Thirty-two hearing impaired adolescents were administered a test instrument assessing comprehension of three anaphoric forms within conjoined sentences: repeated noun, personal pronouns, and null form. The null form was presented in two semantic environments. One environment allowed use of the object-subject deletion rule, a deviant rule found in the language of some hearing impaired students. In this environment, use of the deviant rule produced a conceptually acceptable event. Use of the deviant rule in the second environment, however, produced a conceptually unacceptable event. The null form anaphora in the semantically acceptable environment was significantly more difficult than the other anaphora. Implications for teaching language and development of reading materials for hearing impaired students are discussed.
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