ERIC Number: EJ1011714
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013-Jan
Pages: 24
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
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Available Date: N/A
Verb Inflection in German-Learning Children with Typical and Atypical Language Acquisition: The Impact of Subsyllabic Frequencies
Ott, Susan; Hohle, Barbara
Journal of Child Language, v40 spec iss 1 p169-192 Jan 2013
Previous research has shown that high phonotactic frequencies facilitate the production of regularly inflected verbs in English-learning children with specific language impairment (SLI) but not with typical development (TD). We asked whether this finding can be replicated for German, a language with a much more complex inflectional verb paradigm than English. Using an elicitation task, the production of inflected nonce verb forms (3rd person singular with "-t" suffix) with either high- or low-frequency subsyllables was tested in sixteen German-learning children with SLI (ages 4;1-5;1), sixteen TD-children matched for chronological age (CA) and fourteen TD-children matched for verbal age (VA) (ages 3;0-3;11). The findings revealed that children with SLI, but not CA- or VA-children, showed differential performance between the two types of verbs, producing more inflectional errors when the verb forms resulted in low-frequency subsyllables than when they resulted in high-frequency subsyllables, replicating the results from English-learning children.
Descriptors: Verbs, German, Language Acquisition, Language Impairments, Task Analysis, Syllables, Child Language, Error Analysis (Language), Phonology
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
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Language: English
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