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Department of Cognitive Science

Seminar Abstract

SLI children’s knowledge of plurifunctional forms of DO.

Speaker : Distinguished Professor Mabel Rice, Department of Speech-Language & Hearing, University of Kansas, USA.
Date : 4th of July 2012, 10:30AM until 12:00PM
Location : C5C498 - Palermo Room, Macquarie University.

Children with SLI, and younger typically developing children, are likely to omit auxiliary DO. This is part of a profile of omitted finiteness markers posited to be part of an Extended Optional Infinitive (EOI) period for children with SLI. Other accounts posit general learning deficiencies or breakdowns in input processing. DO has multiple grammatical functions. Under an EOI account, aux DO should be selectively weak relative to lexical DO and overt syntactic errors should be unlikely. This presentation reports on a study of the use of DO in multiple grammatical contexts in the spontaneous utterances of 37 children with SLI, 37 age equivalent children, and 15 language equivalent children. The outcomes conform to the predictions of the EOI model, and support the Grammatical Conservatism model of Synder (2007).