subject and the location expressed was proximal. The findings have important implications for the characterization of hearing-impaired children as bilingual speakers. More specifically, the data revealed that the children's production of one language system versus the other in certain interconstituent environments is regular and predictable. Further, the investigation underscores the need for systematic and replicable research methodologies.PhDLinguisticsLanguage artsCommunicationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161689/1/8801373.pd