Finite verb morphology and phonological length in the speech of children with specific language impairment

Abstract

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) usually differ from younger peers in their use of grammatical morphemes pertaining to tense and agreement. The word-final consonant status of many of these morphemes has prompted researchers to verify that the children under study are capable of producing these consonants in monomorphemic words (e.g. hand, box). However, such a measure does not ensure that the children with SLI are capable of producing words of sufficient length to support grammatical morpheme use. To examine the possible influence of this factor, we employed Ingram's phonological mean length of utterance (PMLU) as the basis for matching a group of preschoolers with SLI and younger typically developing peers. The children's use of tense/agreement morphemes was then determined. The findings indicated that despite the comparable PMLUs of the two groups, the children with SLI were more limited in their use of tense/agreement morphology than the younger peers.

Phonology, morphology and speech processing development in Greek-speaking children

“…With regard to the first research question the results indicate that there is significant development in performance between testing points on speech processing measures and language measures for each group. The finding that significant development of speech processing and language skills occurs between 3;0 and 6;0 years is not surprising, given previous findings that older children outperform younger ones on phonological mean length of utterance and finite morpheme production (Polite & Leonard, 2006). Nevertheless, it should be noted that in certain tasks Group 2 at T1 (children aged 4;6 -5;0) scored lower than Group 1 at T3 (children aged 4; 0 -4; 6).…”

“…On the basis of these findings it can be suggested that in normal development, speech processing for morphological affixes develops simultaneously with the processing of phonological elements of word stems, between similar sounding morphemes. Although phonological factors cannot fully account for inaccurate production of morphemes, phonological factors cannot be ruled out (Polite & Leonard, 2006). In order to explore such diagnostic issues it is helpful to be able to use morphological and phonological tests that are carefully matched, as was done for Greek in the present study.…”

“…Developmental discrepancies in performance accuracy for inflectional realization have been observed between children of different ages, participating as language and age matched controls in SLI studies. Finite verb morphology composites of younger TD children (language matched controls, mean age 3;6) were significantly lower than the composites of age matched controls (mean age 5;4), even when finite verb morphology was calculated by including only those details of morphology that formed a single phonological word (Polite & Leonard, 2006). Significant development in morphology production occurs during the pre-school years, which may be related to phonological factors.…”

Can connective use differentiate between children with and without specific language impairment?

“…Research over the last two decades has contributed important insights into which areas of language are challenging for children with SLI acquiring different languages. The majority of studies so far have focused on the acquisition of noun and verb morphology (Anderson & Lockowitz, 2009; Bedore & Leonard, 2005; De Jong, 1999; Jacobson & Livert, 2010; Leonard & Dromi, 1994; Polite, 2011; Polite & Leonard, 2006; Roberts & Leonard, 1997) and more rarely morphology of other word classes (Bedore & Leonard, 2001; Leonard, Salameh, & Hansson, 2001; Marshall & Van der Lely, 2007; Orgassa, 2009; Ravid, Levie, & Avivi Ben-Zvi, 2003; Tribushinina & Dubinkina, 2012).…”

Development and Standardization of Persian Language Developmental Battery

“…Two clinical linguistic studies at the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences have been based on a developmental language battery developed for Persian in 2001 and 2005 [18]. The previous studies aimed to measure developmental language disorders in Persian children during their early development years.…”