Grammar Deficits of Children with SLI
Children with SLI present general delays in a wide range of language areas, but they also show very specific and severe deficits in the production and comprehension of grammatical tense. This finding was first noted by scientists working with children who were Standard English speakers. Over the past 15 years, we have helped further document this finding by showing that children with SLI who speak one of two nonstandard dialects of English (Southern African American English and Southern White English) also show similar deficits when compared to their same age and same dialect-speaking peers. Controlling for dialect differences across speakers is critical when conducting this type of SLI research. A wide range of experimental protocols are used to study these types of deficits in children. For example, data come from spontaneous language samples, elicitation probes, comprehension probes and grammaticality judgment tasks.
In Standard English speakers, some of the morphemes that are extremely difficult for children with SLI include:
