Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, Matieland 7602, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2010 Apr;53(2):394-413. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2009/07-0286).
To establish whether the predictions of the extended optional infinitive (EOI) hypothesis (Rice, Wexler, & Cleave, 1995) hold for the language of Afrikaans-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and whether tense marking is a possible clinical marker of SLI in Afrikaans.
Production of tense morphology was examined in 3 groups of Afrikaans-speaking children-15 with SLI who were 6 years old, 15 typically developing (TD) 4-year-olds matched on mean length of utterance, and 15 TD 6-year-olds-using both elicited and spontaneously produced verb forms.
On the sentence completion task, children with SLI fared on par with 4-year-olds and worse than age-matched peers. However, in terms of spontaneous production of morphemes pertaining to tense, children with SLI fared worse than both TD groups. Furthermore, children with SLI mostly made the same types of errors as 4-year-olds, although some errors were unique to the SLI group. Most errors entailed omissions, of modal and temporal auxiliaries as well as of copula be.
The errors offer support for the EOI hypothesis. Tense marking has the potential to be a clinical marker of SLI in Afrikaans, but further research with larger groups of Afrikaans-speaking children, including children of other ages, is needed to confirm this.
确定扩展可选不定式（EOI）假说（Rice、Wexler 和 Cleave，1995）是否适用于存在特定语言障碍（SLI）的南非荷兰语儿童的语言，以及时态标记是否是南非荷兰语 SLI 的一个可能的临床标记。
使用诱发和自发产生的动词形式，对 3 组南非荷兰语儿童（15 名 SLI 儿童，年龄为 6 岁；15 名平均语言长度匹配的典型发育（TD）4 岁儿童；15 名 TD 6 岁儿童）的时态形态产生进行了检查。
在句子完成任务中，SLI 儿童的表现与 4 岁儿童相当，不如年龄匹配的同龄人。然而，在涉及时态的语素自发产生方面，SLI 儿童的表现不如两个 TD 组。此外，SLI 儿童犯的错误大多与 4 岁儿童相同，尽管有些错误是 SLI 组特有的。大多数错误涉及省略，包括情态和时态助动词以及系动词 be 的省略。
这些错误为 EOI 假说提供了支持。时态标记有可能成为南非荷兰语 SLI 的临床标记，但需要对更多的南非荷兰语儿童群体进行研究，包括不同年龄段的儿童，以确认这一点。
