title: Subordinate clause comprehension and tense/agreement inconsistency in children with specific language impairment.
abstract: Several recent studies have suggested that the production errors of children with specific language impairment (SLI) such as The girl singing may be explained by a misinterpretation of grammatical adult input containing a similar structure (e.g., The boy hears the girl singing). Thirteen children with SLI and 13 younger typically developing children with comparable sentence comprehension test scores (TD-COMP) completed a comprehension task to assess their understanding of sentences involving a nonfinite subject-verb sequence in a subordinate clause such as The dad sees the boy running. TD-COMP children were more accurate on subordinate clause items than children with SLI despite similar performance on simple transitive (e.g., The horse sees the cow) and simple progressive (e.g., The cow is eating) items. However, no relationship was found between the SLI group's specific subordinate clause comprehension level and their specific level of auxiliary is production, casting some doubt on this type of structure as a source for inconsistent use of auxiliary is.
  
  
  
  The reader will learn that children with specific language impairment (SLI): (1) have difficulty understanding complex sentences that include nonfinite subject-verb sequences; (2) that this difficulty is apparent in comparison to younger typically developing peers who have similar scores not only on a sentence comprehension test, but also on simple sentences that correspond to the component parts of the complex sentences; and (3) that this weakness is concurrent with these children's inconsistent use of auxiliary is in production. Although novel verb studies show a clear connection between how children with SLI hear new verbs and how they use them, we do not yet have evidence that this connection is tied to a poor understanding of the input sentences that house the verbs.
authors.affiliation: Butler University, Indianapolis, IN, United States. Electronic address: ssouto@butler.edu.
authors.forename: Sofía M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Souto
authors.affiliation: Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States.
authors.forename: Laurence B
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Leonard
authors.affiliation: Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States.
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Deevy
authors.affiliation: University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, United States.
authors.forename: Marc E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Fey
authors.affiliation: University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, United States.
authors.forename: Shelley L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Bredin-Oja
mesh_terms: D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D007807:Language Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008297:Male
keywords: Comprehension; Language disorders; Specific language impairment; Syntax