Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T09:04:21.289Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Proficiency with tense and aspect concordance: children with SLI and their typically developing peers*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2010

AMANDA J. OWEN
AMANDA J. OWEN*
Affiliation:
University of Iowa, Communication Sciences & Disorders; Member, DeLTA Center
*
Address for correspondence: Amanda J. Owen, 121 A SHC, Dept of Speech Pathology, 400 Hawkins Dr., University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242. tel: 319-335-6951; e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Children with SLI have difficulty with tense and agreement morphology. This study examined the proficiency of these children and their typically developing peers with the coordination of tense and aspect markers in two-clause sentences. Scenarios designed to elicit past tense were presented to five- to eight-year-old children with SLI (n=14) and their normally developing age- and MLU-matched peers (n=24) to examine the omission of tense markers in complex sentences (Owen, 2010). Responses with overt tense/aspect morphology in both clauses were recoded for how similar the use of tense and aspect was across the two clauses. Tense and aspect concordance was high across both sentence types, but aspect-only mismatches were more common than tense mismatches. The three groups of children did not differ from each other on any comparisons. Coordination of temporal information in sentences with more than one time marker does not appear to be especially difficult for these children.

Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , June 2011 , pp. 675 - 699
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

This work was supported by an internal research grant from the University of Iowa. I would like to thank the children and families who participated in this project and acknowledge the support of Augustana College (Allison Haskill) and the Scottish Rite Program (Elizabeth Merrifield) for assistance with subject recruitment. Stacy Meyers and Marie Christiansen assisted with stimuli development for the elicitation task. The following people assisted with data collection and analysis: Amanda Murphy, Li Sheng, Vicki Samelson, Rebecca Eness, Kenneth Marciniak, Rachel Wakefield, Lyndi Hill, Laura Romey, Katie Errek and Talia Hindin. This article benefited from careful reading by Jean K. Gordon and Melissa Duff and discussion within the Language Discussion Group at the University of Iowa. Portions of the article were presented at the Society for Research in Child Language Disorders held in Madison, WI in 2009.

References

Aksu, A. (1978). Aspect and modality in the child's acquisition of the Turkish past tense. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Antinucci, F. & Miller, R. (1976). How children talk about what happened. Journal of Child Language 3, 167–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, L., Lifter, K. & Hafitz, J. (1980). Semantics of verbs and the development of verb inflection in child language. Language 56(2), 386–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, M. L., Reid, J. & Murray, C. (2007). Causal sentence production in children with language impairments. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 42(2), 155–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eisenberg, S. (2003). Production of infinitival object complements in the conversational speech of 5-year-old children with language-impairment. First Language 23(3), 327–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fletcher, P., Stokes, S. & Wong, A. (2005). Constructions and language development: Implications for language impairment. In Fletcher, P. & Miller, J. (eds), Developmental theory and language disorders, 35–52. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillam, R. B. & Pearson, N. A. (2004). Test of Narrative Language. Austin, TX: PRO-ED. Inc.Google Scholar
Goffman, L. & Leonard, J. (2000). Growth of language skills in preschool children with specific language impairment: Implications for assessment and intervention. American Journal of Speech Language Pathology 9, 151–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hornstein, N. (1990). As time goes by: Tense and Universal Grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, B. W. & Morris, S. R. (2007). Clinical implications of the effects of lexical aspect and phonology on children's production of the regular past tense. Child Language Teaching & Therapy 23(3), 287–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, A. & Kaufman, N. (2004). Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test manual (KBIT-2). Circle Pines, MN: AGS Publishing.Google Scholar
Kidd, E., Lieven, E. & Tomasello, M. (2006). Examining the role of lexical frequency in the acquisition and processing of sentential complements. Cognitive Development 21, 93–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korkman, M., Kirk, U. & Kemp, S. (1998). NEPSY: A developmental neuropsychological assessment. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Krantz, L. R. & Leonard, L. B. (2007). The effect of temporal adverbials on past tense production by children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50(1), 137–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leonard, L. B. (1989). Language learnability and specific language impairment in children. Applied Psycholinguistics 10, 179–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonard, L. B. & Deevy, P. (2009). Tense and aspect in sentence interpretation by children with specific language impairment. Journal of Child Language 36, 1–24.Google Scholar
Leonard, L. B., Deevy, P., Kurtz, R., Krantz Chorev, L., Owen, A., Polite, E., et al. (2007). Lexical aspect and the use of verb morphology by children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50(3), 759–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leonard, L. B., Miller, C. A. & Finneran, D. (2009). Grammaticality judgments in adolescents with and without language impairment. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 43(3), 346–57.Google Scholar
Leonard, L. B., Salameh, E. K. & Hansson, K. (2001). Noun phrase morphology in Swedish speaking children with specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics 22, 619–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marinellie, S. A. (2004). Complex syntax used by school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) in child–adult conversation. Journal of Communication Disorders 37(6), 517–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, C. A., Kail, R., Leonard, L. B. & Tomblin, J. B. (2001). Speed of processing in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 44(2), 416–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Owen, A. J. (2010). Factors affecting accuracy of past tense production in children with specific language impairment and their typically developing peers: The influence of verb transitivity, clause location, and sentence type. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 53(4), 993–1014.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Owen, A. J. & Leonard, L. B. (2006). The production of finite and nonfinite complement clauses by children with specific language impairment and their typically developing peers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49(3), 548–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paradis, J. & Crago, M. (2000). Tense and temporality: Similarities and differences between language-impaired and second-language children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 43, 834–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Redmond, S. M. & Rice, M. L. (2001). Detection of irregular verb violations by children with and without SLI. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 44, 655–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rice, M. L., Wexler, K. & Herschberger, S. (1998). Tense over time: The longitudinal course of tense acquisition in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 41, 1412–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shirai, Y. & Andersen, R. W. (1995). The acquisition of tense–aspect morphology: A prototype account. Language 71(4), 743–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Valian, V. (2006). Young children's understanding of present and past tense. Language Learning and Development 2, 251–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van der Lely, H. K. J. & Battell, J. (2003). WH-movement in children with grammatical SLI: A test of the RDDR hypothesis. Language 79, 153–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, L. (2001). Aspectual influences on early tense comprehension. Journal of Child Language 28, 661–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weist, R., Wysocka, H., Witkowska-Stadnik, K., Buczowska, E. & Konieczna, E. (1984). The defective tense hypothesis: On the emergence of tense and aspect in child Polish. Journal of Child Language 11, 347–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Werner, E. & Kresheck, J. (1974). Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test–II. DeKalb, IL: Janelle Publications.Google Scholar
Wexler, K. (1998). Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint: A new explanation of the optional infinitive stage. Lingua 106, 23–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, K. T. (1997). Expressive Vocabulary Test. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar