A Linguistic Analysis of the Morphemic and Syntactic Structures of a Hard-of-Hearing Child

Abstract

Presented is a detailed study of the expressive language of one hearing impaired 4-year-old girl using concepts of both descriptive and generative linguistics as the means of analysis. Morpheme boundaries, word boundaries and syntactic functions were not assumed a priori but were derived out of the systematic verbal behaviour of the subject. The results showed a large number of single-morpheme words identical in structure to adult English. However, in various other words she exhibited a level of morphemic combinative control which did not reproduce Standard English forms. For instance, several adult words had not yet attained whole word status and instead were used as bound morphemes. Other words which in Standard English illustrate morphemic combinations, actually were not beyond the monomorphemic structure level. Her only productive affix, that is also a standard form was the diminutive "-y" as in " doggy". Syntactically six word-classes were derived using the syntactic slot technique. It was found that seven main rules combined these words in two- and three-word syntactic structures. By applying grammatical terms to the above syntactic combinations, five types of syntactic relations emerge. This paper offers new and valuable approaches to language therapy for hard-of hearing children.

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