Loeb D F, Leonard L B
Purdue University.
J Speech Hear Res. 1991 Apr;34(2):340-6. doi: 10.1044/jshr.3402.340.
Recent theories of language development propose a direct relationship between children's use of verb morphology and their use of subject case pronouns. Such proposals might contribute to an understanding of specifically language-impaired (SLI) children's difficulties. These children's extraordinary problems with verb morphology are well documented, and preliminary evidence indicates frequent pronoun case errors (e.g., her for she) in their speech. Thus, it is possible that a collection of difficulties may be linked to a common source in these children. The objectives of this study were to determine: (a) whether subject case marking, as well as verb morphology was more limited in the speech of a group of SLI children than in the speech of a younger group of normally developing (ND) children matched for mean utterance length; (b) whether a relationship between the use of subject case marking and the use of verb morphology existed in the speech of the ND children; and, if so, (c) whether this relationship is evident in the SLI children as well, in spite of their more limited use of these features. The results revealed that the SLI children were more limited than the ND children in the use of both subject case marking and verb morphology. However, a relationship between the two types of usage was found in both groups of children.
近期的语言发展理论提出，儿童动词形态的使用与主格代词的使用之间存在直接关系。这类观点可能有助于理解特定语言障碍（SLI）儿童的困难。这些儿童在动词形态方面存在的突出问题已有充分记录，初步证据表明他们在言语中频繁出现代词格的错误（例如，用her代替she）。因此，这些儿童身上的一系列困难可能存在一个共同的根源。本研究的目的是确定：（a）一组SLI儿童言语中的主格标记以及动词形态是否比一组年龄较小、平均话语长度匹配的正常发育（ND）儿童的言语更有限；（b）ND儿童的言语中主格标记的使用与动词形态的使用之间是否存在关系；如果存在，（c）尽管SLI儿童对这些特征的使用更为有限，但这种关系在他们身上是否也很明显。结果显示，SLI儿童在主格标记和动词形态的使用上比ND儿童更有限。然而，两组儿童中都发现了这两种用法之间的关系。
