Complement structures in the language of deaf students

Four hundred and twenty-seven deaf students (age 10 to 19 years) and 60 hearing children (age eight to 10 years) judged the grammaticality of sample sentences which contained infinitival or gerundive complements. Results indicated improvement with increasing age for deaf students. Even the youngest hearing students consistently obtained higher scores than most of the deaf students. Although the function of the complement (as subject or object) did not make a difference in performance, the type of complement did. POSS-ing complements were easier than for-to complements. Verb type also influenced performance.