The development of subject role properties in normally-developing and language-impaired children

Diane Frome Loeb, Purdue University

Abstract

Language-impaired children display great difficulty with pronoun case-marking and verb agreement. The purpose of this study was to examine the case-marking and verb agreement usage in the speech of normally-developing as well as specifically-language-impaired children. Sixteen children (eight normally-developing and eight language-impaired) were matched for Mean Length of Utterance (ranging from 2.4 to 4.6 morphemes). The study consisted of a production and comprehension phase. A total of 17,928 utterances were obtained during play and probe tasks. The presence of case errors in third person singular pronouns (i.e., him for he and her for she) and the percent use of copula, auxiliary, and third person singular verb inflections were analyzed. Initial analyses evaluated case errors and verb agreement in all sentences produced by the child. The SLI children were found to produce significantly more case errors, and fewer verb inflections compared to ND children. In addition, the ND population displayed a strong positive relationship between case errors and verb morphology, but not the SLI children. To further explore how case and verb agreement were acquired, a more specific context was examined. The second analysis evaluated case and verb agreement as a set of related features in which preverb third person singular pronouns co-occurred with associated verb agreement in the same sentence. In these contexts, SLI and ND children developed case and verb properties similarly. The strong positive correlation between case and verb inflections held within each of the two subject groups. A comprehension task designed to assess the use of case and verb agreement cues showed performance above the level of chance and no between-group differences. However comprehension of verb agreement cues alone was at the level of chance. Case error productions were not due to a lack of case and agreement cue detection. Instead, case errors may be attributed to low cue validity. The SLI children's learning may be confounded further with positive or conflict learning problems.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Leonard, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Speech therapy

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