Grammatical Morpheme Development in Three Language Disordered Children

Abstract

The order and rate of acquisition of Brown's (1973) 14 prammatical morphemes were investigated in three children with language disorders periodie spontaneous language samples were analyzed for correct and incorrect use of the morphemes in obligatory contexts Results indicated that the groups order of acquisition was similar to that reported by Brown (1973) and de Villiers and de Villiers (1973) for normal children but that there were individual variations in the children's acquisition orders. Also, the language disordered children demonstrated a much slower rate of acquisition than that reported for normally developing children.

Verbal deficits in Down's syndrome and specific language impairment: a comparison

“…Rice and Wexler (1996) have argued that clinical observation of the use of grammatical morphemes provides a more sensitive test of SLI than a consideration of language profiles. Late acquisition of grammatical morphemes is characteristic of SLI (Johnston and Schery 1976, Khan and James 1983, Johnston and Khami 1984, Leonard et al 1988, Bliss 1989, Marchman et al 1999. Children with SLI do not find all grammatical morphemes difficult to acquire (Rice et al 1998), but there is regularity in the morphemes that children do find difficult, and these tend to be the ones that young normally developing children are slow to use consistently.…”

A review of specific language impairment: language characteristics and linguistic interpretations

“…As a group, children with SLI perform as well as normally developing children on the following of Brown's (1973) 14 grammatical morphemes (Le. possessive's, prepositions in/on, irregular past, plural s and present progressive -ing) (Johnston & Schery, 1976;Khan & James, 1983;Lahey et aI., 1992;Rice & Wexler, 1996). However, equally consistently, the children with SLI do show poorer performance on those grammatical morphemes carrying tense and agreement features (e.g.…”

“…However, equally consistently, the children with SLI do show poorer performance on those grammatical morphemes carrying tense and agreement features (e.g. past tense -ed, third person singular -s, and copular and auxiliary be) (Khan & James, 1983;Johnston & Kamhi, 1984;Frome-Loeb & Leonard, 1991;Hansson & Nettelbladt, 1995;Rice & Wexler, 1996). Some of these grammatical morphemes are now being mooted as clinical markers for the diagnosis of SLI in English-speaking children (Rice & Wexler, 1996).…”

“…It is generally accepted that children with SLI are delayed in use of first words and word combinations. Research has clearly demonstrated that grammatical morphology is more affected than other aspects of language in English-speaking children with SLI (Khan & James, 1983;Fletcher, 1992;Leonard, 1992;Rice & Wexler, 1996). In addition, children with SLI have also demonstrated difficulty with verb learning (Fletcher & Peters, 1984;Rice & Bode, 1993).…”

Learning past tense morphology with specific language impairment: a case study

“…Children with SLI master the use of this grammatical morpheme at higher mean length of utterance (MLU) levels than do normally developing children (e.g. Johnston and Schery, 1976; Khan and James, 1983); and when matched with younger normally developing children according to MLU, these children show significantly lower percentages of use of this morpheme in obligatory contexts (e.g. Leonard, Bortolini, Caselli, McGregor and Sabbadini, 1992;Rice, 1993).…”