The Development of Sensitivity to Grammatical Violations in American Sign Language: Native Versus Nonnative Signers

Factors influencing native and nonnative signers’ syntactic judgment ability in American Sign Language (ASL) were explored for 421 deaf students aged 7;6–18;5. Predictors for syntactic knowledge were chronological age, age of entering a school for the deaf, gender, and additional learning disabiliti...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language learning 2017-12, Vol.67 (4), p.791-818
Main Authors: Novogrodsky, Rama, Henner, Jon, Caldwell‐Harris, Catherine, Hoffmeister, Robert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age Differences
Age of acquisition
American Sign Language
ASL
assessment
Correlation
deaf
Deafness
Decision Making
Error Analysis (Language)
Gender Differences
Grammar
Judgment
Language acquisition
Learning Disabilities
Predictor Variables
School Entrance Age
Second Language Learning
Sign Language
Statistical Analysis
Syntax
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Factors influencing native and nonnative signers’ syntactic judgment ability in American Sign Language (ASL) were explored for 421 deaf students aged 7;6–18;5. Predictors for syntactic knowledge were chronological age, age of entering a school for the deaf, gender, and additional learning disabilities. Mixed‐effects linear modeling analysis revealed main effects of each predictor and an interaction between signing status and learning disability. The native signers showed typical syntactic development that varied by chronological age, gender, additional learning disabilities, and age of entering a deaf school. In contrast, the syntactic development of nonnative signers was more variable. It was less tightly related to chronological age and more strongly influenced by the age at which they had entered the school where assessment occurred, which was highly related to length of exposure to a sign language.
ISSN:0023-8333
1467-9922
DOI:10.1111/lang.12245