Plural acquisition in children with specific language impairment.

Full Abstract

A plural elicitation task and a nominal compounding task were administered to a group of children with SLI and two groups of normally developing children, an age-equivalent group (CA) and a language-equivalent group (MLU). Across tasks, differences between the CA and SLI groups were significant, but differences between the MLU and SLI groups were not. These findings suggest that by 5 years of age, children with SLI demonstrate a productive and differentiated plural system. However, unlike the normally developing children, the pluralization skills of the children with SLI were affected by input frequency, with nouns that are frequently pluralized in everyday conversation more readily inflected than ones that are infrequently pluralized. Three explanations within a model of linguistic normalcy are proposed to account for the frequency effect. These include (a) delayed independence of rule use, (b) linguistic vulnerability, and (c) a faulty lexicon.

Author information

Author/s: Oetting, J B (JB); Rice, M L (ML);

Affiliation: Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.

Grants: NIDCD 1R01 NS26129 (Agency:NINDS NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Journal of speech and hearing research (J Speech Hear Res), published in UNITED STATES. (Language: eng)

Reference: 1993-Dec; vol 36 (issue 6) : pp 1236-48

Dates: Created 1994/03/28; Completed 1994/03/28; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 8114491, status: MEDLINE (last retrieved date: 2/18/2009)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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