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The comprehension of relative clauses in Mandarin Children with suspected specific language impairment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2021

Haopeng YU ,
Haiyan WANG  and
Xiaowei HE
Haopeng YU*
Affiliation:
Faculty of International Studies, Henan Normal University, China
Haiyan WANG
Affiliation:
School of Foreign Languages, Xinxiang Medical University, China
Xiaowei HE
Affiliation:
Faculty of English Language and Culture, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China
*
Corresponding author. Haopeng Yu, Faculty of International Studies, Henan Normal University, Jianshe Road 46#, Xinxiang, Henan, China PR. E-mail: yuhaopeng2046@sina.com
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Abstract

This paper investigates the comprehension of Relative Clauses (RCs) in 15 Mandarin children with suspected Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (aged between 4; 5 and 6; 0) and 29 typically developing (TD) controls. Results from a Character Picture Matching Task indicate that (i) the subject RC was better understood than the object RC in children with SLI, but there was no asymmetry in the comprehension of the two RCs in TD children; (ii) the performance of children with SLI was significantly worse than that of their TD peers; (iii) children with SLI were prone to committing thematic role reversal errors and middle errors. In order to overcome the shortcomings of previous accounts, we therefore put forward the Edge Feature Underspecification Hypothesis, which can not only explain the asymmetry of comprehension seen in children with SLI but also shed light on the nature of errors committed by them in the task.

Keywords

relative clausesspecific language impairmentedge feature underspecification hypothesis

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Type
Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 1 - 26
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© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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