The use of articles by monolingual Puerto Rican Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment

Abstract

The present investigation sought to evaluate patterns of article use in a group of monolingual Spanishspeaking children with specific language impairment (SLI). In particular, because of conflicting results reported in previous studies, it was of interest to discern specific types of nontarget responses and how these corresponded to what has been reported in other Spanish-speaking children with SLI. Eleven children with SLI and 11 age-matched peers participated in the study. Three different spontaneous speech samples were gathered from each child. In addition, an experimental task that assessed the children's use of articles with a variety of nouns was also administered to the children. The results of the study for both spontaneous speech and experimental data indicated that the children with SLI performed significantly poorer in their use of Spanish articles than their age-matched peers. Most of the nontarget responses consisted of omission of the target article. In contrast to a previous study by Restrepo and Gutiérrez-Clellen, the children did not present with deficits in noun phrase gender agreement. The gender errors that were observed appeared to be due to difficulties accessing the correct article form and not due to deficits in knowledge of the gender agreement paradigm. Possible theoretical explanations were explored suggesting that both processing and linguistic explanations, in particular optionality of determiners, could explain the observed patterns. Reasons for cross-study differences in error patterns are suggested, including relative phonological skill and language learning environment.

Null Subject Occurrence in Monolingual Spanish SLI: A Discriminant Function Analysis

“…Our assumption is that where a child does not use an overt subject, they have chosen to instead use a null subject pronoun, which is a definite. As we have claimed above, this is of theoretical interest inasmuch as children with SLI have been shown to struggle with definites, including definite articles (Restrepo and Gutiérrez-Clellen 2001;Anderson and Souto 2005), direct object clitics (Merino 1983;De la Mora 2004) and verb tense (Grinstead et al 2013). While the ways in which discourse-pragmatic considerations predict the expression of an overt subject in particular dialects is very interesting, 6 they were not the focus of our inquiry.…”

“…4 In the domain of language disorders, Grinstead et al (2013) claim that this failure to communicate between syntax and discourse-pragmatics is responsible not only for the prolonged delay in tense marking in children with SLI, reported by Rice and Wexler (1996) among others, but also for the more general pattern of all discourse-sensitive constructions being slow to develop in the language of children with SLI, while discourse-insensitive constructions are acquired with relatively little difficulty. Specifically, they review evidence that discourse-sensitive constructions including definite articles (e.g., Anderson and Souto 2005), direct object clitics (e.g., De la Mora et al 2003) and verb tense (Grinstead et al 2013) are problematic for child Spanish-speakers, diagnosed with SLI, while discourse-insensitive constructions, such as nominal plural marking and noun-adjective agreement (Grinstead et al 2008), are not problematic. This special difficulty in the development of discourse-sensitive constructions for children with SLI is referred to as Interface Deficit.…”

Reading Comprehension in Children With Specific Language Impairment: An Exploratory Study of Linguistic and Decoding Skills

“…Regarding the small sample size, it is important to note that the strict diagnosis criteria of SLI often make it difficult to use big samples, thus, many studies of children with this disorder have a limited number of participants (e.g., Acosta, Moreno, & Axpe, 2012;Anderson & Souto, 2005;Contemori & Garraffa, 2010;Domsch et al, 2012;Marinellie, 2004).…”

El uso del artículo en niños hispanohablantes con trastorno específico del lenguaje

“…En algunos casos, los niños son monolingües 6,7,8,9 mientras que en otros son bilingües 10,11,12 . Las características del contexto sociolingüístico donde viven los hispanohablantes también varían, lo mismo que la edad de los individuos.…”

“…Las características del contexto sociolingüístico donde viven los hispanohablantes también varían, lo mismo que la edad de los individuos. Algunos investigadores trabajan con niños menores de 4 años 11 y la mayoría lo hace con niños cuyas edades abarcan entre los 3;11 y 5;9 años 6,7,8,9 , aunque otros lo han hecho con mayores de 7 años 10,12 . Así mismo, algunos estudios utilizan muestras espontáneas, mientras que otros emplean tareas experimentales, o bien, se les solicita a los niños contar o recontar un cuento.…”