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Auxiliary verbs in Dutch SLI children

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Symptomatology in SLI children has been characterised for English speaking children in a number of studies. Symptoms for Dutch SLI children have not been described to the same extent. In this article we wanted to examine in detail a category which has regularly been highlighted as deficient in English speaking children, namely auxiliaries. Available data allows us to examine the distribution of members of this category in a group of 16 Dutch SLI children and 16 MLU matched normals. The analysis of our data was based on hypotheses derived from a comparative view of the English and Dutch auxiliary system. The data used are from a corpus formerly gathered by Bol and Kuiken (1988). Our conclusion is that Dutch SLI children show no group differences in production of auxiliaries in comparison to normals. Six out of 16 SLI children omitted auxiliaries.1
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Scandinavian Journal of Logopedics and Phoniatrics
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Auxiliary verbs in Dutch SLI children
Gerard W. Bol & Jan de Jong
To cite this article: Gerard W. Bol & Jan de Jong (1992) Auxiliary verbs in Dutch SLI
children, Scandinavian Journal of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, 17:1, 17-21, DOI:
10.3109/14015439209099177
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Scand
J
Log
Phon
17:
17-21,
1992
Auxiliary verbs in Dutch
SLI
children
Gerard
W.
Bol
and Jan de
Jong
Bol.
G.
W.,
de Jong,
J.
(1992). Auxiliary verbs in Dutch SLI children. Scand
J
Log
Phon 17: 17-21.
Symptomatology in
SLI
children has been characterised for English speaking children
in a number
of
studies. Symptoms
for
Dutch SLI children have not been described
to
the same extent.
In
this article we wanted to examine in detail a category which has
regularly been highlighted as deficient in English speaking children, namely auxilia-
ries. Available data allows
us
to examine the distribution
of
members
of
this category
in
a group
of
16
Dutch SLI children and
16
MLU matched normals. The analysis
of
our
data was based
on
hypotheses derived
from
a comparative view
of
the English
and Dutch auxiliary system. The data used are from a corpus formerly gathered by
Bol
and Kuiken
(1988).
Our
conclusion is that Dutch SLI children show
no
group
differences in production
of
auxiliaries in comparison to normals. Six out
of
16
SLI
children omitted auxiliaries.’
Key
words: specific language impairment, auxiliaries.
Jan
de
Jong,
Sarphatipnrk
30,
1072
PB
Amsterdam, the Netherlandy.
Introduction
The literature about the linguistic symptoms
of
specific
language impairment is predominantly oriented towards
English speaking children. This poses a question: what
is the relevance
of
these symptoms for other language
communities? In this article we want to take up one
problem area often mentioned for English SLI children
and assess its importance for their Dutch counterparts.
Categories which seem to present language-impaired
children with difficulties are bound morphemes and free
morphemes within closed classes, such as articles, cop-
ulas and auxiliaries (Leonard
et
al.,
1987; Rice, 1991).
The one aspect we want to address is the use
of
auxilia-
ries.
Fletcher and Peters, in their 1984 article, tried to find
categories that differentiate SLI children from normals.
They found, in a discriminant function analysis, that
one of the two categories which most reliably distin-
guished SLI children and normals was UVF, ‘Unmarked
Verb Form’. The SLI group were more likely than the
normal group
to
provide, in a clause, a verb which was a
bare item
-
uninflected for tense, and not premodified
by an auxiliary.
Johnston and Kamhi (1984:73) noticed that “error
rates in the negatives, main verb, and interrogative
1.
The analyses reported here were made by a group
of
stu-
dents at the University
of
Groningen, Department
of
Lin-
guistics. We have benefited from comments
on
previous
versions
by
Harald Clahsen, Paul Fletcher, Kristina Hans-
son
and Anne Mills.
reversal categories in large part reflected difficulties
with the auxiliary system
(..)
forms which seemed par-
ticularly vulnerable to error included the auxiliary and
infinitive markers.
Clahsen (1989:
904)
found, in a group
of
German SLI
children that
“all
the children use simple verbs, prefix
verbs, and modals
(..).
Auxiliaries and copulas, how-
ever, are used in only very few cases. Moreover, the
longitudinal data show that the proportion
of
deleted
elements decreases over time.
No
progress is made,
however, in auxiliaries and copulas”. Clahsen found
high deletion rates and no systematic changes when the
children get older.
In addressing the Dutch data, then, we need to con-
sider first the differences of the Dutch auxiliary system
from the English auxiliary system, to see if the pre-
dictions for Dutch might be different. In the second
place we need to
look
at the phonetic environment of
Dutch auxiliaries. Leonard
et
al.
(1987: 234) state that
“SLI children’s use
of
the copula, auxiliary and verb
inflections lags behind expectations based
on
mean ut-
terance length” and add that “contextual analyses of
copula and auxiliary use reveal clear phonetic envi-
ronment influences”. The third point
to
consider is the
data available on Dutch SLI children.
The comparison with English may seem arbitrary and
uncalled for, but it illustrates the problem of transfer-
ring foreign data, as well as the relative lack
of
in-
formation
on
linguistic symptoms of SLI in Dutch.
2
17
G.
W.
Bol
and
J.
de
Jong
Auxiliaries in English and Dutch
The systems compared
In order to compare the English auxiliary system with
the Dutch one, we take the description
of
the English
auxiliary in Radford’s 1988 textbook on transforma-
tional grammar. On page
153
he gives these character-
Auxiliaries can undergo inversion in direct ques-
tions, whereas Nonauxiliary verbs cannot (and
require do-periphrasis)
Auxiliaries can occur in tags, whereas Nonauxilia-
ry verbs cannot (and require do-tags)
Auxiliary verbs can be negated by not/n’t,
whereas Nonauxiliary verbs cannot, and require
do-negatives
Only Modals take
a
‘bare’ infinitive VP comple-
ment
Unlike other Verbs, Modals have no infinitive
form, and hence cannot be used after the infin-
itive particle ‘to’,
or
after another Modal
Unlike other Verbs, Modals have no ‘-n’ parti-
ciple form, and hence cannot be used after perfec-
tive ‘have’
Unlike other Verbs, Modals have no ‘-ing’ form.”
Of
these, only (d) applies to Dutch.
Palmer (1974) makes
a
distinction between primary
auxiliaries and modals. Modals have no flexion mor-
pheme, while primary auxiliaries do have one. This
difference also exists in Dutch. However, many
of
the
difficult aspects of the English system, as shown in
Radford
(1988),
do not seem relevant to Dutch, a lan-
guage with little use for tags, where main verbs can
stand perfectly well on their own in questions
or
nega-
tive sentences. This
is
a first indication that the
SLI
children’s problems with auxiliary use in English might
be
to
a large extent language specific. Moreover, many
aspects
of
language related
to
auxiliary problems from
the literature on
SLI
are not valid for Dutch; in Dutch
potential problems would arise in a different syntactic
context.
An
element
of
Dutch which differentiates it from
English is the use
of
independent ‘pseudo-modals’.
These have no verbal complement, but take a direct
object. Some examples:
(la) Ik kan dat
(1 b)
I
k kan dat doen
(2a) Ik moet die
(2h) Ik moet die hebben
(I
can that)
(I
can
do
that)
(I
must that one)
(I
must have that one)
If we take the (a) examples
to
be elliptical, it is impor-
tant
to
stress
that it is often not possible
to
determine
which verbal lexical item has been elided.
The phonetic environment
Leonard has directed our attention on
a
number
of
occasions
to
the influence
of
phonetic saliency on pro-
duction of bound and free closed-class morphemes.
For
auxiliaries in Dutch only one phenomenon seems rele-
vant. The Dutch auxiliary
zijn
(to be) can be produced
in a contracted form in the third person singular, though
only after a demonstrative pronoun. For example:
(3a) da’s gevallen
next
to
the full form:
(3b) dat
is
gevallen
(that has fallen)
(that has fallen)
Auxiliaries in Dutch children
In 1988,
Bol
and Kuiken presented a Dutch adaptation
of the LARSP procedure of Crystal, Fletcher and
Gar-
man
(1976).
In their research project
Bol
and Kuiken
sampled
100
utterances
of
spontaneous language for
each child, analysed them morphosyntactically and then
compared scores of groups of children, including an SLl
group, with their normals. Comparing a group
of
12
normal children, aged
3;64;0,
with a
group
of
18
SLI
children, they found no significant difference in auxilia-
ry use.
It
has
to
be pointed out, however, that their
category included all auxiliaries with a verbal comple-
ment, modals as well as others.
In a Dutch paper by Jansen
(1987)
the appearance
of
auxiliaries was explored in detail for normally devel-
oping children between two and four years
of
age. The
children belong to the corpus
of
the
Bol
and Kuiken
research. Jansen made an inventory
of
the auxiliaries
used in 48 samples, divided into four stages, conforming
to
stages
I11
to
VI
of
the Dutch profile chart.
Her
overall conclusion was that Dutch children acquire aux-
iliaries as a system, and not ‘piecemeal’. From stage
I11
(age 2;0-2;6) not
just
one auxiliary was produced, but a
set of them (see Table
1).
Table
1.
Auxiliaries
most
frequently
used
by
normal Dutch
children, Jansen
1987.
Stage Age Modals Aspect
111
2;@-2;6
kunnen gaan
(can) (to
Po)
moeten
(must, to have to)
IV
2;6-3;0
hebben
V
3;U-3;6
mogen
zijn
(to have)
(to
be
(to be)
allowed to)
(to want to)
VI
3;u;O
willen
18
Auxiliary verbs in Dutch
SLI
children
Table
2.
Mann-Whitney U tests SLI and normal children
(p<
.OS).
Variables’
Tense (T)
Aspect (A)
Modality
(M)
Passive (P)
Causative
(C)
Other
‘to
have’ (A)
‘to
bc’
(A)
inchoative (A)
‘to
go’ (A)
‘to
come’ (A)
shall/will (A)
progressive
(A)
past
part.
(A)
to
be’ (A)
‘to
remain’ (A)
capability (M)
desire (M)
Obligdtion (M)
permission
(M)
causative
(C)
utt.
with verb
utt.
with aux
Yo
aux
in
utt.
with verb
‘to do’ (C)
Mean rank Corr.
for ties
SLI
Normal 2-tailed
Signif.
5.0 4.0 .51
16.6 15.4 .72
15.9 16.0 .98
2.0 4.0
.ox
2.0
1
.o
2.0
7.8
8.3
4.7 4.2
14.4 14.7
14.4 14.5
2.5 2.5
1.5
1.5
4.0 4.0
10.1 7.8
2.0 3.0
12.0
8.6
3.4 5.6
11.9 16.6
5.5 5.5
1.5
15.6
17.4
16.5 16.8
17.5 15.5
.32
.80
.73
.93
.Y8
1
.oo
1
.oo
1
.0o
.31
.32
.I7
.I6
.12
1
.o0
.5n
.98
.55
*
According
to
Jansen, 1987.
Hypotheses
We are now
in
a position
to
formulate a strong hypothe-
sis: since the Dutch system is far less complex than the
English system, Dutch SLI children will show no prob-
lems with auxiliaries. The assumption behind this hy-
pothesis is that the reason for problems with auxiliaries
in
English is their involvement in complex syntax and
their sometimes low phonetic substance:
A
less radical formulation would be that the problems
for Dutch children exist, but are less severe than in
English. That hypothesis would leave intact the notion
that auxiliaries per se involve a certain complexity, be it
grammatical, semantic
or
otherwise.
Method
From the children examined in the
Bol
and Kuiken
project, we selected
16
samples
of
SLI children and
16
of MLU-matched normals. Of every child
100
analys-
able utterances were available. In every sample the
auxiliaries had already been identified and counted. We
assigned them to classes as well as to lexical items,
according to the classification Jansen used. Further-
more, omissions were counted. This is, of course, only
possible for aspect auxiliaries; as explained earlier the
omission
of
a modal cannot be reliably verified. Scores
of
both groups were compared using the Mann-Whitney
U
test.
Results
As
can be seen
in
Table
2,
none
of
the categories
showed significant differences between the
SLI
group
and the normal group.
As
for
omitted auxiliaries,
6
children showed
in
total
10 omissions in
42
obligatory contexts. The children
omitted only aspect auxiliaries: ‘hebben’ (to have)
7
times and ‘zijn’ (to be)
3
times.
For
example:
Hessel,
age
6;l
MLU
2.1:
(4)
broertje daanl
(5)
broer edaan/
(little brother <has> done
<that>)
(brother <has> done
<that>)
Joep,
age
6;2
MLU
3.5:
(6)
dat Zeppelin daanl (Zeppelin <has> done that)
(7)
ja, dat Zeppelin
gedaanl (yes, Zeppelin <has> done
that)
The correct participle in Dutch has
a
prefix ‘ge-’. The
differences in the utterances quoted are
in
the real-
isation
of
thc prefix. The right form is ‘gedaan’. Note
that this omitted auxiliary
is
not
of
the contractible
kind. The auxiliary would be ‘heeft’.
With reference to Leonard
et
af.
(1987) we looked at
the correlation between MLU and the number of auxil-
iaries, both in the normal and the SLI group. For both
groups there was a clear correlation between increase of
MLU and number of auxiliaries (see Table
3).
Discussion
These results support the strong version of
our
hy-
pothises, i.e. that, since the English system is more
complex than the Dutch,
SLI
children learning Dutch
will show
no
problems with auxiliaries. We have seen
that
no
type
of
auxiliary was used less frequently by
our
SLI
group than by the controls. Six SLI children omit-
ted auxiliaries.
When comparing
our
results with the results of Clah-
Table 3. Correlations with MLU.
Number
of
Number
of
utterances utterances with
with verbs auxiliaries
SLI
MLU
.64*
.68*
Normals MLU .61* .78”*
*
=
a
<
.01
**
=
a
c
.001
2’
19
G.
W.
Bol
and
J.
de
Jong
sen’s research on German
SLI
children, we find that
there is some discrepancy. Since German is closer to
Dutch than to English, in
so
far as the auxiliary system
is less complex, German auxiliaries should not be a
problem either. The difference between the results of
Clahsen’s and
our
studies only concerns omissions.
Of
Clahsen’s
10
SLI
children,
8
subjects omitted auxilia-
ria2.
In interpreting the differences one might look at the
MLU
range of the
SLI
children in both studies. In
Clahsen’s work they range from 1.46 to 2.84 (with one
sample reaching 3.25). The children in our study range
from 2.1
to
4.7. Only four of our
SLI
children overlap
with the
MLU
range of Clahsen’s subjects.
A
simple
prediction might be that Clahsen’s children may still
‘outgrow’ their problems, since, as we saw before, in
our
children increase in
MLU
correlated with increase
of
auxiliaries. This line
of
thinking is not fully supported
by our own data: the Dutch children who omitted auxil-
iaries had
MLUs
from 2.1 up
to
4.2.
Another way
of
looking at it might be to consider
sample
size.
Clahsen’s samples range from 96 to 217
analysable utterances, while ours are restricted to
100
utterances. The sample size being smaller, the Dutch
children may have had fewer opportunities (obligatory
contexts)
to
use auxiliaries.
Conclusion
Dutch
SLI
children showed no group differences in
production
of
auxiliaries in comparison to normals. Six
out
of
16
SLI
children omitted auxiliaries.
We assumed that auxiliaries would provide an exam-
ple
of
a functional category where English
SLI
children
face problems. Comparison
of
characteristics
of
the En-
glish and the Dutch auxiliary system reveals differences.
Without pretending to fully cover the relevant factors, it
seems that the differences between linguistic systems
go
some way towards explaining the differences in beha-
viour between
our
subjects and the children described
in the English language literature.
References
Bol.
G.
W.,
Kuiken, F. (1988).
Crammaticale analyse van
taalontwikkelingsstoornissen,
PhD dissertation, University
of
Amsterdam.
Clahsen.
H.
(1989). The grammatical characterization of de-
vclopmental dysphasia. Linguistics 27: 897-920.
Clahsen,
H.
(1991).
Child
language and developmental dys-
phasia.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Crystal,
D.,
Fletcher, P., Garman, M. (1976).
Thegrammatical
analysis
of
language di.sability.
London: Arnold.
2. A paper by Hansson (1992) presented results similar to
those
of
Clahsen. In a group
of
5
children 47.5%
of
all
auxiliaries were left out, with two children omitting virtually
all auxiliaries.
Fletcher, P., Peters,
J.
(1984). Characterising language impair-
ment in children: an exploratory study. Language Testing
1:
33-49.
Hansson,
K.
(1992). Swedish verb morphology and problems
with its acquisition in languagc disordered children. Paper
presented at the 1992 Lund Symposium on child language
disorders,
2-5
May.
Jansen,
E
(1987).
De
ontwikkeling van hulpwerkwoorden in
de taal van twee- tot vierjarigc kinderen. M. A. thesis,
University
of
Amsterdam.
Johnson,
J.,
Kamhi, A. (1984). The same can be less: syntactic
and semantic aspects
of
the utterances
of
languageimpaired
children. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly
30:
65-86.
Leonard,
L.
B.,
Sabbadini, L., Leonard,
J.
S.,
Volterra, V.
(1987). Specific language impairment in children: a cross-
linguistic study. Brain Lang 32: 23S252.
Palmer,
F.
(1974).
The
Engiish
verb.
London: Longman.
Radford, A. (1988).
Transformational grammar.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Rice, M. (1991). Children with specific language impairment:
towards a model
of
teachability. In:
E.
Krasneger (Ed.).
Biobehavioral foundations
of
language.
Hillsdale,
N.J.
:
Erl-
baum.
Sammanfattning
Hjalpverb
hos
hollandska sprikstorda barn
Artikelforfattarna inleder med att konstatera att littera-
turen om sprikliga symtom hos barn med sprikstorning
huvudsakligen handlar om engelsksprikiga barn.
De
frigar sig darfor: ar symtomen relevanta ocksi for an-
dra sprik?
Problem med hjalpverbssystemet och verbandelser
har ofta namnts i litteraturen som nigot som skiljer
sprikstorda barn frin barn med normal sprikutveck-
ling. Forfattarna har darfor valt att jamfora sprikstorda
hollandska barns beharskning av hjalpverbssystemet
med vad som rapporterats om sprikstorda engelska
barn.
Det engelska hjalpverbssystemet ar jamfort med det
hollandska, komplext och
de
flesta av sdrigheterna,
t
ex
att hjalpverb kan genomgi inversion
i
direkta frigor
och kan negeras med “not”/”n’t”, medan icke-hjilpverb
har kraver do-omskrivning, att modala hjalpverb ej har
infinitiv, particip- eller -ingform, ar sprikspecifika.
De hypoteser forfattarna staller upp ar: a) eftersom
det hollandska hjalpverbssystemet ar enklare, bor det
inte villa problem for sprikstorda hollandska barn
(stark hypotes); och
b)
hollandska sprikstorda barn har
problem med hjalpverb, men lindrigare an engelska
barn (svagare hypotes).
1
studien, som ornfattar
16
barn med sprikstorning
och 16 sprikligt matchade kontroller frin vilka
100
yt-
tranden vardera analyserats, fann man inga skillnader
vad betraffar utelamnande av hjalpverb (“ha” och
“vara”). Dvs hjalpverben villar inte storre problem for
sprikstorda an for sprikligt nomalutvecklade barn.
Man fann daremot ett klart samband mellan okande
MLU
(yttrandemedellangd) och okande anvandning av
hjalpverb.
Forfattarna menar att resultaten stoder den starka
20
Auxiliary verbs
in
Dutch
SLI
children
hypotesen: det engelska hjalpverbssystemets komplexi-
tet giir det svirare for engelska sprikstorda barn att
tillagna sig, medan det enkIare hollandska systemet inte
villar storre problem.
Forfattarna noterar en skillnad gentemot Clahsens
resultat frin tyska barn. Eftersom tyskans hjalpverbs-
system Br mera likt hollandskans an engelskans, borde
intc heller tyska barn ha problem med hjalpverb. Detta
visar sig dock vara fallet
i
Clahsens studie, dar de flesta
sprHkstorda barnen utelamnar hjalpverb. Skillnaden
skulle kunna forklaras av att de flesta barnen i den tyska
studien har Iagre
MLU
an de som deltog
i
den hol-
Iandska studien.
Forfattarnas slutsats ar att sprikstorda hollandska
barn har mindre problem med hjalpverb an sprikstorda
engelska barn och att detta skulle kunna forklaras av
skillnader
i
komplexitet mellan de bida sprbken. Resul-
taten och slutsaten visar hur viktigt det
Cr
att gora tvar-
sprikliga studier av sprikliga symtom vid sprikstor-
ning.
Y
h
teenve
to
Hollantilaisten kielellisessa
kehtyksessa
viivistyneiden lasten apuverbit
Kirjoittajat toteavat, etta kielellisia oireita koskettava
kirjallisuus kasittelee paaasiasssa englantia puhuvia lap-
sia. Ovatko oirekuvaukset mielekkaita myos muissa
kielissa?
Apuverbien ja verbipaatteiden hallinnan on havaittu
erottelevan kielenkehityksen hairioista karsivia lapsia
normaalisti kehyttyneista. Tutkijat vertasivat hollanti-
laisten lasten apuverbijarjestelman hallintaa englannin-
kielesta saatuihin tuloksiin.
Englantilainen apuverbijarjestelma on huomattavasti
monimutkaisempi kuin hollantilainen ja useimmat vir-
heet ovat kielisidonnaisia.
Tutkimushypoteesit olivat: a) koska hollantilainen
jarjestelma on yksinkertaisempi, eikii se sitten aiheuta
ongelmia kielellisessa kehityksessa viivastyneille lap-
sille? ja
b)
hollantilaisilla kielihaririolapsilla on ongel-
mia apuverbeissa, mutta lievempia kuin englantilaisilla.
Tutkimusryhmassa ja vakioidussa verrokkiryhmassa
oh
16
lasta kummassakin. Tutkittiin sata ilmausta eika
havaittu eroja apuverbien poisjattamisessa.
Eli
apuver-
bit eivat sinansa aiheuttaneet ongelmia tutkimusryhman
lapsille. Sen sijaan havaittiin kasvavan ilmausten keski-
pituuden ja lisaantyvan apuverbien kayton valilla yh-
teys.
Tutkijoiden mukaan tulokset tukevat ajastusta, etta
englanninkielen monimutkainen apuverbijarjestelma
aiheuttaa englanninkielisille lapsille ongelmia.
Saksan kielen apuverbijarjestelma on hyvin paljon
hollannin kaltainen. Kuitenkin Clahsenin tulokset sak-
salaisista lapsista osoittavat apuverbiongelmien olemas-
saolon. Syyna voi olla, etta Clahsenin tutkimuksessa
saksalaisten lasten ilmausten keskipituus
oli
suurempi
kuin hollantilaisten lasten.
Johtopaatos on, etta hollantilaisilla on vahemman
apuverbiongelmia kuin englantilaisilla jarjestelmien
erojen vuoksi. Tutkimus osoittaa kielten valisten vertai-
lujen merkityksen kielellisten hairiiiiden tutkimuksessa.
21
... Grammatical morphology has been shown to be a vulnerable area for mono-and bilingual children with specific language impairment (SLI) (mo-SLI, bi-SLI) or with the recently coined term 'developmental language disorder' (DLD) (Bishop et al. 2016(Bishop et al. , 2017 1 . Tense formation, in particular, has been documented as being especially problematic at both the level of suffixes or concatenating morphology, e.g., past tense -ed in English, and of free morphology, e.g., auxiliaries, for children with SLI speaking a number of languages such as English (Paradis 2016, Rice and Wexler 1996, Pine et al. 2008, German (Clahsen et al. 1997), Dutch (Rispens and De Bree 2014, Bol and de Jong 1992, de Jong et al. 2013, and French (Paradis and Crago 2001), among many others. However, the severity of the impairment differs across languages and is modulated by the availability, systematicity and transparency of morphophonological cues in a particular language (Leonard 2014). ...
... The less affected nature of auxiliaries in Welsh SLI may reflect properties of Welsh auxiliaries and their obligatoriness in the formation of tenses (present and past) and their resistance to being dropped in third-person singular contexts. It is also consistent with previous findings in the literature regarding cross-linguistic differences in the severity of impairment, which reflect language-specific properties of auxiliaries (see Bol and de Jong 1992 for similar arguments for auxiliaries in Dutch). ...
Article
Full-text available
Background Grammatical morphology has been shown to be problematic for children with specific language impairment (SLI) or developmental language disorder (DLD). Most research on this topic comes from widely spoken languages, such as English. Despite Welsh being the most extensively spoken indigenous in the UK after English, and Wales being the only official bilingual country in the UK, our knowledge about the morphosyntactic areas of Welsh that may pose problems for Welsh‐speaking children with SLI is limited. Currently, Welsh‐speaking speech and language therapists (SLTs) are heavily reliant on the use of informally translated English assessments. This can inadvertently result in a failure to take aspects of Welsh morphosyntax into account that are critical for the assessment and treatment of Welsh‐speaking children. Aims This is the first study to examine how Welsh–English bilingual children of early school age with typical development (bi‐TD) and with SLI (bi‐SLI) perform on production tasks targeting verbal and nominal morphology in Welsh. We targeted areas of Welsh morphosyntax that could potentially be vulnerable for Welsh‐speaking children with or at risk of language impairment, such as tense marking and plural formation, and assessed their diagnostic potential. Methods & Procedures Twenty‐eight Welsh‐dominant bilingual children participated in the study: 10 bi‐SLI and 18 bi‐TD. They were administered three elicitation tasks targeting the production of verbal (compound and synthetic past tense) and nominal (plural) morphology in Welsh. Outcomes & Results The bi‐SLI children performed worse than their bi‐TD peers across all three tasks. They produced more uninflected verbs in the elicited‐production task and were less likely to be prompted to produce the synthetic past, which is a concatenating, low‐frequency form of the past tense. They also over‐regularized less in the context of plural nouns, and when they did, they opted for high‐frequency suffixes. Conclusions & Implications By focusing on aspects of morphosyntactic development which are unique to Welsh, we have increased existing about how verbal and nominal morphology are acquired in Welsh‐speaking bi‐SLI and bi‐TD children. The present results point towards productivity problems for Welsh‐speaking bi‐SLI children who are adversely influenced by low‐frequency structures and fail to over‐regularize in the context of verbal and nominal concatenating morphology. From a clinical perspective, targeting synthetic past‐tense forms through a prompting task may be a promising assessment and intervention tool that future studies could explore further.
... Wilsenach (2006) studied the sensitivity of Dutch children with SLI to the morpho-syntactic relation between an auxiliary and its verbal complement. Previous studies on Dutch children with SLI suggested that they do not experience problems in this category (Bol & Kuiken, 1988; Bol & De Jong, 1992). This is however discrepant with the findings in German SLI studies, another SOV language (Clahsen, 1989). ...
... The errors take the form of either omissions or substitutions. Although in earlier studies (Bol & Kuiken, 1988; Bol & De Jong, 1992 The development of syntactic complexity will be investigated by looking at mean length of utterance, the number of constituents used in clauses containing a(t least one) verb and the number of complex sentences produced by the children. Verb morphology will be studied by looking at root infinitives, tense and agreement errors and the use of auxiliary gaan + infinitive. ...
Thesis
Full-text available
Morpho-syntactic skills and verb argument structure were investigated longitudinally in narratives of 16 Dutch children with SLI at ages 6, 7 and 8. On some measures, like MLU and sentence complexity, no significant differences were found between the different ages. On other measures, like proportions of agreement errors and complex sentences a ceiling effect was found at age 7. With respect to verb argument structure, subject and object omissions in obligatory contexts were investigated. No significant differences between ages were found for subject omissions, but object omissions decreased significantly between ages 7 and 8. Possibly due to poor working memory skills, the children violate rules for reference and allowed subject-drop. Special attention was given to the overuse of auxiliary gaan (to go) combined with infinitives and overuse of lexical gaan (to go) as general all purpose (GAP) verb. Proportions of gaan+infinitive remained large at all ages. Explanations may be found either in very slow verb paradigm learning or in word finding difficulties. The insertion of auxiliary gaan offers the children extra time to access the lexical verb. The overuse of gaan+infinitive might also be regarded as ‘frozen forms’ used by the children to cope with problems in inflection and movement of lexical verbs. This interpretation lends support to the procedural deficit hypothesis of Ullman & Pierpont (2005) who claim that children with SLI learn ‘rules’ in declarative memory (e.g. for past tense, use ging-en +infinitive). Proportions of lexical gaan decreased from 6 to 7 years and increased again from 7 to 8 years. It was suggested that a certain (critical) mass of the verb lexicon triggers word finding difficulties.
... Nevertheless, grammatical inflections and morphosyntactic abilities on par with DLD performance are not uniformly marked across speakers, an observation that forms the springboard for advancing keen research interest in this particular area of the language domain (Leivada et al., 2017;Leonard, 2014;Marshall & van der Lely, 2006Mastropavlou & Tsimpli, 2011). Difficulties encountered by children with DLD in the formation of grammatically correct structures have been examined in a number of languages (without this being an exhaustive list), including English (Bishop et al., 2016(Bishop et al., , 2017Paradis, 2016;Pine et al., 2008), German (Clahsen et al., 1997), Dutch (Bol & de Jong, 1992;de Jong et al., 2013;Rispens & De Bree, 2014), French (Paradis & Crago, 2001), and Greek (Mastropavlou & Tsimpli, 2011;Stavrakaki et al., 2012;Tsimpli, 1999) as well as in the Greek dialectal variation of Cypriot Greek (CG; Kambanaros et al., 2013;Mastropavlou et al., 2019;Petinou & Terzi, 2002). ...
Article
Full-text available
Young children are known to make significant progress in learning their native language during the first 4 years of their life. Nonetheless, delays or differences in patterns of language acquisition can be cautiously determined and be sensitive indicators of developmental issues. The current paper displays an investigation that examines plural suffixation skills in preschool bilectal Cypriot-Greek (CG)-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) as compared with their age-matched typically developing peers. Predictions have been made based on the Interpretability Hypothesis (IH) theoretical context postulating that grammatical features (inflections for Tense and Case Features) will be differentially affected in DLD depending on the phonological saliency inherent to specific inflection typology. Developmental language disorder diagnosis was based on exclusionary criteria and on clinical markers based on the language samples analyzed for grammatical errors, including the omission of articles in obligatory contexts, clitic misplacement, incorrect suffixation of plural targets, agreement errors, omission of negation, and reduced Mean Length of Utterance in Words (MLUw). A non-real-word experimental paradigm was used to test subject performance of plural suffixation. Findings revealed that plural suffixation difficulty was not an all-or-none phenomenon. Both erroneous and correct responses were identified during both experimental tasks. In addition, errors were observed in both groups of preschool children; nonetheless, the proportion of errors was recorded to be higher in the DLD group.
... They found that SLI subjects had a markedly lower use of modals and other auxiliaries than age-matched controls. For Dutch children with SLI on the other hand, Bol & de Jong (1992) found no significant difference in the use or in the omission of auxiliaries, compared to MLU-matched controls. Several of the measures reflect the problems that the Swedish children with SLI have with complex verb forms. ...
Article
Data from several languages, including Swedish, have shown that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have particular difficulties with verb morphology. In the present study, the verb morphology of six Swedish children with SLI was further explored in longitudinal and cross-sectional data. It was found that the children with SLI had significant problems with the use of auxiliary and modals, compared with younger MLU-matched controls. Although the children with SLI omit auxiliary and modals less frequently with increasing age, their levels of omission are not compatible with their MLU levels. The results are discussed with reference to recent accounts of the underlying nature of SLI.
... Italian (Bortolini & Leonard, 1996;Gulotta et al., 1991;Levi et al., 1991;Leonard et al., 1992), in Spanish(Bosch-Galceran & Serra-Raventos, 1994; Restrepo, 1995), in French (LeNormand et al., 1993; Methe & Crago, 1996) in Hebrew(Dromi et al., 1993; Leonard & Dromi, 1994; Rom & Leonard, 1990), in German(Bartke 1994;Lindner et al., 1994;Roberts 1995), in Dutch(Bol & De Jong, 1992;Leemans, 1994), and in Swedish(Hansson, 1992; Hansson & Nettlebladt, 1990). 8 Studies admitting that procedural memory can be improved have not been attempted to date. ...
... It has been shown that (modal) auxiliaries are the first finite verbs to occur in Dutch child speech (Jordens 1990;Blom 2003). The most frequently used auxiliaries are: hebben "have," zijn "be," gaan "go," kunnen "can," moeten "must" and willen "want" (Bol & De Jong 1992). The present tense inflections of hebben "have" and zijn "be" are irregular; paradigms are given in Table 1. ...
Article
In this study, the acquisition of Dutch finite verb morphology is investigated in children with cochlear implants (CIs) with profound hearing loss and in children with hearing aids (HAs) with moderate to severe hearing loss. Comparing these two groups of children increases our insight into how hearing experience and audibility affect the acquisition of morphosyntax. Spontaneous speech samples were analyzed of 48 children with CIs and 29 children with HAs, ages 4 to 7 years. These language samples were analyzed by means of standardized language analysis involving mean length of utterance, the number of finite verbs produced, and target-like subject-verb agreement. The outcomes were interpreted relative to expectations based on the performance of typically developing peers with normal hearing. Outcomes of all measures were correlated with hearing level in the group of HA users and age at implantation in the group of CI users. For both groups, the number of finite verbs that were produced in 50-utterance sample was on par with mean length of utterance and at the lower bound of the normal distribution. No significant differences were found between children with CIs and HAs on any of the measures under investigation. Yet, both groups produced more subject-verb agreement errors than are to be expected for typically developing hearing peers. No significant correlation was found between the hearing level of the children and the relevant measures of verb morphology, both with respect to the overall number of verbs that were used and the number of errors that children made. Within the group of CI users, the outcomes were significantly correlated with age at implantation. When producing finite verb morphology, profoundly deaf children wearing CIs perform similarly to their peers with moderate-to-severe hearing loss wearing HAs. Hearing loss negatively affects the acquisition of subject-verb agreement regardless of the hearing device (CI or HA) that the child is wearing. The results are of importance for speech-language pathologists who are working with children with a hearing impairment indicating the need to focus on subject-verb agreement in speech-language therapy.
... In other languages, modals can operate in yet a different way. As noted by Bol and de Jong (1992), a modal such as 'can' in Dutch is usually followed by a lexical verb in infinitive form (the latter in sentencefinal position given the word order rules of Dutch). However, in some contexts, the modal alone is sufficient. ...
Article
For years, investigators have studied the use of tense by children with specific language impairment (SLI). This review article provides a summary of research on the use of other time-related grammatical forms by these children. The literature on children's use of grammatical and lexical aspect, modal verbs and temporal adverbs is reviewed. Findings from children with SLI acquiring a range of different languages are considered. Grammatical aspect and lexical aspect appear to be special weaknesses in children with SLI and problems with lexical aspect may also have an adverse effect on these children's ability to use past tense morphology. Although children with SLI are below age level in their use of modal verbs and temporal adverbs, the available evidence suggests that these weaknesses are no greater than these children's more general limitations with language. The evidence thus far indicates that time-related notions further on the morphosyntactic end of the language continuum (aspect) are more problematic for these children than those time-related notions (modals, temporal adverbs) that include a pragmatic and/or semantic component. In some languages, aspect may prove to be a useful clinical marker of this disorder.
Chapter
Taalachterstand heeft bij kinderen niet altijd een eenvoudig te identificeren oorzaak. In dit hoofdstuk gaat het om kinderen die een taalachterstand hebben die niet gemakkelijk wordt ingelopen en die bestaat zonder duidelijk aanwijsbare etiologie.
Article
Data from several languages, including Swedish, have shown that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have particular difficulties with verb morphology. In the present study, the verb morphology of six Swedish children with SLI was further explored in longitudinal and cross-sectional data. It was found that the children with SLI had significant problems with the use of auxiliary and modals, compared with younger MLU-matched controls. Although the children with SLI omit auxiliary and modals less frequently with increasing age, their levels of omission are not compatible with their MLU levels. The results are discussed with reference to recent accounts of the underlying nature of SLI.
Book
Full-text available
In dit proefschrift wordt verslag gedaan van een onderzoek naar de grammaticale problemen van Nederlandse kinderen met een specifieke taalstoornis
Book
Andrew Radford's new textbook is principally for students with little or no background in syntax who need a lively and up-to-date introduction to contemporary work on transformational grammar. It covers four main topics - the goals of linguistic theory, syntactic structure, the nature and role of the lexicon, and the function of transformations and the principles governing their application. The framework takes into account the major works such as Chomsky's Knowledge of Language and Barriers written since the publication of Radford's widely acclaimed Transformational Syntax in 1981. Not only does the present book use a more recent theoretical framework, but at the descriptive level it covers a wider range of constructions and rules than its predecessor. Andrew Radford is well known for his effective pedagogical approach, and in this book even more care has been devoted to providing a sympathetic and non-technical introduction to the field. At the end of each chapter are exercises which reinforce the text, enable students to apply the various concepts, etc. discussed, or encourage them to look more critically at some of the assumptions and analyses presented. The book also has a detailed bibliographical background section and an extensive bibliography which will be a useful source of reference to the primary literature. Although intended principally as a coursebook for students of syntax or English grammar, Transformational Grammar will be invaluable to any reader who needs a straightforward and comprehensive introduction to the latest developments in this field.
Article
This study compares expressive language samples from normal children ( n = 20) and language impaired children ( n = 9), matched for age and intellectual capacity, across a range of grammatical and lexical dimensions. The aims of the inquiry are to determine if it is possible to characterize language impairment (so far as it pertains to the carefully selected group of children in this study) using such dimensions, and in particular to see if the identification can be made on the basis of a subset of the large set of categories used in the original descriptive framework. An initial comparison of incidence scores based on samples of 200 utterances from each child, for 65 grammatical and lexical categories, indicates that only a third of the categories are relevant to the characterization of impairment. A discrimin ant function analysis using a subset of these caregories identified two variables, which, taken together, were reasonably successful in discriminat ing the two groups. The categories identified relate to verb premodification and inflection, and lexical verb type frequency. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Article
The subject of this two part work is the acquisition of language structure in which the development of syntax and morphology is examined by investigations on children without language problems and on children with developmental dysphasia. The author uses a comparative acquisition study to provide insights into the structure and development of the language acquisition device, which cannot be obtained by isolated analysis of only one type of learning. The theoretical framework used for the investigations is the learnability theory , in which acquisition models are proposed which are heavily influenced by theoretical linguistics. Part I shows how child grammar acquisition can be explained in the framework of learnability theory and Part II deals with deficiencies in normal grammar acquisition using the learnability theory.
Article
discusses "teachability factors" associated with children who have been diagnosed as having a specific language impairment (SLI) / such children exhibit a profile of social, intellectual, and sensory function that is age appropriate but have language skills below expectation / outlines the research literature that has focused upon a description and analysis of the problems shown by SLI children / although not much is known about the lexical development of SLI children, Rice feels that this aspect of their linguistic development may be a critical factor in the deficits observed / suggests that a general explanatory model for SLI must account for: language delay relative to normal social and cognitive development, problems with morphology and word learning, and the social and long-term risks associated with academic achievement Rice describes studies carried out by her at the Language Acquisition Preschool (LAP) / major conclusions are: (a) difficulty in verb learning is a central issue in SLI, and (b) language acquisition is hampered by social reactions that impair motivation mechanisms necessary for language learning (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Tested the hypotheses that language-impaired children produce fewer logical propositions per utterance and evidence less control of formal syntactic markers than normal children. Language samples from 10 language-impaired children (aged 54–72 mo) and 10 normal children (aged 32–40 mo) matched for mean length of utterance (MLU [4.17–5.48]) were analyzed for semantic and syntactic characteristics. Spontaneous language samples were obtained from Ss while playing with a dollhouse, viewing a storybook, and performing cognitive tasks. Both hypotheses were confirmed. Despite similar MLUs, the language-impaired Ss expressed fewer propositions per utterance and made more syntactic errors than the younger normal group. Because, in many other respects, Ss in the 2 groups produced equivalent language, the data imply asynchronous development across linguistic domains for the language-impaired group. They also suggest difficulties with sentence formulation, symbolic thought, and the learning of syntactic elements. The data raise important questions about the validity of an MLU match. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
It has been shown in several studies that verb forms are a problematic area for language impaired children. This was found to be true also for Swedish children in the analysis of spontaneous data from five grammatically impaired children aged 5; 1–5; 11. Analysis of verbs showed that the unmarked verb form, the infinitive, is the most frequent form and that, of inflected forms, the present tense is the most frequent. The verbs were divided into state verbs and change verbs, the latter occurring much more frequently than the former. TTR values indicated that change verbs are more lexically varied than state verbs. The difference between the most developed and the least developed children consisted mainly in the most developed child being more varied in the use of inflections.