I am studying the language acquisition process of children who have not been exposed to a fully native linguistic model. Simon's non-native signing deaf parents provided him with his only exposure to ASL verbs of motion morphology. This input was highly inconsistent. I am presently studying two populations of deaf children of non-native signing hearing parents. One group consists of deaf children whose linguistic input is entirely non-native.
Results show that for movement morphemes all the children surpassed their non-native input.
This study gives us insight into the manner in which the complexity of the grammar, the consistency of the input, and the child s learning biases and biological maturation interact in the language acquisition process. My future goal is to study subjects of more varied ages and backgrounds, and to examine other grammatical structures. These kinds of studies can ultimately help us to understand how the child's mind comes to be organized throughout development.