"Whatdunit?" Sentence Comprehension Abilities of Children with SLI: Sensitivity to Word Order in Canonical and Noncanonical Structures

Autor/inn/en	Montgomery, James W.; Gillam, Ronald B.; Evans, Julia L.; Sergeev, Alexander V.
Titel	"Whatdunit?" Sentence Comprehension Abilities of Children with SLI: Sensitivity to Word Order in Canonical and Noncanonical Structures
Quelle	In: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 60 (2017) 9, S.2603-2618 (16 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1092-4388
DOI	10.1044/2017_JSLHR-L-17-0025
Schlagwörter	Sentences; Comprehension; Language Impairments; Children; Word Order; Comparative Analysis; Error Patterns; Improvement; Child Development; Nouns; Form Classes (Languages); Semantics; Pragmatics; Sentence Structure; Cues + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Sentence analysis; Satzanalyse; Verstehen; Verständnis; Speech disorder; Speech disorders; Speech disabilities; Speech disability; Speech handicap; Speech handicaps; Speech impairment; Speech impairments; Language handicaps; Sprachbehinderung; Child; Kind; Kinder; Wortfolge; Fehlertyp; Qualitätssteigerung; Kindesentwicklung; Analytischer Sprachbau; Semantik; Pragmalinguistik; Satzbau; Satzstruktur; Stichwort
Abstract	Purpose: With Aim 1, we compared the comprehension of and sensitivity to canonical and noncanonical word order structures in school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) and same-age typically developing (TD) children. Aim 2 centered on the developmental improvement of sentence comprehension in the groups. With Aim 3, we compared the comprehension error patterns of the groups. Method: Using a "Whatdunit" agent selection task, 117 children with SLI and 117 TD children (ages 7:0-11:11, years:months) propensity matched on age, gender, mother's education, and family income pointed to the picture that best represented the agent in semantically implausible canonical structures (subject-verb-object, subject relative) and noncanonical structures (passive, object relative). Results: The SLI group performed worse than the TD group across sentence types. TD children demonstrated developmental improvement across each sentence type, but children with SLI showed improvement only for canonical sentences. Both groups chose the object noun as agent significantly more often than the noun appearing in a prepositional phrase. Conclusions: In the absence of semantic--pragmatic cues, comprehension of canonical and noncanonical sentences by children with SLI is limited, with noncanonical sentence comprehension being disproportionately limited. The children's ability to make proper semantic role assignments to the noun arguments in sentences, especially noncanonical, is significantly hindered. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01