Morphology and syntax in the language of children with congenital brain pathologies a longitudinal follow up

Abstract

This is a prospective, naturalistic, longitudinal study of the acquisition of morphology and syntax in two children with congenital, anatomical brain pathologies who were acquiring Hebrew as their first language. Being a Semitic language, Hebrew has a complex morphological system which poses interesting questions with regard to the development of formal linguistic systems that are particularly relevant in the context of the debate between functionalism and formalism in language acquisition. The children were in their fourth year and MPU was 2.2–3.2. Findings suggest a delayed, yet relatively smooth development of formal morphological and selective syntactic aspects of Hebrew, along with marked difficulties in aspects of meaning that these forms convey. A comparison with other populations suggests that children with various types of congenital neurological deficits share a common linguistic profile. In all these populations there is delay and slowness in development and the amount of errors observed is larger than normal, while distribution of error types and order of emergence of forms are similar to that observed in normally developing children.