Verbal inflection, articles and object clitics in Italian specific language impairment.
Morphosyntactic skills in spontaneous and elicited production of a 7-year-old boy with specific language impairment (SLI) were examined and compared to those of younger, mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched, typically-developing children. This study focused on inflectional phrase structures as well as complex constructions in order to investigate hypotheses which suggest verbal inflection is a key deficit underlying SLI. It analysed the most affected morphemes in Italian: articles and direct and indirect object clitics. A deficit was found in verbal inflection as well as in articles and object clitics. The difficulties with verbal inflection found were expected given the child's MLU. Problems with articles and clitics were unexpected for MLU, presenting a challenge for hypotheses that focus on verbal inflection.
Department of Developmental and Socialization Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy. aajunyent@hotmail.com
Andrea Anahí
AA
Junyent
Maria Chiara
MC
Levorato
Gianfranco
G
Denes
D002648:Child; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D007802:Language; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*