Phonological Deletion Revisited: Errors in Young Children’s Two-Handed Signs

The omission or deletion of one hand from two-handed signs was examined in 9 young children of deaf parents. The patterns of hand deletion found in the early signs of these children were quite similar to those reported by Battison (1974) for adult signers. Battison accounted for the deletion patterns he observed largely by sign symmetry. Analyses of the present children’s deletions, however, revealed that the likelihood of hand deletion was also highly related to the type of contact the sign required. Deletion was most frequent in signs that involved contact with the signer’s body. This finding is interpreted as indicating that the likelihood of hand deletion in ASL is related to the amount of information about the location aspect of the sign that would be lost when the sign is produced with only one hand. Evidence for the phonological process of assimilation in the children’s early signs and the children’s accuracy for handshapes in two-handed (as compared with one-handed) signs also is examined.