A study of clitic pronoun production in monolingual and bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment

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Published: Oct 15, 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/psy_hps.23543
Keywords:
Clitic pronouns Bilingualism Specific Language Impairment
Ιάνθη - Μαρία Τσιμπλή
Ελένη Περιστέρη
Μαρία Ανδρέου
Abstract

In this study, we tested the predictions of two opposing perspectives on the nature of the deficit in Specific Language Impairment (SLI): the language delay approach, and the view that the language development of SLI children is qualitatively different from typically developing children populations. Data consisted of the elicited production of pronominal object clitics from monolingual and bilingual SLI children with various language pairs (Greek always being the children’s second language); younger, typically developing, bilingual language peers, and monolingual Greek-speaking comparison groups. We analyzed the children’s accurate responses and error-types in clitic production. Both SLI groups had more difficulty with clitics in comparison to typically-developing, chronological age-matched peers, while SLI children performed similarly with their younger, unaffected monolingual and bilingual peers. We argue that these findings provide support to the language delay approach and present challenges to the role of bilingualism in SLI.

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