The perfective past tense in Greek adolescents with Down Syndrome

Abstract

This study investigates the ability of a group of eight Greek-speaking adolescents with Down Syndrome (DS) (aged 12.1–18.7) to handle the perfective past tense using an acceptability judgement task. The performance of the DS participants was compared with that of 16 typically-developing children whose chronological age was matched with the mental age of the DS group. For existing verbs, both groups showed high accuracy scores for the sigmatic past tense whilst for (potential but non-existing) nonce verbs the DS group performed differently from the controls. Specifically, their judgements were unaffected by a nonce verb's similarity to existing verbs, unlike those of the controls, suggesting that the DS participants were less reliant on similarity-based generalisations when encountering a nonce word than the controls. Apart from that, it was found that people with DS did not show any kind of morphological impairment, replicating previous findings on past tense production in DS.

• language impairment
• past tense
• child language
• developmental disorders

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the children who participated in this study as well as their parents and teachers for their cooperation. We also thank the members of the Psycholinguistic Research Group at the University of Essex for their insightful comments.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.