Acquisition of Word-Formation Categories by Children with Hearing Loss

The article describes the competence of children with hearing loss in comprehending and producing derivational (word-formation constructions) belonging to various categories. The skills of children with hearing loss are compared with the skills of hearing children. The extensive field of observation - the object of study were all word-formation categories (productive in contemporary Polish) - caused this article to focus exclusively on quantitative analyses. The conclusions that follow from them allow us to determine the hierarchy of word-formation categories, ordered according to the degree of difficulty, and to compare the level of their acquisition by hearing children, hard-of-hearing children (using the hearing sense) and by deaf ones (not using the hearing sense). This hierarchy is different in the area of interpreting than in the area of producing derivational (word-formation) constructions. The degree of complication of the semantic structure of the categories investigated has a distinct effect on the level of their acquisition. If we adopt the view that the categorization of the world by the learning mind is reflected in derivational constructions, analyses of the abilities of children with hearing loss in this sphere of linguistic functions allow us to access the available subjective ways of how they perceive and interpret the phenomena of treality. The analyses proper are preceded by a description of the investigation instrument employed: a word-formation questionnaire, which is a methodological proposal for studying word formation in school-age children.