Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:51:38.697Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Morphosyntax in children with word finding difficulties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2008

VICTORIA A. MURPHY ,
JULIE DOCKRELL ,
DAVID MESSER  and
HANNAH FARR
VICTORIA A. MURPHY*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
JULIE DOCKRELL
Affiliation:
Institute of Education, University of London
DAVID MESSER
Affiliation:
Open University
HANNAH FARR
Affiliation:
University of Hertfordshire
*
Address for correspondence: Victoria A. Murphy, Department of Education, University of Oxford, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford, OX2 6PY. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Children with word finding difficulties (CwWFDs) are slower and less accurate at naming monomorphemic words than typically developing children (Dockrell, Messer & George, 2001), but their difficulty in naming morphologically complex words has not yet been investigated. One aim of this paper was to identify whether CwWFDs are similar to typically developing children at producing inflected (morphologically complex) words. A second aim was to investigate whether the dual-mechanism model could account for the use of morphology in a sample of CwWFDs, exemplifying the notion that regular inflections are part of a rule-based system and computed on-line, while irregular inflections are retrieved directly from the associative system (Pinker, 1999). The inflectional knowledge of a group of CwWFDs was compared against a group of language age-matched typically developing peers in three experiments. In Experiment 1 children produced the past tenses of high- and low-frequency regular and irregular English verbs. In Experiment 2 children generalized their knowledge of the past tense system onto nonsense verbs and in Experiment 3 children produced past tenses of verbs used in either a denominal or a verb root context. In each of these three studies, the CwWFDs performed similarly to matched typical children, suggesting that they do not have a selective problem with morphosyntactic features of words. The findings provide mixed support for the dual-mechanism model.

Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , August 2008 , pp. 703 - 720
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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 research was funded by a grant from the ESRC RHP0043. We would like to thank all the children and schools for their willingness to take part in the studies.

References

REFERENCES

Berko, J. (1958). The child's learning of English morphology. Word 14, 150–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H. & Almazan, M. (1998). Syntax and morphology in Williams syndrome. Cognition 68, 167–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, J. D., MacWhinney, B., Flatt, M. & Povost, J. (1993). Psyscope: an interactive graphics system for designing and controlling experiments in the psychology laboratory using Macintosh computers. Behaviour Research Methods, Instruments and Computers 25, 257–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Constable, A., Stackhouse, J. & Wells, B. (1997). Developmental word-finding difficulties and phonological processing: the case of the missing handcuffs. Applied Psycholinguistics 18, 507–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dockrell, J. E., Messer, D. & George, R. (2001). Patterns of naming objects and actions in children with word finding difficulties. Language and Cognitive Processes 16, 261–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, N. C. & Schmidt, R. (1998). Rules or associations in the acquisition of morphology? The frequency by regularity interaction in human and PDP learning of morphosyntax. Language and Cognitive Processes 13, 307–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Francis, W. N. & Kucera, H. (1982). Frequency analysis of English usage: Lexicon and grammar. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
German, D. J. (1989). A diagnostic model and a test to assess word-finding skills in children. British Journal of Disorders of Communication 24, 21–39.Google Scholar
German, D. J. & Simon, E. (1991). Analysis of children's word-finding skills in discourse. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 34, 309–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldman, R. & Fristoe, M. (2000). Test of Articulation 2. Circle Pines, MN: AGS Publishing.Google Scholar
Joanisse, M. F. & Seidenberg, M. S. (1998). Specific language impairment: A deficit in grammar or processing? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2, 240–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kim, J. J., Marcus, G. F., Pinker, S., Hollander, M. & Coppola, M. (1994). Sensitivity of children's inflection to grammatical structure. Journal of Child Language 21, 173–209.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McGregor, K. & Appel, A. (2002). On the relationship between mental representations and naming in a child with specific language impairment. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 16, 1–20.Google Scholar
McGregor, K. & Waxman, S. (1998). Object naming at multiple hierarchical levels: A comparison of preschoolers with and without word-finding deficits. Journal of Child Language 25, 419–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Messer, D., Dockrell, J. E. & Murphy, N. (2004). Relation between naming and literacy in children with word-finding difficulties. Journal of Educational Psychology 96(3), 462–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miozzo, M. (2003). On the processing of regular and irregular forms of verbs and nouns: Evidence from neuropsychology. Cognition 87, 101–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Murphy, V. A. (2004). Dissociable systems in second language inflectional morphology. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26, 433–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinker, S. (1999). Words and rules: The ingredients of language. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar
Prasada, S. & Pinker, S. (1993). Similarity-based and rule-based generalizations in inflectional morphology. Language and Cognitive Processes 8, 1–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prasada, S., Pinker, S. & Snyder, W. (1990). Some evidence that irregular forms are retrieved from memory but regular forms are rule-generated. Paper presented at the 31st Annual Meeting of the Psychonomics Society, New Orleans, November 1990.Google Scholar
Raven, J. (1982). The coloured progressive matrices. Dumfries: H. K. Lewis and Co. Ltd.Google Scholar
Semel, E., Wiig, E. K. & Secord, W. 1986. The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals – Revised. New York: The Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Ullman, M. T. (2004). Contributions of memory circuits to language: The declarative/procedural model. Cognition 92, 231–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ullman, M. T., Maloof, C. J., Hartshorne, J. K., Estabrooke, I. V., Brovetto, C. & Walenski, M. (under revision). Sex, regularity, frequency and consistency: A study of factors predicting the storage of inflected forms.Google Scholar
van der Lely, H. K. J. & Ullman, M. T. (2001). Past tense morphology in specifically language impaired and normally developing children. Language and Cognitive Processes 16, 177–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar