The development of the prosodic word in the speech of a hearing-impaired child with a cochlear implant device LIMOR ADI-BENSAID and OUTI BAT-EL Department of Linguistics, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel (Received 17 November 2003; accepted 23 July 2004) Abstract The paper provides an analysis of the development of the prosodic word in the speech of a Hebrew-speaking, hearing impaired child using a cochlear implant device. The data were collected during 38 sessions, from the age of 1;5 years (three months after the operation) till 3;4, using spontaneous speech and picture naming. The analysis is couched within the theoretical framework of Prosodic Phonology, and compared with that of normally hearing Hebrew- speaking children. The comparison reveals that the development of the prosodic word in the speech of the implanted child is within the normal range, in terms of both developmental path and age. There were, however, two phenomena in the speech of the implanted child that were not reported in the studies on normally hearing children. The implanted child’s vocabulary included mono- and disyllabic words consisting of vowels only, and his vocalic inventory included long vowels. The clinical implications of our findings are discussed. Keywords: prosodic development, prosodic word, hearing impairment, cochlear implant, Hebrew. Introduction One of the basic components of speech perception and production is the proper function of the auditory system. In the course of language development, children receive their linguistic input from the speech of others, which serves as their target. In addition, their own auditory feedback allows them to gradually correct their speech, until it matches their target (Borden, 1979; Northern and Downs, 1991; Stoel- Gammon and Kehoe, 1994; Wallace, Menn and Yoshinaga-Itano, 2000; Kuel, 2000; Obenchain, Menn and Yoshanaga-Itano, 2000). Auditory deprivation arising from hearing loss in the early stages of life affects the different aspects of language development, including the patterns of speech Address correspondence to: Limor Adi-Bensaid, Department of Linguistics, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. Phone: 972-3-730-1051 972-9-954-7792. Fax: 972-3-640- 5109 972-9-956-5075. E-mail: lbensaid@qos.net.il obatel@post.tau.ac.il JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL COMMUNICATION DISORDERS VOL 2, NO 3 (NOVEMBER 2004) 187–206 Journal of Multilingual Communication Disorders ISSN 1476-9670 print/ISSN 1476-9689 online # 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/14769670400009975