THE CRITICAL FUNCTION OF TACTILE INDEX IN BLIND CHILDREN'S USE OF DEICTICS Donna E. West State University of New York College at Cortland The primary claim here is that because of the reliance on the indexical aspect of certain space and person deictics, blind children use these terms differently. The accompanying cues which blind children use as speakers to designate either addressee or referent object in the case of "this"/"that" are qualitatively different than sighted children's cues. This is especially so since at early ages children are more likely to use deictics exophorically (to refer to an entity present in the spatio-temporal environment concurrent with the speech act). If deictics are used exophorically, some accompany- ing cue is necessary to single out the actual referent from the field of potential referents; and a reliance on the symbolic meaning is not sufficient to interpret the deictic for the addressee. In other words, mastery of the symbolic meaning of "this" as an object proximate to the speaker and of "that", as an object more distant from the speaker or of you as the addressee, does little to reveal the referent of such deictics in a specific use: it does little to single out the actual referent within the context from all other potential referents. Sighted children are likely to accompany such exophoric uses with either eye gaze or pointing, each of which is equally instrumental in referring to near or far objects. Blind children, however, since their use of such visual cues (visual index) is hardly likely may well make more extensive use of accompanying tactile and/or linguistic cues. They may be more likely to touch the object which in the case of "this" would seem more plausible since "this" objects are presumably closer than "that" objects. Hence, tactile index should be more useful in the case of near as opposed to far objects. More extensive use of linguistic cues such as "this"/"that" as a determiner along with an explicit nominal, as well as the use of vocatives to accom- pany "you", characterizes an additional difference in use between 128