What compound words mean to children with specific language impairment
Karla K McGregor1, Gwyneth C Rost, Ling Yu Guo
1University of Iowa.
None:
Sixteen children (17 age mates, 17 vocabulary mates) with specific language impairment (SLI) participated in two studies. In the first, they named fantasy objects. All groups coined novel noun-noun compounds on a majority of trials but only the SLI group had difficulty ordering the nouns as dictated by semantic context. In the second study, the children described the meaning of conventional noun-noun compounds. The SLI and AM groups did not differ in parsing the nouns, but the SLI group was poorer at explaining the semantic relationships between them. Compared to vocabulary mates, a larger proportion of the SLI group successfully parsed the compounds but a smaller proportion could explain them. These difficulties may reflect problems in the development of links within the semantic lexicon.
Related Concept Videos
Language Development
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...
Learning Disabilities
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a...
Language and Cognition
Components of Language
Mnemonic Devices
Acronyms
Acronyms are created by using the initial letters of a series of words to form a new word or phrase. This approach condenses complex information into a single, memorable entity. For example,...
Language
Corballis and Suddendorf (2007) and Tomasello and Rakoczy (2003) highlight the role of language in...

