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Commentary published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 4:1 (2014) ► pp.61–88
Commentary

Visual acquisition of Swedish in deaf children

An L2 processability approach

| Stockholm University
This article examines the Swedish L2 development of deaf children by testing the validity of Processability Theory on deaf learners of Swedish as an L2. The study is cross-sectional and includes written data from 38 pupils (grades 5 and 10) from a school for deaf and hearing-impaired pupils in Sweden. The primary language used by the pupils is Swedish Sign Language with Swedish being considered their L2. The Swedish data have been analyzed through the lens of Processability Theory (PT). The results show that the grammatical development of deaf learners is similar to hearing learners of Swedish as an L2. The results therefore suggest that PT is applicable even for deaf learners of L2 Swedish.
Keywords: Bimodal bilingualism, deaf children, Processability Theory
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Bilingual language acquisition in the deaf — An issue of modality
    • 1.2Present study
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Processability Theory
    • 2.2Previous research on PT and Swedish L2 learners
    • 2.3Acquisition criterion: Emergence criterion
    • 2.4Acquisition criterion: Mastery criteria
  • 3.Methods and procedures
    • 3.1The informants
    • 3.2The data collection
    • 3.3The analysis
    • 3.4Implicational scales
  • 4.Results
  • 4.1The analysis
  • 4.2The results according to the emergence criterion
    • 4.3The results according to the mastery criteria
  • 5.Discussion
  • 5.1Limitations
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 February 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.4.1.03sch
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