Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T07:26:17.969Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Subject–verb agreement in Specific Language Impairment: A study of monolingual and bilingual German-speaking children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2011

MONIKA ROTHWEILER*
Affiliation:
University of Bremen
SOLVEIG CHILLA
Affiliation:
University of Erfurt
HARALD CLAHSEN
Affiliation:
University of Potsdam
*
Address for correspondence: Monika Rothweiler, University of Bremen, FB12, Bibliothekstrasse 1, D-28359 Bremen, Germanyrothweiler@uni-bremen.de

Abstract

This study investigates phenomena that have been claimed to be indicative of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in German, focusing on subject–verb agreement marking. Longitudinal data from fourteen German-speaking children with SLI, seven monolingual and seven Turkish–German successive bilingual children, were examined. We found similar patterns of impairment in the two participant groups. Both the monolingual and the bilingual children with SLI had correct (present vs. preterit) tense marking and produced syntactically complex sentences such as embedded clauses and wh-questions, but were limited in reliably producing correct agreement-marked verb forms. These contrasts indicate that agreement marking is impaired in German-speaking children with SLI, without any necessary concurrent deficits in either the CP-domain or in tense marking. Our results also show that it is possible to identify SLI from an early successive bilingual child's performance in one of her two languages.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The research presented here was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, ‘German Research Council’), through a grant to HC for a research project on monolingual children with SLI at the University of Düsseldorf (SPP ‘Language Acquisition’, 1986–1991) and a grant to MR for a research project on bilingual children with SLI at the University of Hamburg (SFB 538 ‘Multilingualism’, 2002–2011).

References

Acarlar, F., Miller, J. F., & Johnston, J. R. (2006). Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT), Turkish (Version 9) [Computer Software]. Language Analysis Lab: University of Wisconsin-Madison (distributed by the Turkish Psychological Association).Google Scholar
Archibald, L. M. D., & Gathercole, S. E. (2006). Short-term and working memory in SLI. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 41, 675693.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armon-Lotem, S., Galit, A., Siege-Haddad, E., & Walters, J. (2008). Verb inflection as indicators of bilingual SLI. Child Language Seminar 2007. Child Language Seminar Electronic Proceedings, 26–37.Google Scholar
Babur, E., Rothweiler, M., & Kroffke, S. (2007). Spezifische Sprachentwicklungsstörung in der Erstsprache Türkisch [Specific Language Impairment in Turkish as a first language]. Linguistische Berichte, 112, 377–402.Google Scholar
Bartke, S. (1998). Experimentelle Studien zur Flexion und Wortbildung: Pluralmorphologie und lexikalische Komposition im unauffälligen Spracherwerb und im Dysgrammatismus [Experimental studies on inflection and word formation: Plural morphology and lexical compounding in unimpaired children and children with SLI]. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiat, S. (2010). Mapping at the interface. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31 (2), 261270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chilla, S. (2008). Erstsprache, Zweitsprache, Spezifische Sprachentwicklungsstörung? Eine Untersuchung des Erwerbs der deutschen Hauptsatzstruktur durch sukzessiv-bilinguale Kinder mit türkischer Erstsprache [L1, L2, SLI? A study of the acquisition of German sentence structure by Turkish–German successive bilingual children]. Hamburg: Kovac.Google Scholar
Chilla, S., & Babur, E. (2010). Specific Language Impairment in Turkish–German bilingual children. Aspects of assessment and outcome. In Topbas, S. & Yavas, M. (eds.), Communication disorders in Turkish, pp. 352–368. Bristol: Multilingual Matters Ltd.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H. (1986). Verb inflections in German child language. Acquisition of agreement markings and the functions they encode. Linguistics, 24, 79–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H. (1989). The grammatical characterization of developmental dysphasia. Linguistics, 27 (1), 897920.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H. (1991). Child language and developmental dysphasia. Linguistic studies of the acquisition of German. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H. (2008). Chomskyan syntactic theory and language disorders. In Ball, M. J., Perkins, M., Mueller, N. & Howard, S. (eds.), The handbook of clinical linguistics, pp. 165–183. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., Bartke, S., & Goellner, S. (1997). Formal features in impaired grammars: a comparison of English and German SLI children. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 10 (2–3), 151171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Dalalakis, J. (1999). Tense and agreement in Greek SLI: A case study. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics, 24, 1–25.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., Kursawe, C., & Penke, M. (1996). Introducing CP: wh-questions and subordinate clauses in German child language. In Koster, C. & Wijnen, F. (eds.), Proceedings of the Groningen assembly on language acquisition, pp. 5–22. Groningen: Center for Language and Cognition.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Penke, M. (1992). The acquisition of agreement morphology and its syntactic consequences: New evidence on German child language from the Simone-corpus. In Meisel, J. M. (ed.), The acquisition of verb placement. pp. 181223. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Rothweiler, M. (1993). Inflectional rules in children's grammars: Evidence from German participles. In Booij, G. & van Marle, J. (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 1992, pp. 134. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
De Jong, J. (2010). Notes on the nature of bilingual specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31, 273–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dromi, E., Leonard, L. B., Adam, G., & Zadunaisky-Ehrlich, S. (1999). Verb agreement morphology in Hebrew-speaking children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 42 (6), 14141431.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eisenbeiss, S., Bartke, S., & Clahsen, H. (2005/2006). Structural and lexical case in child German: Evidence from language-impaired and typically-developing children. Language Acquisition, 13, 142.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V., Simon-Cereijido, G., & Wagner, C. (2008). Bilingual children with language impairment: A comparison with monolingual and second language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29 (1), 319.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hamann, C., Penner, Z., & Lindner, K. (1998). German impaired grammar: The clause structure revisited. Special issue “Specific Language Impairment in Children.” Language Acquisition 7, 193–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, R. (2001). Second language syntax: A generative introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hickey, T. (1991). Mean Length of Utterance and the acquisition of Irish. Journal of Child Language 18, 553–569.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leonard, L. B. (1998). Children with specific language impairment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Leonard, L. B., Ellis Weismer, S., Miller, C. A., Francis, D., Tomblin, B., & Kail, R. (2007). Speed of processing, working memory, and language impairment in children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 408428.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levy, Y., & Kavé, G. (1999). Language breakdown and linguistic theory: A tutorial overview. Lingua, 107 (1–2), 95143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (2009). Second language acquisition in early childhood. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 28 (1), 534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orgassa, A. (2009). Specific Language Impairment in a bilingual context. The acquisition of Dutch inflection by Turkish–German learners. Amsterdam: LOT.Google Scholar
Orgassa, A., & Weerman, F. (2008). Dutch gender in specific language impairment and second language. Second Language Research, 24 (3), 325356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J. (2008). Tense as a clinical marker in English L2 acquisition with language delay/impairment. In Haznedar, B. & Gavruseva, E. (eds.), Current trends in child second language acquisition: A generative perspective, pp. 337356. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J. (2010). The interface between bilingual development and specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31 (2), 227252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J., Crago, M., & Genesee, F. (2005/2006). Domain-general versus domain-specific accounts of specific language impairment: Evidence from bilingual children's acquisition of object pronouns. Language Acquisition, 13 (1), 3362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J., Crago, M., Genesee, F., & Rice, M. (2003). French–English bilingual children with SLI: How do they compare with their monolingual peers? Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 46 (1), 113127.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rice, M. L. (2003). A unified model of specific and general language delay: Grammatical tense as a clinical marker of unexpected variation. In Levy, Y. & Schaeffer, J. (eds.), Language competence across populations: Toward a definition of Specific Language Impairment, pp. 6395. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Rice, M. L., Noll, K. R., & Grimm, H. (1997). An extended optional infinitive stage in German-speaking children with specific language impairment. Language Acquisition, 6 (4), 255295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rispens, J. E., & Been, P. (2007). Subject–verb agreement and phonological processing in developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI): A closer look. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 42 (3), 293305.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rothweiler, M. (2006). The acquisition of V2 and subordinate clauses in early successive acquisition of German. In Lleó, C. (ed.), Interfaces in multilingualism, pp. 91113. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothweiler, M. (2010). The potential of studying SLI in bilinguals for linguistic research on SLI in monolinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31 (2), 102106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothweiler, M., Chilla, S., & Babur, E. (2010). Specific Language Impairment in Turkish: Evidence from case morphology in Turkish–German successive bilinguals. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 24 (7), 540–555.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rothweiler, M., & Clahsen, H. (1994). Dissociations in SLI children's inflectional systems. A study of participle inflection and subject–verb-agreement. Scandinavian Journal of Logopedics & Phoniatrics, 18, 169179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stavrakaki, S., Vogindroukas, I., Chelas, E., & Ghousi, S. (2008). Subject–verb agreement in SLI and child L2: A comparative approach to Greek SLI and (un)impaired child L2. In Gavarró, A. & Freitas, M. J. (eds.), Language acquisition and development: Proceedings of GALA 2007, pp. 413423. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Steenge, J. (2006). Bilingual children with specific language impairment: Additionally disadvantaged? Nijmegen: EAC, Research Centre on Atypical Communication.Google Scholar
Ullman, M. T., & Pierpont, E. I. (2005). Specific Language Impairment is not specific to language: The procedural deficit hypothesis. Cortex, 41, 399433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wexler, K., Schütze, C., & Rice, M. (1998). Subject case in children with SLI and unaffected controls: Evidence for the Agr/Tns omission model. Language Acquisition, 7, 317–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar