title: Error analysis of pronouns by normal and language-impaired children.
abstract: Recent research has located extraordinary weakness in specifically language-impaired (SLI) children's development other than grammatical morphemes. A problem with pronoun case marking was reported to be more prevalent in SLI children than in normally developing children matched by mean length of utterance. However, results from the present study do not support that finding. Spontaneous utterances from 3 conversational contexts were generated by 3 groups of normal and SLI children and were analyzed for accuracy of pronoun usage. Third person singular pronouns were judged according to case, gender, number, person and cohesion based on their linguistic and nonlinguistic contexts. Results indicated that SLI children exhibited more total errors than their chronological peers, but not more than their language level peers. An analysis of error types indicated a similar pattern in pronoun case marking.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, Illinois State University, Normal 61790-4720, USA.
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Moore
mesh_terms: D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male