Completed Projects

Acquisition of Classifiers in Hong Kong Sign Language by Deaf Children

Date: 01/01/1999 - 01/01/2000

Aims:

The aim of this project is to discover the developmental stages deaf children go through in acquiring the grammatical properties of classifiers in Hong Kong sign language.

 
Activities:

We studied the classifier construction by presenting six comic strips with a clear and straightforward story line to 14 deaf children. We asked them to study the comic strips one by one and narrate them to a deaf research assistant individually.
 
The 14 children were grouped into three levels of proficiency (level 1 to level 3). All video recordings were later transcribed using ELAN, a software package developed by the Max Planck Institute of psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

 
Project Team:
Professor Gladys Tang
Ms Felix Sze
Ms Scholastica Lam
Mr Kenny Chu
Ms Brenda Yu
 
Output:

• Tang, G., Sze, F., & Lam, S. (2007). Acquisition of Simultaneous Constructions by Deaf Children of Hong Kong Sign Language. In M. Vermeerbergen, L. Leeson, and O. Carborn (Eds.), Simultaneity in Signed Languages: Form and Function (pp. 283-316) Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company.