The acquisition of American Sign Language phonology by young children of deaf parents

The acquisition of the formational characteristics of American Sign Language (ASL) was examined in children of deaf parents. This investigation was based on videotape and written records of nine children and their parents that had been collected during monthly home visits extending from 5 to 14 months. The parents demonstrated on videotape how their children formed each newly-acquired sign. When first observed, most of the children were under eight months of age. One child was deaf.;The focus of the study was the children's acquisition of the location, handshape, and movement aspects of signs. The children typically were highly accurate in their production of locations, even in their earliest signs. Moreover, several analyses indicated that locations played a central role in the children's early phonology. Sign movements tended to be produced less accurately than locations, although contacting action was usually produced with high accuracy. Bidirectional movements, similar in form to primitive rhythmical motor routines, tended to develop earlier than most other ASL movements. Handshapes as a class were produced with the least accuracy, although handshape production clearly improved with age. The children's sign phonology often resembled that of their parents; one notable difference consisted of the children's production of homonymous forms. Although homonyms are extremely rare in the lexicons of adult signers, each child produced homonymous forms. The extent of homonymy in the present subjects' early signs was found to be quite similar to that reported for children learning speech.;Analyses of the frequency, accuracy, and order of first production for each ASL phoneme were integrated to indicate a level of difficulty for each phoneme and reflect the typical acquisition order within each phoneme class. Three factors other than individual phoneme production demands were identified as affecting accuracy: characteristics of the surrounding phonemes, part of the hand used at the point of contact with the location, and temporal position of a phoneme within the sign. Finally, the present findings on ASL phonological acquisition are discussed with regard to phonological acquisition processes in general and the selection and adaptation of signs for motorically-impaired individuals.