ABSTRACT
In cases of sensory hearing loss cochlear implantation provides access to audition for profoundly deaf persons. In recent years cochlear implantation has become increasingly popular for young congenitally deaf or prelingually deafened children. Studies of speech perception and speech production indicate that children implanted at a young age are capable of acquiring spoken language (Fryauf-Bertschy, Tyler, Kelsay, Gantz & Woodworth, 1997), but so far, there has been little research on these children's language development from a developmental psycholinguistic perspective. This chapter takes such a perspective; it aims to delineate the course of acquisition of grammatical structures in children with cochlear implants in comparison to normally hearing children.
