Insensitivity to verb conjugation patterns in French children with SLI (original) (raw)
Related papers
2008
This study examines inflectional abilities in French-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) using a verb elicitation task. Eleven children with SLI and age-matched controls (37–52 months) participated in the experiment.We elicited the passé composé using eight regular and eight irregular high frequency verbs matched for age of acquisition. Children with SLI showed dissimilar productive verb inflection abilities to control children (even when comparing participants with similar verb vocabularies and mean length of utterance in words). Control children showed evidence of overregularization and sensitivity to morphological structure, whereas no such effects were observed in the SLI group. Error patterns observed in the SLI group demonstrate that, at this age, they cannot produce passé composé forms in elicitation tasks, even though some participants used them spontaneously. Either context by itself might therefore be insufficient to fully evaluate productive linguistic abilities in children with SLI.
Verb acquisition in monolingual and multilingual children and adults
Proceedings of GALA 2017: Language Acquisition and Development, 2019
We investigated whether children and adults, French monolinguals (L1) or multilinguals (MUL) are sensitive to regular, sub-regular and irregular verb inflection patterns. We hypothesized that MUL participants would process these patterns differently, from L1-speakers, based on their default status or reliability, due to less exposure to French. Children were also expected to show lower proficiency than adults. Verbs were elicited in 162 children (preschoolers and first graders attending French school) and 36 adults that were either French L1 or MUL, all from the Montréal Canada area. Twenty-four French verbs were used to elicit the passé composé (perfect past) with regular, sub-regular, and irregular participle forms (6 each: ending in /e/, /i/, /y/ or Other idiosyncratic forms) using our Android application. Logistic regression analyses showed effects for verb group and participant group: adults responded better than children. Verb group comparisons revealed that Other verbs are significantly harder to produce than those ending in /e/ and in /i/, but not significantly harder than verbs ending in /y/. Children show additive effects of parental education and age. These data indicate that all participants show strengths on default patterns and sensitivity to sub-regular verbs, even though MUL children and adults have less exposure to French.
In this article we examine language processing and development in Catalan or Spanish-speaking children with SLI, focusing on the study of the verb. We analyse the key initial phase of its process of acquisition and aim to define common features of the SLI group that distinguish them from children with normal language development. We intend to identify more precisely the kind of delay shown by these children in a language with a rich verb morphology, in terms of both structure and chronology. The sample comprised 18 Catalan-Spanish bilingual preschool children, assigned to three groups of six; an SLI group and two control groups, one matched for age and the other matched for MLU-w. Developmental data were obtained by recording situations of spontaneous speech at two different time points. Certain differences were found between groups in verb production. Production of verb inflection by children with SLI was only partial at the first evaluation; they maintained the same percentage of errors after a year. The patterns of correct and incorrect verb forms found in Catalan and Spanish do not corroborate the EOI hypothesis, but they support the Surface Hypothesis, given that the number of errors is not particularly high. This suggests the presence of limitations in subjects' processing ability, linked to the typological characteristics of the specific language being learnt.
Lingua, 2013
The purpose of this study is to determine whether the occurrence of nonfinite verbs in the spontaneous speech of monolingual Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) distinguishes them from typically-developing children of the same age and to consider the Interface Deficit account of SLI, in contrast to other prominent accounts of the tense deficit, in light of current literature. To demonstrate that tense, a discourse-sensitive construction, is problematic for Spanish-speaking children with SLI, 42 monolingual Spanish-speaking children, 21 with SLI and 21 age-matched typically-developing children, were recorded for 20-35 min sessions of narrative speech, in Mexico City. The children's ages ranged from 58 to 76 months. Utterances were coded for compliance with obligatory context, defined as whether or not they agreed with plausibly associated subjects in the grammatical context. Our results show that children with SLI produced significantly more errors in verb finiteness, taking into account obligatory context, than did their typically-developing counterparts. We conclude that the type and frequency of finiteness errors produced by the children with SLI indicate that these children do indeed pass through an Extended Optional Infinitive (EOI) Stage. Our measure of obligatory context enables the identification of a bare stem, non-finite verb form, previously unidentified in spontaneous speech studies of Spanish-speaking children with SLI. Consequences of these findings for 3 prominent theories of SLI are discussed.
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 2000
This study compares the morphosyntax of children with SLI to the morphosyntax of children acquiring a second language (L2) to determine whether the optional infinitive phenomenon (M. Rice, K. Wexler, & P. Cleave, 1995; K. Wexler, 1994) is evident in both learner groups and to what extent cross-learner similarities exist. We analyzed spontaneous production data from French-speaking children with SLI, English-speaking L2 learners of French, and French-speaking controls, all approximately 7 years old. We examined the children's use of tense morphology, temporal adverbials, agreement morphology, and distributional contingencies associated with finiteness. Our findings indicate that the use of morphosyntax by children with SLI and by L2 children has significant similarities, although certain specific differences exist. Both the children with SLI and the L2 children demonstrate optional infinitive effects in their language use. These results have theoretical and clinical relevance. Fi...