Negative sentences in children with specific language impairment

Abstract

This study used elicited production methodology to investigate the negative sentences that are produced by English-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI). Negative sentences were elicited in contexts in which adults use the negative auxiliary verb doesn't (e.g., It doesn't fit). This form was targeted to see how negative markers (not, n't) interact with the 3rd person singular -s in the grammars of children with SLI. A robust sample of negative sentences was collected from 63 children: 21 5-yearold children with SLI, 21 language-matched typically-developing children and 21 agematched typically-developing children. The negative sentences produced by children in the two control groups were consistently adult-like. In contrast, only 5 of the 21 children in the SLI group produced adult-like negative sentences with doesn't. The other 16 children with SLI produced a variety of non-adult negative sentences (e.g., It not fit, It's not fit, It not fits, It's not fits). The study concludes that children with SLI undergo an extended period in the development of sentential negation during which they produce

Language impairments in children with developmental language disorder and children with high-functioning autism plus language impairment: Evidence from Chinese negative sentences

“…As English children with DLD produced ungrammatical/ non-adult negative structures in the experiments in Thornton et al (2016), the DLD group in the present study produced ungrammatical sentences in Structure A, like those in (12), typical Chinese ungrammatical negative sentences. These findings were consistent with those in Tsai (2011) and indicated that children with DLD are not sure about the usage of negative markers in negating sentences with the aspectual marker-le.…”

“…An elicited production task ( Thornton et al, 2016 ; Schaeffer, 2018 ) was used to investigate the production of Structure A (NP- mei -VP). The participants were required to describe the actions indicated by the experimental materials.…”

“…Tests of negative structures also mirror the language impairments of the ASD population ( Shapiro and Kapit, 1978 ; Tager-Flusberg et al, 1990 ; Schindele et al, 2008 ; Cuccio, 2012 ). Meanwhile, studies reveal that children with DLD show similar performance to younger TD children in negation (e.g., He and Dai, 2012 ; Thornton et al, 2016 ) as do children with HFA-LI ( Shapiro and Kapit, 1978 ). Therefore, an analysis of the production of negative sentences may be useful in identifying the similarities or differences between the two groups.…”

“…Children with DLD are claimed to perform similarly to younger TD children in an extended period of language development ( Wexler, 1998 ). English-speaking children with DLD, like their younger TD peers, produce ungrammatical/non-adult negative sentences, such as It not fit, It’s not fit, It not fits, It’s not fits ( Thornton et al, 2016 ). As expected, Chinese children with DLD have been also observed to perform similarly to younger TD children.…”

Combining implicit and explicit intervention approaches to target grammar in young children with Developmental Language Disorder

“…the boy/s walked), whereas 3S marks both tense and subject–verb agreement (e.g. he walks vs. they walk), indicating that 3S is a more complex morphosyntactic structure for children to master (Thornton et al, 2016). At A2, the GET (90 probes) was re-administered.…”