Yu Haopeng, Wang Haiyan, He Xiaowei
Faculty of International Studies, Henan Normal University, China.
School of Foreign Languages, Xinxiang Medical University, China.
J Child Lang. 2023 Jan;50(1):1-26. doi: 10.1017/S0305000921000660. Epub 2021 Dec 9.
This paper investigates the comprehension of Relative Clauses (RCs) in 15 Mandarin children with suspected Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (aged between 4; 5 and 6; 0) and 29 typically developing (TD) controls. Results from a Character Picture Matching Task indicate that (i) the subject RC was better understood than the object RC in children with SLI, but there was no asymmetry in the comprehension of the two RCs in TD children; (ii) the performance of children with SLI was significantly worse than that of their TD peers; (iii) children with SLI were prone to committing thematic role reversal errors and middle errors. In order to overcome the shortcomings of previous accounts, we therefore put forward the Edge Feature Underspecification Hypothesis, which can not only explain the asymmetry of comprehension seen in children with SLI but also shed light on the nature of errors committed by them in the task.
本文调查了15名疑似特定语言障碍（SLI）的普通话儿童（年龄在4岁5个月至6岁0个月之间）和29名发育正常（TD）的对照组儿童对关系从句（RCs）的理解情况。一项人物图片匹配任务的结果表明：（i）在患有SLI的儿童中，主语关系从句比宾语关系从句更容易理解，但在发育正常的儿童中，对这两种关系从句的理解不存在不对称性；（ii）患有SLI的儿童的表现明显比其发育正常的同龄人差；（iii）患有SLI的儿童容易犯主题角色颠倒错误和中间错误。为了克服以往研究的不足，我们因此提出了边缘特征未充分规定假说，该假说不仅可以解释患有SLI的儿童在理解上的不对称性，还可以阐明他们在任务中所犯错误的本质。
