Examines the production of schwa-like elements, monosyllabic place holders (MPHs), before lexical items in early utterances of Italian children. The results of a longitudinal study of normal language acquisition in six Italian preschool children show that MPHs do not stem from imitation but actually retain important grammatical properties of…

Presents data that challenge the view that the omission of functional categories by children with specific language impairment is a manifestation of the same immaturity characterizing the grammar of young children without impairment. Data include atypically high omissions or even almost total absence of determiners in the speech productions of a…