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).

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 impact of word-end phonology and morphology on stuttering.

This paper investigates whether stuttering rates in English-speaking adults and children are influenced by phonological and morphological complexity at the ends of words. The phonology of English inflection is such that morphological and phonological complexity are confounded, and previous research has indicated that phonological complexity influences stuttering. Section 1 of this paper considers how to disentangle phonological and morphological complexity so that the impact of each on stuttering can be tested.

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).

Derivational morphology in children with grammatical-specific language impairment.

Although it is well-established that children with Specific Language Impairment characteristically optionally inflect forms that require tense and agreement marking, their abilities with regards to derivational suffixation are less well understood. In this paper we provide evidence from children with Grammatical-Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI) that derivational suffixes, unlike tense and agreement suffixes, are not omitted in elicitation tasks. We investigate two types of derivation - comparative/superlative formation and adjective-from-noun formation - and reveal that G-SLI children supply these suffixes at high rates, equivalent to their language matched peers.

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.

Grammatical language impairment and the specificity of cognitive domains: relations between auditory and language abilities.

Grammatical-specific language impairment (G-SLI) in children, arguably, provides evidence for the existence of a specialised grammatical sub-system in the brain, necessary for normal language development. Some researchers challenge this, claiming that domain-general, low-level auditory deficits, particular to rapid processing, cause phonological deficits and thereby SLI. We investigate this possibility by testing the auditory discrimination abilities of G-SLI children for speech and non-speech sounds, at varying presentation rates, and controlling for the effects of age and language on performance.

A foot domain account of prosodically-conditioned substitutions.

Children's prosodically conditioned substitutions have been recently described in terms of syllable structure. In this paper we present an alternative analysis, based on the position of the consonant within the foot. We review data from a previous case study (Chiat, 1989) that provide evidence in favour of a foot domain account and against the syllable structure account.