Learning Language the Hard Way

1 June 1980

journal article
research article
Published by SAGE Publications in First Language

Vol. 1 (2) , 122-140
https://doi.org/10.1177/014272378000100203

Abstract

This paper analyses and discusses the speech of Vincent, a hearing child of deaf parents who acquired sign language as his first language. When exposed to spoken language, his progress was slow and abnormal. He utilised a number of grammatical devices which may have come from sign language, such as reduplication, copying around, doubling, and afterthought. These were imposed on a fixed kernel sentence which attributed more importance to form than to semantic relations. The possible reasons for this abnormal development are put forward, and their implications discussed.

Keywords

This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:

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