The Emergence of Verb Patterns in Arabic in Children With Developmental Language Disorder Compared to Children With...

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• Arabic verb morphology is nonlinear, relying on root and pattern systems.
• Early verb acquisition in children may prioritize semantic complexity over morphological structure.
• Understanding developmental language disorder (DLD) in relation to morphological acquisition is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the role of morphological and semantic complexity in Arabic verb derivational morphology acquisition.
• To compare Arabic-speaking children with DLD to those with typical language development (TLD) in verb system emergence.
• To determine if DLD impacts verb acquisition pathways or represents a delay.

Main Methods:

• Collected natural language data from 40 Arabic-speaking children with DLD (4-6 years) and 133 with TLD (2;6-6;0 years).
• Utilized picture-based elicitation tasks for verb data collection.
• Coded verbs for morphological derivational features and semantic complexity.

Main Results:

• Children with DLD produced fewer verb patterns (types and tokens) than age-matched TLD peers.
• Older children with DLD (5-6 years) showed similar verb pattern production to younger TLD children (3.5-4 years).
• Verb semantics and overall morphological/semantic diversity were comparable between DLD and TLD groups.

Conclusions:

• Children with DLD and TLD follow the same developmental pathway for acquiring Arabic derivational verb morphology.
• Quantitative lexical differences suggest a delay in verb acquisition for children with DLD, rather than a deviation from typical development.