Deborah Chen Pichler

Gallaudet University

Deborah Chen Pichler received Bachelor's degrees in Biology and French from Pennsylvania State University in 1995. Having long agonized over whether to enter a career in science or foreign languages, she eventually split the difference and pursued a doctorate in Linguistics at the University of Connecticut. She completed her dissertation on the acquisition of ASL word order in 2001 and, following a post-doctoral appointment at Purdue University, joined the Linguistics faculty at Gallaudet University in 2002. Her main teaching and research interest is language acquisition, particularly the acquisition of ASL by Deaf and hearing children. She is also interested in the acquisition of ASL as a second language by hearing adult learners.