Abstract
Hearing parents of deaf children are often encouraged to learn a signed code for English and to sign and speak simultaneously with them. The present study sought to determine how consistently a sample of mothers using simultaneous communication signed what they said. Though only one of the mothers had a spoken M LU of more than four morphemes, there were deletions of a mean 69 morphemes per 100‐utterance sample.* A mean 40.5 utterances per sample were signed fully. The majority of elements deleted were functors, and a set of 13 of these was examined to investigate possible variability of deletion rates within the category. Prepositions and noncontracted forms of the verb to be were signed most consistently, and bound morphemes as a group were signed about 50% of the time. Suggested factors affecting deletion rates are categorized as characteristics of (1) the sign codes, (2) the mothers, (3) the linguistic and communicative situation, and (4) the child. The results are discussed with respect to simplification and foreigner talk.
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