Recordings of phrases and sentences, contrasting on the prosodic level, were obtained from normal‐hearing and hearing‐impaired children, 9–12 years of age. Preliminary results from an acoustic analysis ofF0, durational, and intensity patterns indicate that, on questions, the normal‐hearing children make use of the typical risingF0contour, although not always on the appropriate syllable. Also, the slope of the risingF0contour is not as consistent as was found for English adults [Ashby, Proc. Eighth Int. Congr. Phonet. Sci. (1975)l. The hearing‐impaired children exhibited some control over prosodic pattern features, but these were not systematically appropriate. In particular, they appeared to use idiosyncratic durational cues contrastively between question and statement. One hypothesis is that durational cues compensate for the inability to reproduce the cause (F0rise) of a perceived consequential acoustic change (increased intensity). This does not necessarily signal “deviant” language behavior since normal‐hearing children go through similar stages at earlier ages. [Research supported in part by PHS Grant No. 09252 from NINCDS.]