Purpose: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have known deficits in the verb lexicon and finiteness marking. This study investigated a potential relationship between these 2 variables in children with SLI and 2 control groups considering predictions from 2 different theoretical perspectives, morphosyntactic versus morphophonological.…

The effect of neighborhood density on optional infinitives was evaluated for typically developing (TD) children and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Forty children, twenty in each group, completed two production tasks that assessed third person singular production. Half of the sentences in each task presented a dense verb, and…

This study explored the acquisition of regular and irregular past tense in 21 children with specific language impairment. The findings support a morphosyntactic rather than morphophonological learning model, such as the extended optional infinitive model, with regard to the limitations in finiteness marking and for affected children. (Contains…

Fifty-seven children (ages 5-8) with and without specific language impairment (SLI) participated in judgment and elicitation tasks designed to evaluate their understanding of irregular verb forms. Differences between SLI and control children were observed in their productions and relative levels of sensitivity to infinitive errors in finite…

This study examined initial preferences for verb interpretation by 15 5-year-old children with specific language impairment, 15 language-matched children, and 15 age-matched children. Children indicated preferred interpretations of novel verbs from videotapes of motion and change-of-state activity scenes. Findings suggested that children's verb…

Predictions were formulated for extended Optional Infinitives (OIs) stage in German-speaking children with specific language impairment and evaluated in clinical sample of 8 SLI German-speaking children, ages 4; 0 to 4; 8; and control group of 8 younger utterance-equivalent children, ages 2; 1 to 2; 7. Samples reveal that affected group more…

Production of the morpheme BE was studied among 22 children (ages 4-5) with and without specific language impairment (SLI). Contractible contexts were produced more accurately than uncontractible contexts by both groups, and there were no significant interactions between language status and contractibility. Copula forms were produced more…

This study examined the acquisition of verb particles and prepositions in language-impaired, language-matched, and age-matched preschool children (total n=42). Results indicated that the use of verb particles constituted a particularly challenging task for the language-impaired subjects relative to both the age-matched and language-matched peers.…

This study evaluated an Extended Optional Infinitive theory of specific language impairment (SLI) in children, which suggests that SLI children omit finiteness markers longer than do normally developing children. Comparison of 18 SLI 5-year olds with 2 normally developing groups (ages 5 and 3) found that SLI subjects omitted finiteness markers…