This article examines ethical dilemmas related to cochlear implant surgery in children. These dilemmas arise from the existence of a linguistic and cultural minority called the Deaf World. Organizations of culturally Deaf adults in the United States and abroad, as well as the World Federation of the Deaf, have, on ethical grounds, strongly criticized the practice of cochlear implant surgery in children. Three ethical dilemmas are examined. (1) The surgery is of unproven value for the main significant benefit sought, language acquisition, whereas the psychological, social, and linguistic risks have not been assessed. Thus the surgery appears to be innovative, but innovative surgery on children is ethically problematic. (2) It is now widely recognized that the signed languages of the world are full-fledged natural languages, and the communities that speak those languages have distinct social organizations and cultures. Deaf culture values lead to a different assessment of pediatric cochlear implant surgery than do mainstream (hearing) values, and both sets of values have standing. (3) The fields of otology and audiology want to provide cochlear implants to Deaf children but also, their leaders say, want to protect Deaf culture; those appear to be conflicting goals in principle because, if there were perfect implants, the ranks of the Deaf World would diminish.

The distribution of null arguments across languages has been accounted for in terms of two distinct strategies: licensing by agreement and licensing by topic. Lillo-Martin (1986 claims that American Sign Language (ASL) exploits both strategies for licensing null arguments, depending on the morphological characteristics of the verb. Here we show that this is incorrect. Once the nonmanual correlates of agreement features (comparable to the nonmanual expressions of other syntactic features) in ASL are recognized, it becomes apparent that null arguments in this language are systematically licensed by an expression of syntactic agreement.

Grammatical information in ASL can systematically be marked on the face. Such nonmanual marking extends over the c-command domain of the trigger, and therefore provides information about the hierarchical organization of the language. Consistent with evidence available from the distribution of non-manual markings—as illustrated with respect to wh-marking and negation—a basic clausal structure for ASL is proposed. Furthermore, we suggest, contrary to generally accepted claims about ASL, that both Tense and Agreement are structurally present in all ASL main clauses. This analysis allows for a uniform account of the licensing of null subjects in ASL. Evidence in favor of this analysis, and against a dual licensing mechanism (as proposed in Kegl, 1985, and Lillo-Martin, 1986, 1991b), is presented.

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