Nominal Versus Verbal Morpheme Use in Late Talkers at Ages 3 and 4

Abstract

Late talkers with normal receptive language and typically developing peers matched at 24- to 31-month intake on socieoeconomic status and nonverbal cognitive skills were compared at age 3 (N = 29, 20) and age 4 (N = 37, 16) on grammatical morpheme suppliance during speech samples. Age 4 late talkers differed from age 3 MLU-matched typically developing children on only the contractible copula. At age 4, "late bloomers" did not differ from typically developing children on any morpheme, but late talkers with "continuing delay" differed from comparison children on articles, nominative case pronouns, auxiliary be, and the contractible copula. Noun phrase morphemes were acquired earlier than verb phrase morphemes by both late talkers and comparison children, a nominal-verbal morpheme "decalage" that was first reported by R. Brown (1973). Results suggested that our late talkers did not have a selective deficit in verb morphology relative to their MLU. Findings are discussed in terms of a spectrum of SLI, with both late talkers and preschoolers with SLI hypothesized to have weaker endowments for language learning than typically developing children, but with late talkers being less impaired and thus closer to normal on this spectrum.

Grammatical profile of three- to four-year-old Estonian children

“…Still, late talkers used also some stems in lieu of inflectional affixes, that usually occur during the premorphological phase of morphology acquisition (Argus, 2007;Vihman & Vija, 2006). Thus, the suggestion that the pattern of acquisition by late talkers was similar to that of typical development but more protracted was confirmed (Rescorla & Roberts, 2002;Rescorla & Turner, 2015). Results update current knowledge about the development of early gram matical skills by Estonian children.…”

“…Kõne hindamiseks on vaja teada tunnuseid, mis eristavad kõnehilistusega lapsi eakohase aren guga lastest. Eelkõige inglise keele baasil tehtud uuringutest (Rescorla, 2011;Rescorla, Dahlsgaard, & Roberts, 2000;Rescorla & Roberts, 2002;Rescorla & Turner, 2015;Rice, Taylor, & Zubrick, 2008) ilmneb, et hilis kõnelejatele on iseloomulik grammatiliste oskuste, eriti verbimorfoloogia hilisem kujune mine. Just 3-4aastastel kõne arengu hilistusega lastel on grammatiliste oskuste tase eakohase arenguga laste omast madalam, samas 5-6aastastel hakkab see jõudma eakaaslastele järele.…”

“…Inglise keelt kõnelevatel KAP ja EK lastel on verbimorfoloogiat keerulisem omandada kui nimisõnamorfoloogiat. See kinnitab taas, et KAP laste areng on sarnane EK laste omaga, ainult hilisem (Rescorla & Roberts, 2002;Rescorla & Turner, 2015). KAP lastel ilmnevad raskused just nende kategooriate omandamisel, mis on keeles rasked.…”

“…Esimene hüpotees leidis kinnitust ja tulemused toetavad varasemate uurijate seisukohti (Rescorla et al, 2000;Rescorla & Roberts, 2002;Rescorla & Turner, 2015). Kõigis uuritud oskustes said KAP lapsed oluliselt halvema tulemuse kui EK lapsed.…”

“…We assumed that morphosyntactic skills of late talkers were significantly lower than those of children with typical language development, while the profile of skills was similar, i.e. both groups made errors in the same word forms (Rescorla & Roberts, 2002;Rescorla & Turner, 2015). 4.…”