Elicited production of relative clauses in German: Evidence from typically developing children and children with specific language impairment
- We elicited the production of various types of relative clauses in a group of German-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing controls in order to test the movement optionality account of grammatical difficulty in SLI. The results show that German-speaking children with SLI are impaired in relative clause production compared to typically developing children. The alternative structures that they produce consist of simple main clauses, as well as nominal and prepositional phrases produced in isolation, sometimes contextually appropriate, and sometimes not. Crucially for evaluating the movement optionality account, children with SLI produce very few instances of embedded clauses where the relative clause head noun is pronounced in situ; in fact, such responses are more common among the typically developing child controls. These results underscore the difficulty German-speaking children with SLI have with structures involving movement, but provide no specific support for the movement optionalityWe elicited the production of various types of relative clauses in a group of German-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing controls in order to test the movement optionality account of grammatical difficulty in SLI. The results show that German-speaking children with SLI are impaired in relative clause production compared to typically developing children. The alternative structures that they produce consist of simple main clauses, as well as nominal and prepositional phrases produced in isolation, sometimes contextually appropriate, and sometimes not. Crucially for evaluating the movement optionality account, children with SLI produce very few instances of embedded clauses where the relative clause head noun is pronounced in situ; in fact, such responses are more common among the typically developing child controls. These results underscore the difficulty German-speaking children with SLI have with structures involving movement, but provide no specific support for the movement optionality account.…
Author details: | Flavia AdaniORCiDGND, Maja Henny Katherine Stegenwallner-SchützORCiDGND, Yair Händler, Andrea Zukowski |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723716648842 |
ISSN: | 0142-7237 |
ISSN: | 1740-2344 |
Title of parent work (English): | First language |
Publisher: | Sage Publ. |
Place of publishing: | London |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2016 |
Publication year: | 2016 |
Release date: | 2020/03/22 |
Tag: | Elicited production; German; first language acquisition; relative clauses; specific language impairment |
Volume: | 36 |
Number of pages: | 25 |
First page: | 203 |
Last Page: | 227 |
Funding institution: | German Science Foundation (DFG) [AD 408/1-1] |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Institution name at the time of the publication: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Exzellenzbereich Kognitionswissenschaften |