Uninflected Structure in Familial Language Impairment: Evidence from French

Abstract

We present the results of 20 French subjects with familial language impairment (FLI) on a linguistic battery task, with an emphasis on verb production. The results show strong qualitative differences between the verb production of FLI subjects and that of controls. Language-specific factors do not seem to determine the production of verbs in French FLI individuals. Rather, verb frequency and the inflectional status (uninflected vs. inflected) of the form seem to be determining factors in correct/incorrect production of a verb in a sentence context. The phonetic structure of French inflection provides additional arguments against the hypothesis of a processing deficit in FLI subjects. French tense morphemes are stressed and salient, and should therefore be produced without problems, according to the processing hypothesis. We found evidence contrary to this postulate. We therefore submit that the morphological deficit hypothesis is supported by the French data.

The French noun phrase in preschool children with SLI: morphosyntactic and error analyses

“…Although school-aged and adolescent French-speaking children with SLI do show differences from their unimpaired peers, especially in elicited production, in domains such as accusative clitic production (Grüter, 2005; Jakubowicz, Nash, Rigaut & Gérard, 1998; Paradis & Crago, 2004; Paradis, Crago & Genesee, 2005/2006), verb inflection (Jakubowicz & Nash, 2001; Rose & Royle, 1999), and subject–verb agreement (Franck et al , 2004), the elicitation of verbal and clitic forms is quite difficult in young children and poses interpretation problems, as target production levels are low (see, e.g., Royle & Elin Thordardottir, 2008). Thus, although Royle and Elin Thordardottir's study reveals differences between groups with and without SLI in elicited verb production, floor effects on the task make the data difficult to interpret.…”

The Codes of Life

“…Whether other cognitive skills are also, or even primarily, affected, has been debated ever since (Vargha-Kadem et al, 1998). More evidence with other linguistic groups is accumulating (Dalalakis, 1999;Rose and Royle, 1999;Tomblin and Pandich, 1999). A study (Van der Lely et al, 1998), sadly without genetics, claims to demonstrate that grammatically limited SLI does exist in 'children' (although only one child is analysed in the paper!…”

Insensitivity to verb conjugation patterns in French children with SLI

“…Several other studies suggest that children who suffer from SLI have difficulties with verb tense or agreement inflection in Arabic (Abdalla & Crago, 2008), Danish (Vang Christensen & Hannson, 2012), Dutch (Spoelman & Bol, 2012), English (Marshall & van der Lely, 2007;Paradis & Crago, 2001;Rice, Wexler & Cleave, 1995;Ullman & Gopnik, 1994), Finnish (Kunnari, Savinainen-Makkonen, Leonard, Makinen, Tolonen, Luotonen & Leinonen, 2011), French (Franck, Cronel-Ohayon, Chillier, Frauenfelder, Hamann, Rizzi, & Zesiger, 2004;Jakubowicz, 2003;Paradis & Crago, 2001;Rose & Royle, 1999;Royle & Elin Thordardottir, 2008), German (Clahsen, 1989), Greek (Stavrakaki, Chrysomalis & Petraki, 2011), Hebrew (Dromi, Leonard, & Shteiman 1993), Hungarian (Leonard, Lukács & Kas, 2012;Lukács, Leonard, Kas & Pléh, 2009), Italian (Leonard, Bortolini, Caselli, McGregor, & Sabbadini, 1992;Pizzioli & Schelstraete, 2008), Japanese (Gopnik, Dalalakis, Fukuda, Fukuda & Kehayia, 1996), Norwegian (Simonsen & Bjerkan, 1998), and Swedish (Hansson, 1997).…”

“…Furthermore, some children find it easier to correctly produce inflected verbs in spontaneous speech compared to elicitation tasks. For example, even very young French-speaking children with language impairment tend to make very few mistakes in spontaneous speech (e.g., Elin Thordardottir & Namazi, 2007, for pre-school children, but see Paradis & Crago, 2001 for school-aged children who do show difficulties) but have more difficulty producing appropriate forms in elicitation tasks (Jukubowicz & Nash, 2001;Jakubowicz, 2003;Rose & Royle, 1999;Royle & Elin Thordardottir, 2008). Similar distinctions can be made across languages, with some studies showing major problems in spontaneous verb production (e.g., Arabic: Abdalla & Crago 2008;Dutch: Spoelman & Bol, 2012;English: Rice, Wexler & Cleave, 1995;French: Paradis & Crago, 2001;Spanish: Bedore & Leonard, 2005;Swedish: Hannson, Nettelbladt & Leonard, 2000) and others showing similar results compared to younger language-matched but not age-matched peers (e.g., Hebrew: Dromi et al, 1993;Dromi, Leonard, Adam & Zadunaisky-Ehrlich, 1999;Italian: Bortolini, Leonard & Caselli, 1998;Spanish: Bedore & Leonard, 2001), with still others observing few deficits compared to both language-and age-matched peers (e.g., French: Elin Thordardottir & Namazi, 2007;Greek: Stavrakaki, 2005;Icelandic: Elin Thordardottir, 2008;Spanish: Bedore & Leonard, 2005).…”