THE LEXICAL DEVELOPMENT

OF DEAF CHILDREN
ACQUIRING
SIGNED LANGUAGES

CABIGUNA, THRECIA MAY C.

BSNED TDHL 3A
Deafness is defined as a hearing
loss that is so severe that the
person, with or without
amplifications, is limited in
processing linguistic
information through hearing.
Congenital hearing loss occurs in about 1-3
infants per 1,000 born in United States.
5 % will be born to deaf parents (deaf
children of deaf parents, DCDP)
Majority will be born to parents with
normal hearing (deaf children of hearing
parents, DCHP)
Newborn hearing screening has been critical
in the early identification of hearing loss

median age of identification is 3 months

(New York)
age range was from 2.1 to 5 months
(Colorado)
Factors affecting lexical acquisition
Parental hearing status (deaf vs. hearing)
Degree of hearing loss (mild through
profound)
Type of communication (ASL, MCE, Spoken
English, Cued Speech)
Age of identification
Age of language exposure
other conditions
The Basics of American Sign Language (ASL)

ASL is the visual-gestural language used by the

deaf population in the US for many purposes
including daily communication and education.

ASL exhibits both the grammatical complexity

and organizational principles common to the
spoken language (Klima & Bellugi, 1979)
 Structure of ASL
subject + verb + object
time + subject + verb + object
Examples:
English: I went to Japan last year
ASL: Last year me went to Japan
English: Do you like cookies and milk?
ASL: You like cookies and milk?
English: Do you like to sleep-in?
ASL: Sleep-in you like?
Verbs often occupy the initial position in a
sentence and verb morphology plays a salient role
in the sign language.

The use of non-manual grammatical signals

(mouth morphemes, eye gazes, facial expression,
body shifting, head tilting) results in a
simultaneous layering of linguistic information.
 First Signs: Onset
Deaf children of deaf parents demonstrated
an advantage in the first signs as compared
to the first words in hearing children
(Bonvillian et al., 1983)

Infants’ first recognizable signs occurred

around 8 months of age
8-11-month-old, the youngest child producing
signs with a vocabulary of two signs (MILK &
BATH)

10-month-old, children using two or three signs,

all nouns with one iconic verb (CLAP)

11-month-old, child had a vocabulary of 17 signs

 First Signs: Content
First words and signs are remarkable
similar in the ASL and English
vocabularies
An interesting lexically different is
names for body parts because they are
not part of ASL
 English-language-based Sign Systems

In most deaf children, ASL is a language to which

they are not exposed when they are young. Hearing
families faced with complex decisions about their
child’s communication and choose alternative
language methods including spoken language,
cued speech or variety of English-based signs
system or the Manually Coded English (MCE)
 Manually Coded English
invented to teach English to deaf
students
based on English vocabulary, bound
morphology and syntax
have signs for specific English-language
-bound morphology such as plural “s”
(DOG would be signed + s)
 The MCE system includes:

SEE 1 or Seeing Essential English

(Anthony, 1972)

SEE 2 or Signing Exact English

(Gustason et al., 1973)
 SEE 1 or Seeing Essential English
(Anthony, 1972)
teach proper grammatical
construction by using gestures
borrowed from ASL but it using English
word order, and other grammatical
markers
 SEE 2 or Signing Exact English
(Gustason et al., 1973)
a system of manual communication
that strives to be an exact
representation of English language
vocabulary and grammar. It is one of a
number of such systems in use in
English-speaking countries
The goal of this system is to provide
a visual model of English that is
often signed to the children at the
same time that the spoken language
is produced and spoke to them.
Lexical Acquisition of ASL
The general acquisition profile of manual signs
in ASL begins with manual babbling, followed
by a one-sign stage, and the multi-sign
combinations
During the early acquisition years, children also
make errors in the acquisition of ASL with
respect to the formational aspects of sign
handshape, location, and movement.
Two differences in the lexical acquisition of ASL and
English were noted (ASL-CDI)
There is no evidence for a vocabulary burst in the
DCDP (Anderson & Reilly, 2002)
Early lexicons of hearing children have a
preponderance of nouns, the percentage of
predicates is higher among the ASL vocabularies
than the vocabularies of children acquiring
spoken English
First words and signs to emerge in English and ASL

English ASL
Daddy DADDY
Mommy MOMMY
Baby BABY
Bye BYE
Ball BALL
No NO
Shoe SHOE
Bottle MILK
Cookie COOKIE
 Approximate Age and Vocabulary Ranges for the
Emergence of Specific Lexical Items
VOCABULARY EMOTION COGNITIVE
AGE RANGE
WH-FORMS NEGATIVES
SIGNS VERBS

YOUNGER THAN SLEEP, HINGRY,

<150 SIGNS NO
18 MONTHS THIRSTY

18-21 150-250 WHERE, DON’T-WANT,

CRY WANT
MONTHS SIGNS WHAT NONE

WHO, WHICH, DON’T-LIKE, SAD, HAPPY,

21-24 MONTHS 250-350 SIGNS
FOR-FOR DON’T KNOW SCARED
LIKE

30-35 HOW, WHY,

<350 SIGNS CAN’T, NOT ANGRY THINK
MONTHS DO-DO
Wh-Forms
What and where are the first to appear by the age of
18-21 month followed by who and which
By the age of 24 months, why, how, and do emerged

Emotion Signs
Signs about physical state (sleepy, hungry, thirsty)
emerged earliest
Signs that denote feelings (sad, happy, scared, angry)
are first seen around 18-20 months
 Children acquiring ASL is similar to their
hearing counterparts. With the exception in
productive language onset, which happens at an
earlier age than children acquiring spoken
languages. The content of early vocabularies are
similar to learning English and the order of
acquisition of specific lexical categories also
parallels that seen in English.
References

Schick, B., et al., (n.d.). Advances in the sign language development of deaf children. Google
Books. https://books.google.com.ph/books?
hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;id=9nV2CAAAQBAJ&amp;oi=fnd&amp;pg=PT141&amp;dq=info%3A1rllHl8
9WwoJ%3Ascholar.google.com%2F&amp;ots=GFYA55Hjz0&amp;sig=IaF-
qQzJdSC7KmKRPf7puqEdruE&amp;redir_esc=y&amp;fbclid=IwAR05OI9AcnJ_K-7EABrUZLw7K-
mzwApioJ6mbKaT7cj5TcNOputHLc5IIoE#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false

Paul. (2018, December 31). How to learn ASL sentence structure - basic. ASL Deafined.
https://www.asldeafined.com/2009/06/asl-sentence-structure-basic/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky9FmWmw4M8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSdIjCLpCHo