The Phonological Systems of Deaf Children

Abstract

Samples of a group of deaf children’s spontaneous speech were used to derive phonological rules. The predictive value of some of the rules was assessed by asking another group of deaf children to lip-read and read nonsense words. The results indicated that the phonological systems of profoundly deaf children are partially rule-governed. There was also some evidence which suggested that lipreading was a major input to the deaf children’s phonological systems.