To examine syntactic and semantic differences between the written language of deaf and hearing persons, 30 deaf students (10 Ss were 10 to 12 years old, 10 Ss 13 to 15, and 10 Ss 16 to 18) were asked to recall sentences. Ss' recall was compared to that of hearing control Ss matched for age. More than half (59.8%) of the total number of sentences recalled by deaf Ss violated rules of English grammar, syntax, or both; while only 9.7% of hearing Ss' errors did so. Deaf Ss also made more recall errors than control Ss. However, deaf Ss could use the semantic relations in English sentences as well as the hearing Ss did to aid in recall, suggesting that the deaf are able to take advantage of semantic information and coding strategies for processing a sentence whether or not these relations are realized in their syntactic rules. (CL)