Past participle formation in specific language impairment.

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• German participle formation involves prefixation and suffixation.
• Acquisition of suffixation is well-studied, but prefixation rules remain unclear.
• Vulnerability of participle formation in children with specific language impairment (SLI) is debated.

Purpose of the Study:

• Compare participle formation in children with and without SLI.
• Investigate sensitivity to morphophonological prefixation rules.

Main Methods:

• 14 German-speaking children with SLI (mean age 7;5) and controls performed a participle formation task.
• Included regular verbs and pseudo-verbs, some requiring the 'ge-' prefix.

Main Results:

• Children with SLI performed significantly worse than controls.
• They avoided participle markings or used incorrect affixes.
• Successfully applied morphoprosodic rules for prefixation.

Conclusions:

• Regular participle formation is challenging for German children with SLI.
• Findings contradict previous research suggesting intact prefixation.
• Highlights a specific morphological deficit in SLI.