Describes a study that determines if an interrelationship exists between cognitive level, gestural development, and spoken English development in five hearing-impaired preschool children. Results suggest that a deaf child's cognitive development may be related to his/her communicative ability, especially in terms of pragmatic-semantic…

Attempts to prove that users of American Sign Language (ASL) do perform within a closed system of manual and nonmanual sign production features (phonemes and distinctive features). Deaf signers are quite capable of creating nonsense words as well as communicating with signers of other languages through pantomime and other paralinguistic features.…