The contribution of part-word phonological factors to the production of regular noun plural –<i>s</i> by children with and without specific language impairment

Polite, Elgustus J.

doi:10.1177/0142723711406431

Cited by 19 publications

(25 citation statements)

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“…This phonological influence on plural production is consistent with previous findings of such effects for third-person singular -s (Song et al, 2009) as well as plural -s (Polite, 2011); however, it was not observed in our previous work (Theodore et al, 2011). Close examination of the data presented in Theodore et al (2011) shows that there was a trend for the coda complexity effect in utterance-final position, but not so for the utterancemedial position, which was near floor performance.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Examination of the Locus of Positional Effects on Children's Production of Plural –s : Considerations From Local and Global Speech Planning

Theodore

Demuth

Shattuck‐Hufnagel

2015

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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dPurpose: Prosodic and articulatory factors influence children's production of inflectional morphemes. For example, plural -s is produced more reliably in utterancefinal compared to utterance-medial position (i.e., the positional effect), which has been attributed to the increased planning time in utterance-final position. In previous investigations of plural -s, utterance-medial plurals were followed by a stop consonant (e.g., dogs bark), inducing high articulatory complexity. We examined whether the positional effect would be observed if the utterance-medial context were simplified to a following vowel. Method: An elicited imitation task was used to collect productions of plural nouns from 2-year-old children.Nouns were elicited utterance-medially and utterancefinally, with the medial plural followed by either a stressed or an unstressed vowel. Acoustic analysis was used to identify evidence of morpheme production. Results: The positional effect was absent when the morpheme was followed by a vowel (e.g., dogs eat). However, it returned when the vowel-initial word contained 2 syllables (e.g., dogs arrive), suggesting that the increased processing load in the latter condition negated the facilitative effect of the easy articulatory context. Conclusions: Children's productions of grammatical morphemes reflect a rich interaction between emerging levels of linguistic competence, raising considerations for diagnosis and rehabilitation of language disorders.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Examination of the Locus of Positional Effects on Children's Production of Plural –s : Considerations From Local and Global Speech Planning

Theodore

Demuth

Shattuck‐Hufnagel

2015

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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“…In the Introduction we discussed studies that have previously shown the significance of both utterance position and coda complexity on morpheme production in children with SLI (Dalal & Loeb 2005; Marshall & van der Lely 2007; Polite 2011). The fact that we did not systematically find this effect in our set of data may be due to the diversity of methods used across studies or to the wide variety of language deficits observed in children with SLI.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since overall children with SLI demonstrate an approximate 2-year delay in their language development (Rice 2013), those participants who continue omitting grammatical markers at the age of 9–16 are likely to have additional problems (e.g., articulatory deficits) on top of their difficulties in acquiring morphology. Furthermore, the participants in the Polite’s study (2011) showed high overall accuracy and very small differences between the two conditions – 77% vs. 74% correct productions for simple versus complex codas, respectively. Therefore, it remains unclear how robust the effect of the coda complexity might be for children with SLI.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…However, other studies have shown that at least some of the variability in the SLI children’s use of grammatical morphemes can be explained by the effects of phonological context (Marshall & van der Lely 2007; Polite 2011), suggesting that children have some knowledge of the morpheme despite their failure to reliably produce it. In addition, some of the recent findings show that the interconnections between different levels of language have stronger effects on the grammatical development in children with SLI than might be anticipated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…However, there is evidence suggesting that, for example, coda complexity might have a similar effect on morpheme production in children with SLI as it does in TD children. Thus, some studies have reported a higher proportion of morpheme omission in the context of complex codas (Polite 2011), and even in older 9–16-year-old children with SLI (Marshall & van der Lely 2007). However, the age of the participants in the latter study raises some concerns.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Phonological and morphophonological effects on grammatical development in children with specific language impairment

Tomas

Demuth

Smith-Lock

et al. 2015

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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Background & Aims Five-year-olds with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) often struggle with mastering grammatical morphemes. It has been proposed that verbal morphology is particularly problematic in this respect. Previous research has also shown that in young typically developing children grammatical markers appear later in more phonologically challenging contexts. The main aim of the present study was to explore whether grammatical deficits in children with SLI are morphosyntactic in nature, or whether phonological factors also explain some of the variability in morpheme production. The analysis considered the effects of the same phonological factors on the production of three different morphemes: two verbal (past tense -ed; 3rd person singular -s) and one nominal morpheme (possessive -s). Methods & Procedures The participants were 30 children with SLI (21 boys) aged 4;6–5;11 years (mean=5;1) The data were collected during grammar test sessions, which consisted of question/answer elicitations of target forms involving picture props. A total of 2301 items were analysed using binary logistic regression; the predictors included: 1) utterance position of the target word, 2) phonological complexity of its coda, 3) voicing of the final stem consonant, and 4) syllabicity (allomorph type); 5) participant accounting for the individual differences in the responses. Outcomes & Results The results showed a robust effect of syllabicity on the correct morpheme production. Specifically, syllabic allomorphs (e.g., She dresses) were significantly more challenging than the segmental ones (e.g., He runs) for all three morphemes. The effects of other factors were observed only for a single morpheme: coda complexity and voicing helped explain variability in past tense production, and utterance position significantly affected children’s performance with the possessive. The participant factor also had a significant effect, indicating high within-group variability – often observed in SLI population. Conclusions & Implications The systematic effect of syllabicity across both verbal and nominal morphemes suggests morphophonological influences in the grammatical development of children with SLI that cannot be fully explained by syntactic deficits. Poorer performance in producing syllabic allomorphs can be accounted for by much lower overall frequency of these forms, and by the “tongue-twisting” effect of producing similar segments in succession, as in added [ædəd], washes [wɒʃəz]. Interestingly, the greater acoustic salience of the syllabic allomorphs (an extra syllable) does not enhance children’s abilities to produce them. These findings suggest that the interconnections between different levels of language have a stronger effect on the grammatical development of children with SLI than might be expected. Allomorphy should, therefore, be taken into account when designing language assessments and speech therapy, ensuring that children receive sufficient practice with the entire set of allomorphic variants.

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Irregular past tense forms in English: how data from children with specific language impairment contribute to models of morphology

Marshall

Lely

2012

Morphology

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Two cognitive models of inflectional morphology are widely debated in the literature-the Words and Rules model, whereby irregular forms are stored in the lexicon but regular forms are created by rule, and Single Mechanism models, whereby both regulars and irregulars form an associative network, with no rules. A newer model, the Computational Grammatical Complexity (CGC) model, recognises the contribution of hierarchical complexity in three components of the grammar, syntax, morphology and phonology, to the construction of morphologically complex forms. This model has previously been tested for regular past tense inflection in English, and in this study we test its predictions for the English irregular past tense, in four groups of children: a group with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI; aged 9;8-17;8), and three groups of typically developing children (aged 5;4-8;5). Children with G-SLI provide an important test case for the CGC model because they have deficits in syntax, morphology and phonology. As predicted, children with G-SLI produced fewer tense-marked irregulars than expected for their age, and fewer over-regularisations than their

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The contribution of part-word phonological factors to the production of regular noun plural –s by children with and without specific language impairment

Cited by 19 publications

References 41 publications

Examination of the Locus of Positional Effects on Children's Production of Plural –s : Considerations From Local and Global Speech Planning

Examination of the Locus of Positional Effects on Children's Production of Plural –s : Considerations From Local and Global Speech Planning

Phonological and morphophonological effects on grammatical development in children with specific language impairment

Irregular past tense forms in English: how data from children with specific language impairment contribute to models of morphology

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