The acquisition of relative clause comprehension in Hebrew: a study of SLI and normal development.
Comprehension of relative clauses was assessed in 10 Hebrew-speaking school-age children with syntactic SLI and in two groups of younger children with normal language development. Comprehension of subject- and object-relatives was assessed using a binary sentence-picture matching task. The findings were that while Hebrew-speaking children with normal development comprehend right-branching object relatives around the age of 6 ; 0, children with syntactic SLI are still at chance level in object relatives by age 11 ; 0. The four-year-olds were also at chance on object relatives. Comprehension of subject relatives was good in the SLI group, similar to the six-year-olds, and significantly better than the four-year-olds. The syntactic impairment is interpreted as a selective deficit to non-canonical sentences that are derived by movement.
Friedmann
Naama
N
School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. naamafr@post.tau.ac.il
Novogrodsky
Rama
R
D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D007802:Language; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000208:ethnology*; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014706:Verbal Learning