Stuart Nichola J, van der Lely Heather
Department of Psychology, Social Work & Public Health, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.
Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2015 Mar-Apr;50(2):187-201. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12125. Epub 2014 Nov 19.
Morphosyntax has been well researched in specific language impairment (SLI) and there is general agreement that children with SLI have particular difficulties with tense-marking. Less well researched is the role that aspect plays in the difficulties found in tense-marking, especially as tense and aspect are often confounded in English. Initial investigation of the understanding of aspect in preschool children with SLI suggests that they are less sensitive to aspect and its interaction with tense than typically developing (TD) children. It is unclear, however, what is the developmental trajectory of their understanding of aspect and its interaction with tense and whether these difficulties are still found in older children and adolescents with SLI.
To investigate comprehension of the grammatical aspect contrast between completed events using the simple past tense -ed/irregular (perfective grammatical aspect) and ongoing events using the past progressive (imperfective grammatical aspect). The role of lexical aspect was also investigated through the balanced use of verbs that were inherently telic (i.e. have a natural end-point) and verbs that required the addition of prepositional phrase for a telic interpretation when used in the perfective aspect condition.
METHODS & PROCEDURES: A sentence-picture matching task was administered to 10 participants with SLI (aged 12;10-16;8 years) and 30 language ability matched TD children who were split into three groups (mean ages: 5;10, 7;4 and 9;2).
OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Adult-like performance was found by all groups on the perfective aspect condition, but only by the oldest group of TD children on the imperfective aspect condition. The performance of the group with SLI was consistent with their much younger language ability matched TD children in their understanding of the progressive -ing when used to describe ongoing events that have taken place in the past. The lexical aspect of the telicity of the verbs was not found to have any significant effect on performance.
CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Although further investigation of the understanding of aspect (both comprehension and production) is needed, the results have implications for therapy. The past progressive -ing construction is important, particularly for providing context and background information in narratives, but it is not explicitly taught in schools. Therefore, some focus on the temporal nature of tense-marking in therapy may be beneficial to individuals with SLI in understanding the temporal nature of events and how aspect interacts with tense.
形态句法在特定语言障碍（SLI）方面已有充分研究，人们普遍认为患有SLI的儿童在时态标记方面存在特殊困难。而体貌在时态标记困难中所起的作用研究较少，尤其是在英语中，时态和体貌常常相互混淆。对患有SLI的学龄前儿童体貌理解的初步调查表明，与典型发育（TD）儿童相比，他们对体貌及其与时态的相互作用不太敏感。然而，尚不清楚他们对体貌及其与时态相互作用的理解的发展轨迹是怎样的，以及这些困难在年龄较大的患有SLI的儿童和青少年中是否仍然存在。
研究使用一般过去时-ed/不规则形式（完成体语法体貌）表示已完成事件和使用过去进行时（未完成体语法体貌）表示持续事件之间的语法体貌对比理解情况。还通过平衡使用固有终结性动词（即有自然终点）和在完成体体貌条件下需要添加介词短语才能进行终结性解释的动词，研究了词汇体貌的作用。
对10名患有SLI的参与者（年龄在12岁10个月至16岁8个月之间）和30名语言能力匹配的TD儿童进行了句子-图片匹配任务，TD儿童被分为三组（平均年龄：5岁10个月、7岁4个月和9岁2个月）。
所有组在完成体体貌条件下都表现出类似成人的水平，但只有年龄最大的TD儿童组在未完成体体貌条件下表现出类似成人的水平。患有SLI的组在理解用于描述过去发生的持续事件的进行时-ing方面，与语言能力匹配的年龄小得多的TD儿童表现一致。未发现动词的终结性词汇体貌对表现有任何显著影响。
尽管需要进一步研究体貌理解（包括理解和产出），但研究结果对治疗有启示。过去进行时-ing结构很重要，特别是在叙事中提供背景和上下文信息时，但学校并未明确教授。因此，在治疗中适当关注时态标记的时间性质，可能有助于患有SLI的个体理解事件的时间性质以及体貌与时态的相互作用。
