The production of novel root compounds in children with specific language impairment

This study examined ten children with specific language impairment (SLI), 16 normally developing children, and ten adults for the production of novel root compounds. The participants were asked to invent names for pictures of 24 pairs of contrasting, novel objects. For half of the pictures, the context supported a grammatical novel root compound, 16 contexts supported only an ungrammatical compound, and eight contexts supported a marginally grammatical compound. All participants used novel root compounds in grammatical contexts and relatively few compounds in ungrammatical contexts. The children with SLI used the information presented in the experimental probes less frequently than the normal controls. In addition, the children with SLI made more word-order errors in their production of novel compounds. However, they were as likely as their normal counterparts to resist the use of regular plural markers within compounds. The results of this study support a difficulty associated with processing linguistic information on the part of the children with SLI.