Verb morphology in Catalan and Spanish in children with Specific Language Impairment: a developmental study

Abstract

In this article we examine language processing and development in Catalan or Spanish‐speaking children with SLI, focusing on the study of the verb. We analyse the key initial phase of its process of acquisition and aim to define common features of the SLI group that distinguish them from children with normal language development. We intend to identify more precisely the kind of delay shown by these children in a language with a rich verb morphology, in terms of both structure and chronology. The sample comprised 18 Catalan‐Spanish bilingual pre‐school children, assigned to three groups of six; an SLI group and two control groups, one matched for age and the other matched for MLU‐w. Developmental data were obtained by recording situations of spontaneous speech at two different time points. Certain differences were found between groups in verb production. Production of verb inflection by children with SLI was only partial at the first evaluation; they maintained the same percentage of errors after a year. The patterns of correct and incorrect verb forms found in Catalan and Spanish do not corroborate the EOI hypothesis, but they support the Surface Hypothesis, given that the number of errors is not particularly high. This suggests the presence of limitations in subjects' processing ability, linked to the typological characteristics of the specific language being learnt.

• SLI
• Catalan
• Spanish
• verb morphology
• verb acquisition

Notes

1. The Extended Unique Checking Constraint model (Wexler, 2003) also predicts that the production of inflected verbs expressing tense or concordance will not present particular difficulties (Bedore & Leonard, 2005).

2. In Catalan and Spanish, the infinitive ending is replaced by tense, mood or aspect inflection.

3. Available in the CHILDES database (MacWhinney, 1995).

4. The intervention consisted of two weekly re‐education sessions with the speech therapist assigned to the school. The treatment and evolution were followed by the research group in 3‐monthly meetings and reports.

5. Total potential: the number of times the category was required; that is to say, the number of times the category was used plus the number of times it should have been used.

6. There were hardly any cases in which the type of error could not be clearly distinguished. In the cases where there was a multiple error (number and person, person and tense, etc.), these errors were considered separately.

7. Some errors are considered as progress in normal language acquisition, such as morphology errors that coincide with a higher use of markers. The most informative error for the application of morphology rules is over‐regularization; however, as the SLI group produced only one example of this type coming from the SLI group, it was excluded from the study.