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Production and on-line comprehension of definite articles and clitic pronouns by Greek sequential bilingual children and monolingual children with specific language impairment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2014

VASILIKI CHONDROGIANNI ,
THEODOROS MARINIS ,
SUSAN EDWARDS  and
ELMA BLOM
VASILIKI CHONDROGIANNI*
Affiliation:
Bangor University
THEODOROS MARINIS
Affiliation:
University of Reading
SUSAN EDWARDS
Affiliation:
University of Reading
ELMA BLOM
Affiliation:
University of Utrecht
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Vasiliki Chondrogianni, School of Linguistics and English Language, Bangor University, Bangor LL57 2DG, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The present study compared production and on-line comprehension of definite articles and third person direct object clitic pronouns in Greek-speaking typically developing, sequential bilingual (L2-TD) children and monolingual children with specific language impairment (L1-SLI). Twenty Turkish Greek L2-TD children, 16 Greek L1-SLI children, and 31 L1-TD Greek children participated in a production task examining definite articles and clitic pronouns and, in an on-line comprehension task, involving grammatical sentences with definite articles and clitics and sentences with grammatical violations induced by omitted articles and clitics. The results showed that the L2-TD children were sensitive to the grammatical violations despite low production. In contrast, the children with SLI were not sensitive to clitic omission in the on-line task, despite high production. These results support a dissociation between production and on-line comprehension in L2 children and for impaired grammatical representations and lack of automaticity in children with SLI. They also suggest that on-line comprehension tasks may complement production tasks by differentiating between the language profiles of L2-TD children and children with SLI.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 36 , Issue 5 , September 2015 , pp. 1155 - 1191
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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