Verb inflection in German-learning children with typical and atypical language acquisition: the impact of subsyllabic frequencies*. Issue 1 (5th December 2012)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: OTT, SUSAN; HÖHLE, BARBARA
• Editors: Bavin, Edith L.; Naigles, Letitia R.
• Is Part Of: Journal of child language. Volume 40:Issue 1(2013)
• Page Start: 169
• Page End: 192
• Publication Date: 2012-12-05
• Subjects: Children -- Language -- Periodicals; 401.9305
• DOI: 10.1017/S030500091200027X
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0305-0009

Abstract

ABSTRACT: 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 (3 rd 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.