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…

This paper reports on two studies of finite verb use to determine whether children with specific language impairments, who use grammatical morphemes less than typical children matched for mean length of utterance (MLU), produce other language details more frequently. The paper concluded that offsetting effects are not necessary in principle, given…

This study examined difficulties in the use of -ed as passive participle or as past tense in 12 young children with specific language impairment. Results suggest that either the surface properties of -ed are related to the difficulty or these children have a separate, non-tense- related deficit in the area of verb morphology. (Contains…

This study examined the influence of argument-MA-structure complexity on the omission of auxiliary "be" verbs in 30 children with specific language impairment (SLI). Results indicated that the children with SLI and controls matched for mean length of utterance were more likely to omit the auxiliary forms when attempting sentences with greater…

This study examined the productivity and representation of past-tense marking by 11 6-year-old children with and 22 children without specific language impairment (SLI). Patterns of past-tense marking as a function of a word's phonological composition and inflectional frequency were the same for the SLI children and the 11 control children matched…

Investigates whether patient animacy affected the acquisition of the passive construction of syntax of 32 children aged two-five years. Results indicate that children who were taught the passive with animate patients produced more passives in the teaching phase than did comparable children who received inanimate patients. (RJC)

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 investigated the rate at which 60 elementary school children produced 3 advanced verb forms--past progressive, past perfect progressive, and past perfect--when retelling narratives. Results suggest that advanced verb production is influenced by children's sensitivity to type of narrative register, the propositional ability associated…

Evaluation of the grammatical morphology used by 50 preschool children with specific language impairment as a function of their lexical diversity found their use of finite-verb morphology (based on number of different verbs used) and noun-related morphology lagged behind expectations in comparison to a group of normally developing preschoolers.…

Re-examination of data on noun-verb pair comprehension and production in Australian and American Sign Language confirm the existence of formationally related noun-verb pairs in Auslan in which the verb displays a single movement and the noun displays a repeated movement. Overall, the derivational process appears closely linked to an iconic base…

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…

Discusses prevailing ideas of how children learn language and addresses the argument of rules versus analogies in learning to form the past tense of verbs. Cites cases involving connectionist models. (ML)

The use of deictic words from 5 classes by 4 preschool teachers and 12 children with hearing losses was examined. Teachers used a total of 648 deictic words versus the children's 172 examples. Personal pronouns were the most frequently used class, followed by demonstrative pronouns, adverbs of location, shifting reference verbs, and adverbs of…

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 regular and irregular verb class distinctions in the language of two adults with severe congenital physical impairments who relied on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems. Limited evidence for distinction between the two verb classes was found. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed. (DB)