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Abstract
The grammatical and lexical aspects of temporal reference in the expressive language of prelingually deaf speakers in comparison with normally hearing age-matched speakers were examined. Significant differences emerged between groups in the grammaticalization of time. The deaf subjects used fewer verb inflections to mark time and made many errors with inflections. In addition, a significant triple interaction was found between group × verb typology × verb inflection, which suggested that the deaf were using the verb inflections to code the aspectual features of completion and duration inherent in verbs. Lexical aspects of time reference were found to be similar for both groups. The results are discussed with reference to the normal development of linguistic expressions of time in children acquiring language, and the implications for language therapy with the deaf are considered.