The phonology-morphology interface in the speech of Hebrew-speaking children with specific language impairment.

UNLABELLED: Phonological deficits are common in children with specific language impairment (SLI). However, the degree to which they constitute an area of extraordinary difficulty, and their contribution to the morphological deficits of these children are largely unknown. In this investigation, we studied a group of young children with SLI who were acquiring Hebrew, a language in which phonology and morphology are closely linked. The phonology of these children lagged behind that of same-age peers as well as younger normally developing children matched according to mean number of morphemes per utterance. Furthermore, the children with SLI were more likely to commit phonological errors that neutralized important morphological distinctions in their language. These findings have implications for both assessment and therapy. LEARNING OUTCOMES: As a result of this activity, the following learning outcomes will be achieved: The participant will be able to: (1) describe the differences in phonology between children with SLI and typically developing children; (2) describe the impact ofphonological disorders on the assessment of the morphological systems of children with SLI; and (3) explain the necessary modifications to a therapy program for children with a combination of morphological and phonological disorders.

Tense and finiteness in the speech of children with specific language impairment acquiring Hebrew.

Verb morphology is often an area of extraordinary difficulty for children with specific language impairment (SLI). However, in Hebrew, this difficulty appears to be more circumscribed than in other languages. In a recent study by Dromi et al., the limitations exhibited by a group of Hebrew-speaking children with SLI were confined primarily to the use of agreement inflections within past tense. This difficulty was interpreted as being due to the fact that the agreement paradigm within past tense is rather complex (involving person, number, and gender, along with tense). This study explores another possibility--that these inflections were difficult because they required past tense in particular. Also determined was whether the children's frequent use of the morphologically simplest forms (such as past third person masculine singular) in place of the correct forms could be interpreted as their selection of a non-finite default form. A group of Hebrew-speaking children with SLI (age 4.2 to 6.1) participated, along with a group of age controls, and a group of younger normally developing children matched for mean length of utterance (MLU). The children listened to stories that were accompanied by pictures. During each story, the children completed the experimenter's incomplete sentences using appropriate verbs. To complete the sentences accurately, the children had to alter the tense or finiteness of the verb used by the experimenter in the preceding sentence. The results indicated that the children with SLI had more difficulty than both comparison groups in the production of basic present and past forms and infinitive forms of verbs that required use of one particular phonological template or 'binyan'. However, for the verbs requiring the remaining three phonological templates, the children with SLI were as capable as MLU controls in their command of past as well as present tense, and in their use of infinitive forms. It is concluded that tense and finiteness probably do not form the core of the problem faced by Hebrew-speaking children with SLI in the area of verb morphology.

The Hebrew Communicative Development Inventory: language specific properties and cross-linguistic generalizations.

Cultural, linguistic, and developmental evidence was taken into consideration in constructing the HCDI, a Hebrew adaptation of the MCDI. The HCDI was then administered to a stratified sample of Israeli mothers of 253 toddlers aged 1;6 to 2;0 (M = 1;8.18). Hebrew results are presented and compared with scores from the original MCDI sample (Fenson, Dale, Reznick, Bates, Thal & Pethick, 1994). The HCDI is a reliable and sensitive measure of lexical development and emergent grammar, capturing wide variability among Israeli toddlers. In comparison with English, the relation between vocabulary size and age, as well as the shape of the growth curves for nouns, predicate terms, and closed class words relative to size of lexicon, were strikingly similar. These results indicate that conclusions concerning cross-linguistic similarities can be best documented by using parallel methods of measurement. The HCDI results support the claim that early lexical development in Hebrew and in English follow remarkably similar development patterns, despite the typological differences between the two target languages.

Verb agreement morphology in Hebrew-speaking children with specific language impairment.

Earlier reports of verb morphology use by Hebrew-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) have suggested that these children mark agreement with the subject as accurately as younger control children matched according to mean length of utterance (MLU). This issue was examined in greater detail in the present study by including a wider range of agreement inflections from the present and past tense paradigms and employing verbs of different patterns (binyanim). It was hypothesized that children with SLI would be more limited than would MLU controls in their use of agreement inflections within past tense because the past tense agreement paradigm of Hebrew requires the simultaneous manipulation of three features-person, number, and gender. Differences between the groups were not expected for the use of agreement inflections within present tense, because only two features-number and gender-must be manipulated in the present tense paradigm. A group of preschool-age children with SLI was found to have more difficulty than did MLU controls in the use of most past tense agreement inflections. Within present tense, the two groups differed in their use of agreement inflections in only one pattern. For both groups, most errant productions differed from the target form by only one feature, usually person or tense. We found no feature that was consistently problematic for the children. The findings are discussed within a limited processing capacity framework.

Israeli mothers' expectations from early intervention with their preschool deaf children.

Family-oriented early intervention programs have become a common practice in deaf education and intervention. This trend requires the extensive investigation of parents' expectations about programs and professionals in order to enhance the efficacy of parent-professional collaboration. The goal of this study was to closely examine the expectations of mothers whose children were already enrolled i a comprehensive early intervention program for deaf children and their families. Three means of data collection were utilized: two open-ended written questions, an individual oral interview with the mother, and a set of formal questionnaires on various maternal, family, and child characteristics. A heterogeneous sample of 50 mothers of 2- to 5-year-old deaf children in Israel participated in the study. A wealth of maternal expectations emerged from this qualitative methodology, underscoring mothers' impressive knowledge and awareness, as well as individual differences. Through cluster analysis, the mothers were sorted into four distinct groups, yielding interesting patterns of expectations for programs and processionals.

The grammatical morphology of Hebrew-speaking children with specific language impairment: some competing hypotheses.

Many English-speaking children with specific language impairment have unusual difficulty with grammatical morphemes such as past tense and third-person singular verb inflections and function words such as articles. Unfortunately, the source of this difficulty is not yet clear, in part because some of the possible contributing factors are confounded in English. In the present study, alternative accounts of grammatical morpheme difficulties were evaluated using children with specific language impairment who were acquiring Hebrew. We examined the grammatical morpheme production and comprehension of 15 Hebrew-speaking children with specific language impairment, 15 normally developing compatriots matched for age and 15 normally developing children matched for mean length of utterance in words. The results provided tentative support for the notion that grammatical morphemes are less difficult for children with specific language impairment if they take the form of stressed and/or lengthened syllables and if they appear in a language in which nouns, verbs, and adjectives must be inflected. The possibility that features such as person, number, and gender are missing from the underlying grammars of these children seems less likely.