This study examines the morphosyntactic development, specifically verb morphology, of typically-developing Bangla-speaking children between the ages of two and four. Three verb forms were studied: the Present Simple, the Present Progressive and the Past Progressive. The study was motivated by the observations that reliable language-specific…

The purpose of this study was to explore the production of infinitival complements by children with specific language impairment (SLI) as compared with mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched children in an effort to clarify inconsistencies in the literature. Spontaneous language samples were analysed for infinitival complements (reduced…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to test Bedore and Leonard's (1998) proposal that a verb morpheme composite may hold promise as a clinical marker for specific language impairment (SLI) in English speakers and serve as an accurate basis for the classification of children with and without SLI beyond the preschool level. Method: The language…

Purpose: Many typically developing children first use inflections such as "-ed" with verb predicates whose meanings are compatible with the functions of the inflection (e.g., using "-ed" when describing events of brief duration with clear end points, such as "dropped"). This tendency is assumed to be beneficial for…

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often have extraordinary difficulty in the use of tense and agreement morphemes. Because spontaneous speech samples may not provide a sufficient number of obligatory contexts for these morphemes, structured probe items are often employed. However, these usually emphasize actions that can be readily…

A group of preschool-aged children with specific language impairment (SLI), a group of typically developing children matched for age (TD-A), and a group of younger typically developing children matched for mean length of utterance (TD-MLU) were presented with novel verbs in contexts that required them to inflect with past tense "-ed."…

The notion that partial control of full agent-action-patient word order in comprehension may precede its production was examined. Reversible active sentences including the verbs "kiss,""hug," and "tickle" were presented to a triad of listeners consisting of a test child, a familiar adult caretaker, and a familiar…

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…