Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Sensitivity to Verb Phrase Grammaticality by Children With Specific Language Impairment
Abstract
Research suggests that typically developing (TD) children and children with specific language impairment (SLI) are sensitive to noun phrase grammaticality (Gerken & McIntosh, 1993; McNamara, Carter, McIntosh, & Gerken, 1998). A verb comprehension task was used to investigate sensitivity to auxiliary is in four contexts – grammatical (Who ispushing?), omitted (Who pushing?), ungrammatical (Who in pushing?), and nonsense (Who id pushing?). Eight preschoolers with SLI (age range = 44 – 58 months) and eight language-matched TD toddlers (22 – 29 months) participated. Data revealed a significant interaction: children with SLI had the lowest comprehension in the ungrammatical context and TD children had the highest. Results suggest that children with SLI, but not younger typically developing children, were sensitive to grammatical co-occurrences. One explanation is that children with SLI’s knowledge of morphosyntax exceeded production. Moreover, typically developing children may have ignored morpheme anomalies, perhaps benefiting from other input cues or flexible sentence processing.
Publication Date
2005
Recommended Citation
Beverly, B. L., & Swanson, L. A. (2005). Sensitivity to verb phrase grammaticality by children with specific language impairment. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 100(3), 1049-1054. https://doi.org/10.2466%2Fpms.100.3c.1049-1054
Comments
This is the peer-reviewed version of the following article: Beverly, B. L., & Swanson, L. A. (2005). Sensitivity to verb phrase grammaticality by children with specific language impairment. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 100(3), 1049-1054, which is published in its final form at https://doi.org/10.2466%2Fpms.100.3c.1049-1054. This article may not be used commercially or be enhanced, enriched, or transformed in any way without permission from the authors and publishers.