Language development in deaf children's interactions with deaf and hearing adults: a Dutch longitudinal study.
The language development of two deaf girls and four deaf boys in Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) and spoken Dutch was investigated longitudinally. At the start, the mean age of the children was 3;5. All data were collected in video-recorded semistructured conversations between individual children and deaf and hearing adults. We investigated the lexical richness and syntactic complexity of the children's utterances in SLN and spoken Dutch, as well as language dominance and interactional participation. Richness and complexity increase over time, as well as children's participation. An important outcome is that syntactic complexity is higher in utterances with both sign and speech. SLN does not have higher outcomes on richness or complexity, but is dominant in terms of frequency of use.
Center for Language Studies, Faculty of Arts, Radboud University Nijmegen, Erasmus Building Room 8.02B, P.O. Box 9103, 6500 HD Nijmegen, The Netherlands. j.klatter@let.ru.nl
Jetske
J
Klatter-Folmer
Roeland
R
van Hout
Esther
E
Kolen
Ludo
L
Verhoeven
D000328:Adult; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009426:Netherlands; D019986:Persons with Hearing Disabilities