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Grammatical morphology in language–impaired children acquiring English or German as their first language: A functional perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Katrin Lidner  and
Judith R. Johnston
Katrin Lidner*
Affiliation:
Universität München
Judith R. Johnston*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
*
Katrin Lindner, Institut für Deutsche Philologie, Universität München, Schellingstr.3, D-8000 München 40, Germany
Judith R. Johnston, School of Audiology and Speech Sciences, University of British Columbia, 5804 Fairview Crescent, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3 Canada
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Abstract

Fourteen matched pairs of German-speaking and English-speaking language-impaired children, aged 4;5–6;11, were tested for their knowledge of grammatical morphology and expressive vocabulary, using the Grammatical Closure subtest of the ITPA or its German adaptation, Grammatik in the PET, and the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test or the Aktiver Wortschatztest. Children were matched pairwise on the basis of their chronological age, nonverbal IQ, and scores in a sentence imitation and a sentence production task. As predicted, the German-speaking language-impaired children earned higher scores in grammatical morphology and vocabulary than did the English-speaking children. These findings add to a growing body of literature that documents language-specific sensitivity to particular sorts of syntactic devices. They also suggest that the morphological difficulties seen in English-speaking language-impaired children stem in part from the minor functional role played by these forms during the early language learning years.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , April 1992 , pp. 115 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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