Auxiliary verbs in Dutch SLI children

Abstract

Symptomatology in SLI children has been characterised for English speaking children in a number of studies. Symptoms for Dutch SLI children have not been described to the same extent. In this article we wanted to examine in detail a category which has regularly been highlighted as deficient in English speaking children, namely auxiliaries. Available data allows us to examine the distribution of members of this category in a group of 16 Dutch SLI children and 16 MLU matched normals. The analysis of our data was based on hypotheses derived from a comparative view of the English and Dutch auxiliary system. The data used are from a corpus formerly gathered by Bol and Kuiken (1988). Our conclusion is that Dutch SLI children show no group differences in production of auxiliaries in comparison to normals. Six out of 16 SLI children omitted auxiliaries.¹

Key Words:

• specific language impairment
• auxiliaries