Description
In hearing loss, the first language acquisition is considered when the linguistic input is based on a modality appropriate to the child's sensory abilities, the sign language (Lillo-Martin, 1999). However, the context of exposure to sign language from birth is rare since most of the hearing-impaired children (90% - 95%) have hearing parents (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004). Hearing-impaired children with and without hearing devices have syntactic difficulties, showing that the deprivation of linguistic input in the first year(s) of life resulting from hearing loss is the main factor for difficulties in Wh- questions and relative clauses oral production and comprehension (Friedmann & Szterman, 2006, 2011; Power & Quigley, 1973; Ruigendijk & Friedmann, 2017; Volpato, 2009; e.o.). Recently, it was observed that, for the acquisition and mastery of these structures, deaf children with cochlear implants (CI) might need more time for oral language exposure in parallel with early activation of the CI, demonstrating that the acquisition of wh- questions and relative clauses are not fully compromised in these children (Moita, 2022). In this context, it can be expected that hearing-impaired children exposed to sign language from birth do not have difficulties in acquiring these same structures, raising the question: Are the difficulties in acquiring structures with the A-bar movement of the oral language in hearing-impaired children suppressed by exposure to a sign language from birth?Exploring the answer to this question, it analysed the oral production and comprehension of wh-questions (non-d-linked and d-linked) and relative clauses in European Portuguese of a hearing-loss child native signer of Portuguese Sign Language (LGP) and has CI. The child's data were compared with those of two deaf children with CI without language exposure in the first year(s) of life, one of which was exposed to LGP after three years of life (Table 1).
In wh- questions and relative clauses comprehension, the results reveal that the hearing-impaired child native signer with CI has similar percentages of correct answers to those presented by the hearing-loss child with CI and late exposure to LGP, with some differences between conditions. The child without exposure to LGP has higher percentages of correct answers than the two children with exposure to LGP. In the performance analysis, considering the syntactic function of the wh- element, the three children better understood interrogative wh- subject structures, to the detriment of the same type of direct object structures of the indirect object (Table 2).
In the oral production context, the two children with native and late exposure to LGP have fewer answers by the wh- questions structure than the monolingual hearing-impaired child with CI. In the oral production of relative clauses, only the monolingual child in the EP presented answers by the target structure. In general, it is observed that the two children exposed to LGP reveal common grammatical difficulties in the production of target structures, such as the omission of prepositions, omission of the auxiliary verb, alteration of word order, and, in the case of interrogatives, Q, duplication of the Q-constituent, verifying a greater number of ungrammatical and fragmentary responses in the pregnant child native to LGP.
In this case study, it is observed that the difficulties in acquiring the target structures in the hearing-impaired child with CI were not suppressed by the native exposure to LGP. For this work, an in-depth analysis of the oral linguistic performance of deaf children with CI is proposed, discussing the possible effects of native and late bimodal bilingualism compared with the possible effects of the late acquisition of PE.
| Period | 20 Sept 2023 |
|---|---|
| Event title | The Romance Turn |
| Event type | Conference |
| Conference number | XI |
| Location | Madrid, SpainShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |