Cross-linguistic patterns in the acquisition of quantifiers.

Learners of most languages are faced with the task of acquiring words to talk about number and quantity. Much is known about the order of acquisition of number words as well as the cognitive and perceptual systems and cultural practices that shape it. Substantially less is known about the acquisition of quantifiers.

Phonetic categorisation and cue weighting in adolescents with Specific Language Impairment (SLI).

This study investigates phonetic categorisation and cue weighting in adolescents and young adults with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). We manipulated two acoustic cues, vowel duration and F1 offset frequency, that signal word-final stop consonant voicing ([t] and [d]) in English. Ten individuals with SLI (14.

Role of aspect in understanding tense: an investigation with adolescents with SLI.

Background: 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.

The biological basis of language: insight from developmental grammatical impairments.

Specific language impairment (SLI), a genetic developmental disorder, offers insights into the neurobiological and computational organization of language. A subtype, Grammatical-SLI (G-SLI), involves greater impairments in 'extended' grammatical representations, which are nonlocal, hierarchical, abstract, and composed, than in 'basic' ones, which are local, linear, semantic, and holistic. This distinction is seen in syntax, morphology, and phonology, and may be tied to abnormalities in the left hemisphere and basal ganglia, consistent with new models of the neurobiology of language which distinguish dorsal and ventral processing streams.

Early activation of Broca's area in grammar processing as revealed by the syntactic mismatch negativity and distributed source analysis.

Though activation of Broca's region in the combinatorial processing of symbols (language, music) has been revealed by neurometabolic studies, most previous neurophysiological research found the earliest grammar indices in the temporal cortex, with inferior-frontal generators becoming active at relatively late stages. We use the attention- and task-free syntactic mismatch negativity (sMMN) event-related potential (ERP) to measure rapid and automatic sensitivity of the human brain to grammatical information in participants' native language (French). Further, sources underlying the MMN were estimated by applying the Parametrical Empirical Bayesian (PEB) approach, with the Multiple Sparse Priors (MSP) technique.

Number dissimilarities facilitate the comprehension of relative clauses in children with (Grammatical) Specific Language Impairment.

This study investigates whether number dissimilarities on subject and object DPs facilitate the comprehension of subject- and object-extracted centre-embedded relative clauses in children with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI). We compared the performance of a group of English-speaking children with G-SLI (mean age: 12;11) with that of two groups of younger typically developing (TD) children, matched on grammar and receptive vocabulary, respectively. All groups were more accurate on subject-extracted relative clauses than object-extracted ones and, crucially, they all showed greater accuracy for sentences with dissimilar number features (i.

Phonological deficits in specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia: towards a multidimensional model.

An on-going debate surrounds the relationship between specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia, in particular with respect to their phonological abilities. Are these distinct disorders? To what extent do they overlap? Which cognitive and linguistic profiles correspond to specific language impairment, dyslexia and comorbid cases? At least three different models have been proposed: the severity model, the additional deficit model and the component model. We address this issue by comparing children with specific language impairment only, those with dyslexia-only, those with specific language impairment and dyslexia and those with no impairment, using a broad test battery of language skills.

Non-word repetition in adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI).

Background: Non-word repetition (NWR) difficulties are common, but not universal, among children with specific language impairment (SLI). However, older children and adolescents with SLI have rarely been studied. Studies disagree on the relationship between NWR difficulties and difficulties with other areas of language and literacy.

An investigation to validate the grammar and phonology screening (GAPS) test to identify children with specific language impairment.

Background: The extraordinarily high incidence of grammatical language impairments in developmental disorders suggests that this uniquely human cognitive function is "fragile". Yet our understanding of the neurobiology of grammatical impairments is limited. Furthermore, there is no "gold-standard" to identify grammatical impairments and routine screening is not undertaken.

Do children with dyslexia and/or specific language impairment compensate for place assimilation? Insight into phonological grammar and representations.

English speakers have to recognize, for example, that te[m] in te[m] pens is a form of ten, despite place assimilation of the nasal consonant. Children with dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI) are commonly proposed to have a phonological deficit, and we investigate whether that deficit extends to place assimilation, as a way of probing phonological representations and phonological grammar. Children with SLI plus dyslexia, SLI only, and dyslexia only listened to sentences containing a target word in different assimilatory contexts-viable, unviable, and no change-and pressed a button to report hearing the target.

Who did Buzz see someone? Grammaticality judgement of wh-questions in typically developing children and children with Grammatical-SLI.

This paper tests claims that children with Grammatical(G)-SLI are impaired in hierarchical structural dependencies at the clause level and in whatever underlies such dependencies with respect to movement, chain formation and feature checking; that is, their impairment lies in the syntactic computational system itself (the Computational Grammatical Complexity hypothesis proposed by van der Lely in previous work). We use a grammaticality judgement task to test whether G-SLI children's errors in wh-questions are due to the hypothesised impairment in syntactic dependencies at the clause level or lie in more general processes outside the syntactic system, such as working memory capacity. We compare the performance of 14 G-SLI children (aged 10-17 years) with that of 36 younger language-matched controls (aged 5-8 years).

Grammatical feature dissimilarities make relative clauses easier: A comprehension study with Italian children.

The Relativized Minimality approach to A'-dependencies (Friedmann et al., 2009) predicts that headed object relative clauses (RCs) and which-questions are the most difficult, due to the presence of a lexical restriction on both the subject and the object DP which creates intervention. We investigated comprehension of center-embedded headed object RCs with Italian children, where Number and Gender feature values on subject and object DPs are manipulated.

Optical brain imaging reveals general auditory and language-specific processing in early infant development.

This study uses near-infrared spectroscopy in young infants in order to elucidate the nature of functional cerebral processing for speech. Previous imaging studies of infants' speech perception revealed left-lateralized responses to native language. However, it is unclear if these activations were due to language per se rather than to some low-level acoustic correlate of spoken language.

Assessing component language deficits in the early detection of reading difficulty risk.

This article focuses on some of the linguistic components that underlie letter-sound decoding skills and reading comprehension: specifically phonology, morphology, and syntax. Many children who have reading difficulties had language deficits that were detectable before they began reading. Early identification of language difficulties will therefore help identify children at risk of reading failure.

Production and comprehension of pronouns by Greek children with specific language impairment.

This study contributes to the characterization of the deficit in specific language impairment (SLI) by investigating whether deficits in the production and comprehension of pronouns in Greek children with SLI are best accounted for by domain-general or domain-specific models of the language faculty. The Greek pronominal system distinguishes between acoustically salient and non-salient forms, which are both interpreted on semantic/thematic grounds, and non-salient forms (object clitics) interpreted on syntactic grounds either in spec-head agreement or syntactic dependencies incurring feature checking through movement/chain formation. The results revealed a significant effect of the syntactic configuration on the production and comprehension of object clitics.

Backward and simultaneous masking in children with grammatical specific language impairment: no simple link between auditory and language abilities.

Purpose: We investigated claims that specific language impairment (SLI) typically arises from nonspeech auditory deficits by measuring tone-in-noise thresholds in a relatively homogeneous SLI subgroup exhibiting a primary deficit restricted to grammar (Grammatical[G]-SLI).

Method: Fourteen children (mostly teenagers) with G-SLI were compared to age-, vocabulary-, and grammar-matched control children on their abilities to detect a brief tone in quiet and in the presence of a masking noise. The tone occurred either simultaneously with the noise or just preceding it (backward masking).

Electrical brain responses in language-impaired children reveal grammar-specific deficits.

Background: Scientific and public fascination with human language have included intensive scrutiny of language disorders as a new window onto the biological foundations of language and its evolutionary origins. Specific language impairment (SLI), which affects over 7% of children, is one such disorder. SLI has received robust scientific attention, in part because of its recent linkage to a specific gene and loci on chromosomes and in part because of the prevailing question regarding the scope of its language impairment: Does the disorder impact the general ability to segment and process language or a specific ability to compute grammar? Here we provide novel electrophysiological data showing a domain-specific deficit within the grammar of language that has been hitherto undetectable through behavioural data alone.

The count-mass distinction in typically developing and grammatically specifically language impaired children: new evidence on the role of syntax and semantics.

Unlabelled: By the age of three, typically developing children can draw conceptual distinctions between "kinds of individual" and "kinds of stuff" on the basis of syntactic structures. They differ from adults only in the extent to which syntactic knowledge can be over-ridden by semantic properties of the referent. However, the relative roles of syntax and semantics in determining the nature of the count-mass distinction in language acquisition are still not well-understood.

Intervention for verb argument structure in children with persistent SLI: a randomized control trial.

Purpose: The authors aimed to establish whether 2 theoretically motivated interventions could improve use of verb argument structure in pupils with persistent specific language impairment (SLI).

Method: Twenty-seven pupils with SLI (ages 11;0-16;1) participated in this randomized controlled trial with "blind" assessment. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 therapy groups: syntactic-semantic, semantic, and control.

On-line processing of wh-questions in children with G-SLI and typically developing children.

Background: The computational grammatical complexity (CGC) hypothesis claims that children with G(rammatical)-specific language impairment (SLI) have a domain-specific deficit in the computational system affecting syntactic dependencies involving 'movement'. One type of such syntactic dependencies is filler-gap dependencies. In contrast, the Generalized Slowing Hypothesis claims that SLI children have a domain-general deficit affecting processing speed and capacity.

Non-word repetition: an investigation of phonological complexity in children with Grammatical SLI.

We investigate whether children with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI) are also phonologically impaired and, if so, what the nature of that impairment is. We focus on the prosodic complexity of words, based on their syllabic and metrical (stress) structure, and investigate this using a novel non-word repetition procedure, the Test of Phonological Structure (TOPhS). Participants with G-SLI (aged 12-20 years) were compared to language-matched, typically developing children (aged 4-8 years).

Narrative discourse in adults with high-functioning autism or Asperger syndrome.

We report a study comparing the narrative abilities of 12 adults with high-functioning autism (HFA) or Asperger Syndrome (AS) versus 12 matched controls. The study focuses on the use of referential expressions (temporal expressions and anaphoric pronouns) during a story-telling task. The aim was to assess pragmatics skills in people with HFA/AS in whom linguistic impairments are more subtle than in classic autism.

Development of the Grammar and Phonology Screening (GAPS) test to assess key markers of specific language and literacy difficulties in young children.

Background: Despite a large body of evidence regarding reliable indicators of language deficits in young children, there has not been a standardized, quick screen for language impairment. The Grammar and Phonology Screening (GAPS) test was therefore designed as a short, reliable assessment of young children's language abilities.

Aims: GAPS was designed to provide a quick screening test to assess whether pre- and early school entry children have the necessary grammar and pre-reading phonological skills needed for education and social development.

A challenge to current models of past tense inflection: the impact of phonotactics.

Is past tense production better modelled by a Single Mechanism or a Words and Rules model? We present data concerning a phenomenon that has not been considered by either model-regular past tense verbs with contrasting phonotactics. One set of verbs contains clusters at the inflected verb end that also occur in monomorphemic words ('monomorphemically legal clusters', MLC) whereas the other has clusters that can only occur in inflected forms ('monomorphemically illegal clusters', MIC). We argue that if children apply a morphological rule, phonotactics will not affect performance.

Domain-specific cognitive systems: insight from Grammatical-SLI.

Specific language-impairment (SLI) is a disorder of language acquisition in children who otherwise appear to be normally developing. Controversy surrounds whether SLI results from impairment to a "domain-specific" system devoted to language itself or from some more "domain-general" system. I compare these two views of SLI, and focus on three components of grammar that are good candidates for domain-specificity: syntax, morphology and phonology.