Laurence B. Leonard

Language Learnability and Specific Language Impairment in Children.

Theories of language learnability have focused on “normal” language development, but there is a group of children, termed “specifically language-impaired,” for whom these theories are also appropriate. These children present an interesting learnability problem because they develop language slowly, the intermediate points in their development differ in certain respects from the usual developmental stages, and they do not always achieve the adult level of language functioning. In this article, specifically language-impaired children are treated as normal learners dealing with an input that is distorted in principled ways. When the children are viewed from this perspective, Pinkers (1984) theory can account for many of the features of their language.

The Role of Speed of Processing, Rapid Naming, and Phonological Awareness in Reading Achievement

This study investigated the role of speed of processing, rapid naming, and phonological awareness in reading achievement. Measures of response time in motor, visual, lexical, grammatical, and phonological tasks were administered to 279 children in third grade. Measures of rapid object naming, phonological awareness, and reading achievement were given in second and fourth grades. Reading group comparisons indicated that poor readers were proportionally slower than good readers across response time measures and on the rapid object naming task. These results suggest that some poor readers have a general deficit in speed of processing and that their problems in rapid object naming are in part a reflection of this deficit. Hierarchical regression analyses further showed that when considered along with IQ and phonological awareness, speed of processing explained unique variance in reading achievement. This finding suggests that a speed of processing deficit may be an “extraphonological” factor in some reading disabilities.

Do children pick and choose? An examination of phonological selection and avoidance in early lexical acquisition.

The influence of phonological selection and avoidance upon early lexical acquisition was examined within an experimental paradigm. During 10 bi-weekly experimental sessions, 12 children (1;0.21 to 1;3.15 at the outset) were presented with 16 contrived lexical concepts, each consisting of a nonsense word and four unfamiliar referents. For each child, eight words involved phonological characteristics which had been evidenced in production (in) and eight had characteristics which had not been evidenced in production or selection (out), in words were produced imitatively and non-imitatively in greater numbers and in earlier sessions than OUT words, providing evidence for the influence of selection and avoidance. The degree of phonetic accuracy of these two types of productions did not differ. These findings are discussed in terms of a proposal concerning early phonological representation and acquisition.

Specific language impairment in children: A cross-linguistic study

A common profile in English-speaking specifically language-impaired children is a moderate deficit across a broad range of linguistic features and a more marked, selective impairment in using bound morphemes and components of the verb system. To gain a clearer understanding of the nature of these more serious problems, we examined the speech of monolingual Italian-speaking as well as English-speaking children with specific language impairment. The evidence suggested that phonological factors contributed significantly to these childrens extraordinary problems with particular linguistic features. Contrary to expectations, other marked deficits seemed more related to the opacity of the rules involved and homonymity with other morphemes than to problems with formal grammatical devices in general or components of the verb system in particular.

Clinical markers for specific language impairment in Italian: the contribution of clitics and non‐word repetition

BACKGROUND The discovery of clinical markers for specific language impairment (SLI) in children can assist in the accurate identification of children with this disorder, and in a description of the disorders phenotype for genetic study. One challenge to this type of research is the fact that languages vary in the most salient symptoms of SLI. This study focuses on Italian. AIMS To determine whether three measures--the use of third-person plural inflections, the use of direct-object clitics and non-word repetition--are successful in distinguishing Italian-speaking children with SLI from their typically developing peers. METHODS & PROCEDURES Eleven preschool-aged children with SLI, 11 same-age typically developing peers and 11 younger typically developing children participated in the study. The third-person plural inflection and direct-object clitic tasks required the children to describe drawings in response to prompts provided by the examiner. In the non-word repetition task, the children repeated non-words ranging from one to four syllables in length. OUTCOMES & RESULTS All three measures proved successful either singly or in combination, with direct-object clitics and non-word repetition showing the highest sensitivity and specificity. CONCLUSIONS Additional research should be pursued to replicate and extend these findings. Along with the potential clinical value of the findings, the results suggest that difficulties with non-final weak syllables--a problem that would adversely affect all three measures--may be an important part of the SLI profile in Italian.

Verb inflections and noun phrase morphology in the spontaneous speech of Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment

Spanish-speaking preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI) were compared to typically developing same-age peers (TD-A) and younger typically developing children matched for mean length of utterance (TD-MLU) in terms of their use of grammatical morphology in spontaneous speech. The children with SLI showed high levels of accuracy on present tense and past tense (preterite) verb inflections. However, their use of definite articles and direct object clitics was significantly more problematic than for either the TD-MLU or the TD-A children. Substitutions and omissions were observed, especially in contexts requiring plural articles and clitics. Many of the details of the observed Spanish SLI profile were predicted by Wexlers (Extended) Unique Checking Constraint (EUCC) proposal. Remaining details in the data could be accommodated by making additional assumptions within the same general linguistic framework as the EUCC. Some of the differences between the findings from Spanish and those from previous studies on related languages such as Italian suggest the need for clinical assessment and intervention procedures that are shaped as much by language-specific details as by the languages typology.

Phonology and children with specific language impairment: Status of structural constraints in two languages

Two studies are reported in which the phonological characteristics of preschool-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) are compared with those seen in younger normally developing children matched for mean length of utterance and consonant inventory size. The productions of both English-speaking and Italian-speaking children with SLI were more likely to deviate from the adult standard than the productions of the younger control children. In Italian, the children with SLI had more difficulty than the younger controls in the use of non-final weak syllables; in English, the children with SLI were poorer than the younger controls in the use of non-final weak syllables, word-final consonants, and word-final consonant clusters. These are the same phonological details that are required for several grammatical inflections and many function words in the two languages. However, the children with SLI were also less consistent than their younger compatriots in using consonants in structurally simple words. These findings provide evidence for the view that for many preschool-age children with SLI, phonological problems go beyond those that might be predicted on the basis of the childrens short utterances and limited consonant inventories.

Individual differences in early child phonology

Three studies are reported that deal with individual differences among children in the use of consonants during the early period of phonological development. The findings indicated that (1) children differ in their early phonologies, yet these differences do not extend beyond certain limits, (2) the linguistic environment cannot account for a number of these phonological differences, and (3) such differences are due in part to the fact that childrens use of sounds varies considerably with the lexical items being produced. Modifications in theories of child phonology are suggested in order to account for these findings.

Subject Pronoun and Article Omissions in the Speech of Children With Specific Language Impairment: A Phonological Interpretation

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their MLU-matched normally developing (ND) peers imitated proper nouns, the pronouns he and you, and the article the in subject phrases. Although all of these word types were phonological phrase-initial syllables, the proper nouns received strong stress, but the function words received weak stress. Both groups of children showed significantly more omissions of the function words than the proper nouns. There was no significant difference amongst the imitations of the two pronouns or the article; all were omitted frequently by both groups. This suggests that the status of subject articles and pronouns as weak syllables in the initial position of phonological phrases may in some cases constitute a more important factor than the distinctive grammatical roles they play. A phonological explanation of subject article and pronoun omissions is explored.

The use of grammatical morphemes by normal and language-impaired children

An examination was made of the grammatical morpheme usage of normal children and language-impaired children matched at two different levels of mean utterance length. The language-impaired children displayed less grammatical morpheme usage than the normal children with equivalent mean utterance length. However, no use of alternative features of semantic importance by the language-impaired children was noted, suggesting that no unique patterns for acquiring language were in operation. Instead, it appears that the language-impaired children may have attached less communicative significance to grammatical morphemes.