The Speech Production and Spoken Language of the Deaf

Abstract

The distinction was made between speech production and spoken language in analysing the oral output of those with hearing impairment. A brief review of studies in both areas was undertaken, including the report of a new electronic visual monitoring device, the glossal transducer. It was postulated that the deaf utilise a unique visual-to-motor conversion within the brain when speaking and monitor consciously by tactile-kinæsthetic control. The more recent studies relate to the syntactical features of the speech of the deaf. These show that deafness creates telegraphic speech with reduced sentence length and omissions of essential words such as functors. The speech of the deaf seems to contain mostly nouns and verbs, with a limited number of words used to expand verb forms.