Swedish verb morphology and problems with its acquisition in language impaired children

Abstract

It has been shown in several studies that verb forms are a problematic area for language impaired children. This was found to be true also for Swedish children in the analysis of spontaneous data from five grammatically impaired children aged 5; 1–5; 11. Analysis of verbs showed that the unmarked verb form, the infinitive, is the most frequent form and that, of inflected forms, the present tense is the most frequent. The verbs were divided into state verbs and change verbs, the latter occurring much more frequently than the former. TTR values indicated that change verbs are more lexically varied than state verbs. The difference between the most developed and the least developed children consisted mainly in the most developed child being more varied in the use of inflections.

Key Words:

• grammatical impairment
• verb morphology