Search

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are characterised by impaired language abilities both in comprehension and production. Complex syntax is a specific domain which is often considered challenging for children with DLD. Research regarding complex syntax is mostly concerned with the production patterns of speakers and usually employs English-speaking populations. This scoping review aims to systematically map the abilities of non-English-speaking children with DLD to comprehend complex syntactic structures, comparing these results with the broader literature on English-speaking children with DLD. It also aims to consider the account (i.e. grammatical vs processing) by which these abilities can be explained. Four online databases were used to extract original research articles published between 2011 and 2021. Of the 264 studies initially identified, 20 studies were included in the review. The results demonstrated that children with DLD present with difficulties in comprehending object relative clauses, wh-questions, sentences with non-canonical word order, passives, and other types of complex syntax. All of these challenges are also evident in English-speaking children with DLD and can be mainly attributed either to the inability of children to assign thematic roles, their restricted working memory capacities, or a combination thereof. It is concluded that the comprehension of complex syntax might be a universal marker of DLD, which can be explained on the basis of either a grammatical or a processing account, or both. Common challenges in certain structures across languages can be used to design a comprehension assessment tool that can be applied in several languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Complex syntax is affected by developmental language disorder (DLD) during the school years. Targeting areas of syntactic difficulty for children with DLD may yield useful assessment techniques. Aims: To determine whether wh‐movement can be measured in language samples from typically developing mono‐ and bilingual school‐aged children, and, if so, to provide preliminary evidence of validity by comparison with traditional measures of syntax in a cross‐sectional, known‐groups design. Methods & Procedures: Participants were 48 typically developing children recruited from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia in four groups: monolingual English and bilingual French–English children in early (7–8 years of age) and late (11–12 years of age) elementary school. Language samples were collected and analysed with mean use of wh‐movement, mean length of utterance and clausal density. These measures were compared for effects of age, bilingual development and elicitation task. Outcomes & Results: The results from all measures closely paralleled each other, providing preliminary evidence of validity. Wh‐movement‐based and traditional measures demonstrated similar age‐related and discourse genre effects. Neither demonstrated an effect of mono‐ versus bilingual development. Conclusions & Implications: The results confirm research interest in syntactic movement as an area of language assessment. Further research is required to understand its application to clinical populations. What this paper addsWhat is already known on the subjectComplex syntax is known to be an area of difficulty for children with DLD. Certain syntactic constructions appear to be particularly difficult for these children. Assessments targeting these areas of difficulty are emerging.What this paper adds to existing knowledgeThe paper compares traditional measures of syntax with measures based on wh‐movement. It shows similar results for both types of measures, suggesting construct and convergent validity. Results suggest that syntactic movement is an age‐appropriate area of assessment for elementary school‐aged children's language.What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?Language sample assessment measures based on wh‐movement appear promising. The impact of task effects of the discourse genre on assessing syntax must be carefully considered in research and clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to explore the production of infinitival complements by children with specific language impairment (SLI) as compared with mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched children in an effort to clarify inconsistencies in the literature. Spontaneous language samples were analysed for infinitival complements (reduced infinitives and true infinitives). Participants included children with SLI ( n == 19; 5;2-7;10) and children with typical language ( n == 19; MLU; 3;0-5;9). There was no group difference in the number of infinitival complements and the number of different complement-taking verbs. However, the SLI group produced more true infinitives than the MLU group. The SLI group was less accurate than the MLU group on inclusion of obligatory infinitival to, with 80.21%% accuracy (SD == 29.42) and 99.81%% accuracy (SD == 0.85), respectively. As a group, children with SLI did not have problems with the clausal structure of infinitives. However, they had difficulty with the specific grammatical requirement of infinitival clauses, that is, the inclusion of the infinitival marker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The author examined the influence of sentence type, clause order, and verb transitivity on the accuracy of children's past tense productions. All groups of children, but especially children with specific language impairment (SLI), were predicted to decrease accuracy as linguistic complexity increased. Method: The author elicited past tense productions in 2-clause sentences from 5- to 8-year-old children with SLI (n = 14) and their typically developing peers (n = 24). The target sentences varied in the type and obligatory nature of the second clause and the number of arguments. Results: On average, 85% of the responses across all groups and sentence types contained 2 clauses. Fewer 2-clause sentences were produced in the complement clause condition than in the other conditions. Sentence type and clause order, but not argument structure, influenced use of past tense. Children with SLI had a similar but less accurate profile as compared with the age-matched group. The younger mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched group reflected decreased accuracy with each additional source of linguistic complexity. Conclusions: Increased syntactic difficulty decreases use of morphology for all children, supporting the hypothesis that processing demands influence morphological accuracy. MLU-matched children, but not children with SLI, were more affected by changes in linguistic complexity. Further work on age-related changes in sentence production is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to explore whether 13 children with specific language impairment (SLI; ages 5;1-8;0 [years;months]) were as proficient as typically developing age- and vocabulary-matched children in the production of finite and nonfinite complement clauses. Preschool children with SLI have marked difficulties with verb-related morphology. However, very little is known about these children's language abilities beyond the preschool years. In Experiment 1, simple finite and nonfinite complement clauses (e.g., The count decided that Ernie should eat the cookies; Cookie Monster decided to eat the cookies) were elicited from the children through puppet show enactments. In Experiment 2, finite and nonfinite complement clauses that required an additional argument (e.g., Ernie told Elmo that Oscar picked up the box; Ernie told Elmo to pick up the box) were elicited from the children. All 3 groups of children were more accurate in their use of nonfinite complement clauses than finite complement clauses, but the children with SLI were less proficient than both comparison groups. The SLI group was more likely than the typically developing groups to omit finiteness markers, the nonfinite particle to, arguments in finite complement clauses, and the optional complementizer that. Utterance-length restrictions were ruled out as a factor in the observed differences. The authors conclude that current theories of SLI need to be extended or altered to account for these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is extensive documentation of the morphological limitations of children with specific language impairment (SLI), few studies have reported on complex syntax acquisition in children with SLI. This case study examined the development of complex syntax in a child with SLI between 3 and 7 years. Twelve conversational samples were analysed to describe emergence of complex syntax types, proportional use of complex syntax, and complex syntax production errors. Earliest emerging complex syntax types were catenatives and let's clauses, not always considered true complex syntax, as well as simple infinitives. These three types accounted for 88% of complex syntax tokens through age 4;8 (MLU?=?3.12). A diverse range of complex syntax types was produced consistently at age 5;9 (MLU?=?4.27), including wh clausal complements, relative clauses, and full propositional clauses. Production errors on complex syntax included omissions of infinitival to , omissions of wh pronouns in wh clausal complements, omissions of obligatory relative markers, and an omission of a complementizer. Production errors continued to be prevalent even in the last language sample at 7;10 (MLU?=?5.46). Documentation of complex syntax development in children with SLI is critical to the clarification of linguistic deficiencies that characterize specific language impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]