Lexical learning skills in young children with specific language impairment (SLI).

Twenty-eight children with specific language impairment (SLI) aged 4;4-5;10, and 28 children with normal language (NL) aged 2;4-3;7 were exposed to four novel verbs, and four novel nouns in eight naturalistic play sessions, over 4 weeks. Spontaneous utterances of the novel lexical items in each of the training sessions were recorded and formed the basis of the analyses. The results of the spontaneous production data (across all sessions) revealed that children with NL produced more novel verbs than children with SLI, with a trend for children with SLI to produce more novel nouns.

Children's grammatical categories of verb and noun: a comparative look at children with specific language impairment (SLI) and normal language (NL).

The study investigated the development of grammatical categories (noun and verb) in young language learners. Twenty-eight children with specific language impairment (SLI) with a mean language age of 35 months and 28 children with normal language (NL) with a mean language age of 34 months were exposed to four novel verbs and four novel nouns during 10 experimental child-directed play sessions. The lexical items were modelled with four experimentally controlled argument structures.