Acquisition of PNG Marker in Malayalam Speaking Children with Hearing Impairment

Language is a set of arbitrary symbols (mainly conventional) used by people for the purpose of communication. The function of language is informative, expressive and directive. (Subba Rao, 1992)Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and pragmatics make five domains of language. Language plays a crucial role in child?s development in order to effectively exchange information with others in meaningful way. Person, Number, Gender (PNG) markers are arrangement that happen between verb and a subject when a word changes from depending on the other word to which it relates. The development of PNG marker starts with the appearance of pronouns. The aim of the present study was to report the acquisition of PNG markers in Malayalam speaking children with Hearing Impairment of age 4-8 years. 40 Malayalam speaking children with Hearing Impairment of the age 4-8 years and who are attending special school in Kerala. Further divided into 2 groups with respect to their age 4-6 years and 6-8 years with 20 members in each group and equal number of males and female participated in the present study. The results shows that the children with Hearing Impairment of age 4-6 years showed significant increase in the percentage of acquisition of PNG markers when compared to that of children with hearing Impairment of age 6-8 years. It is clear that the usage of PNG markers increased as the age increases both in males and females. The present study is I accordance with vijayakshmi (1981), says that 3-4 years of age, third person singular (both masculine and feminine) marker found in normal children. Prema (1979), says that the non-usage of gender and number marker in 5-6 years children indicting their instability of speech in young children. Kaur, Jijiand Subba Rao (2017), says that as age increases the acquisition of PNG markers also increased and also shows that most of these markers developed by 4 years of age.