Today, many deaf children can be given access to oral language
thanks to a cochlear implant, a surgically implanted electronic
device that provides a sense of sound thanks to electric
stimulation of the auditory nerve. In this study, the
acquisition of personal pronouns is considered to be a measure
for the effectiveness of cochlear implantation in congenitally
deaf children. Pronouns are morphemes with low perceptual
prominence. They are semantically complex and lack
morphophonological regularity. Building on these insights, the
acquisition of pronouns is quite a challenge for hearing-
impaired children. The goal of this study is to examine whether
a cochlear implant provides deaf children with sufficient
auditory input to acquire low salient and complex functional
items like personal pronouns and to compare the results to those
obtained in hearing peers. Different developmental steps in
pronoun acquisition have been examined including the building of
the pronominal paradigm and its morphological attributes