The use of definite and indefinite articles by children with specific language impairment

Polite, Elgustus J.; Leonard, Laurence B.; Roberts, Felicia

doi:10.3109/17549507.2011.558116

Cited by 25 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Most of the errors were substitutions of the indefinite article a for the definite article the. This vulnerability of the definite article was also found for English-acquiring pre-school children with SLI by Polite, Leonard & Roberts (2011). However, further analysis shows that only 25% of the children with SLI in Chondrogianni & Marinis' study do this at a substantial rate ( = more than 50% of the time).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 62%

Article choice in children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

Schaeffer

Witteloostuijn²,

Haan³

2014

AVT

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This study reports on the choice between a definite and an indefinite article by children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). We carried out an elicited production task with 16 Dutch-speaking non-grammatically impaired children with HFA aged 6-13, 16 age-matched Dutch-speaking children with SLI, and 16 typically developing (TD) age controls. The results in the indefinite conditions reveal virtually no errors across groups. However, in the definite condition the HFA group, but NOT the SLI group, incorrectly produces indefinite articles significantly more often than the TD group. A more detailed analysis shows that 38% (6/16) of the children with HFA vs. 13% (2/16) of the children with SLI regularly produce indefinite articles in definite contexts. We propose that these children do not always calculate the additional (pragmatic) meaning of indefinites derived by scalar implicature (Horn 2006). Furthermore, development by age in the SLI group, but NOT in the HFA group, suggests that the failure to draw a scalar implicature is more persistent in children with HFA than in children with SLI. Concluding, our results show that non-grammatically impaired children with HFA are more prone to pragmatic impairments than children with SLI, suggesting a dissociation between grammar and pragmatics.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 62%

Article choice in children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

Schaeffer

Witteloostuijn²,

Haan³

2014

AVT

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“…Articles are the most frequently studied weaksyllable morphemes posing problems for Englishspeaking children with DLD (e.g., Polite et al 2011). However, there are others.…”

Section: Factor 3: the Power Of Prosodymentioning

confidence: 99%

Five overarching factors central to grammatical learning and treatment in children with developmental language disorder

Leonard

Kueser

2019

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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Background During grammatical treatment of children with developmental language disorder (DLD), it is natural for therapists to focus on the grammatical details of the target language that give the children special difficulty. However, along with the language‐specific features of the target (e.g., for English, add –s to verbs in present tense, third‐person singular contexts), there are overarching factors that operate to render the children's learning task more, or less, challenging, depending on the particular target. Aims To identify five such factors that can play a role in the grammatical learning of children with DLD. We use English as our example language and provide supporting evidence from a variety of other languages. Main Contribution We show that the relative degree of English‐speaking children's difficulty with particular grammatical details can be affected by the extent to which these details involve: (1) bare stems; (2) opportunities for grammatical case confusion; (3) prosodic challenges; (4) grammatical and lexical aspect; and (5) deviations from canonical word order. Conclusions During treatment, therapists will want to consider not only the English‐specific features of grammatical targets but also how these more general factors can be taken into account to increase the children's success.

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“…To-date there are only two experimental studies examining the acquisition of definite and indefinite articles in English-speaking children with SLI (McGregor & Leonard, 1994;Polite et al 2011).…”

Section: The Acquisition Of Articles In Typically Developing Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The majority of these studies have examined the morpho-syntactic properties of English articles in pre-school children with SLI using naturalistic data and have provided mixed results regarding the vulnerability of articles in this population. A recent experimental study contrasting the acquisition of English definite and indefinite articles in pre-school children with SLI (Polite, Leonard, & Roberts, 2011) has suggested that definite articles are particularly problematic and may constitute clinical markers for English-speaking children with SLI.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Production of definite and indefinite articles in typically developing English-speaking children and children with SLI

Chondrogianni

Marinis

2015

Lingua

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The present paper examines the production of definite and indefinite articles in English-speaking typically-developing (TD) children and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Twenty four English-speaking children with SLI (mean age: 7;5), twenty nine TD age-matched (TD-AM) children (mean age: 7;5) and condition; in the indefinite article contexts, they had better performance on the nonreferential predicational vs. the referential specific and the non-referential instrumental conditions. In terms of errors, the TD-VM children and the children with SLI produced significantly more substitutions than the TD-AM children in the definite article contexts. In the indefinite article contexts, the three groups did not differ in terms of accuracy or error patterns. The present results point towards problems in the discourse integration of entities that are part of the speaker's and hearer's knowledge in children with SLI and TD-VM controls, especially in definite articles. These problems are accentuated in the children with SLI due to their grammatical impairment and suggest that children with SLI exhibit a delayed acquisition profile.

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The use of definite and indefinite articles by children with specific language impairment

Cited by 25 publications

References 19 publications

Article choice in children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

Article choice in children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

Five overarching factors central to grammatical learning and treatment in children with developmental language disorder

Production of definite and indefinite articles in typically developing English-speaking children and children with SLI

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