The role of type and token frequency in using past tense morphemes correctly

Development of derivational morphological knowledge in monolingual and bilingual children: Effects of modality and lexicality

This study mapped the trajectory of developing derivational morphological knowledge in Hebrew monolingual and Russian-Hebrew bilingual children. We investigated 2nd and 4th graders, using a two-by-two structure along the dimensions of modality (comprehension, production) and type of word (real-word, pseudo-word). Performance in the morphological analogies comprehension tasks improved with grade, and monolingual and bilingual children performed equally well. A different pattern was evident in production tasks. In real-word production, monolingual children were more accurate than bilingual children, but this group difference narrowed with age. In pseudo-word production, monolingual children used more morphological elements than bilingual children, and there was also a tendency towards group differences narrowing with age. Detailed error analyses across all tasks revealed that monolingual children recruited more morphological elements than bilingual children. We present implications for assessment of morphological knowledge, and suggest that morphological intervention is a promising avenue for promoting bilingual children's success.

Telling Personal Narratives: Comparing Stories Told by 10-Year-Old Speakers of Cypriot Greek Dialect and of Standard Modern Greek

INTRODUCTION

Cypriot Greek is the variety of Greek language used for oral communication by the Greek Cypriot people, while Standard Modern Greek is the official language. Cypriot Greek differs from Standard Modern Greek in various aspects, including lexicon, phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, and pragmatics. This study examines whether there are differences between children who are native speakers of the Cypriot Greek dialect and those who are native speakers of Standard Modern Greek in narrative measurements obtained in a personal narrative context.

METHODS

Thirty-nine ten-year-old children (19 Cypriot Greek speakers and 20 Standard Modern Greek speakers) participated in the study. The Global TALES protocol was used to elicit personal narratives across 6 emotion-based prompts. Measures of microstructure (mean length of utterance, number of different words) and macrostructure (plot elements) are examined.

RESULTS

Analysis showed no differences in macrostructure between Cypriots Greek speakers and Standard Modern Greek speakers in response to the prompts. In contrast, group differences were found in syntactic complexity, with the Standard Modern Greek speakers producing longer sentences.

CONCLUSION

This is the first study to compare the characteristics of personal narratives spoken by 10-year-old children who are speakers of Cypriot Greek and Standard Modern Greek. The results from this initial comparison highlight that children who are speakers of two varieties of the same language share similar narrative elements. However, they may differ in their linguistic profiles, such as in syntax. Understanding these differences is important for researchers, educators, and speech therapists. A detailed understanding of developmental milestones and a clear understanding of each variety's characteristics are crucial from a research, pedagogical, and speech therapy perspective.

When Children's Production Deviates From Observed Input: Modeling the Variable Production of the English Past Tense

As children gradually master grammatical rules, they often go through a period of producing form-meaning associations that were not observed in the input. For example, 2- to 3-year-old English-learning children use the bare form of verbs in settings that require obligatory past tense meaning while already starting to produce the grammatical -ed inflection. While many studies have focused on overgeneralization errors, fewer studies have attempted to explain the root of this earlier stage of rule acquisition. In this work, we use computational modeling to replicate children's production behavior prior to the generalization of past tense production in English. We illustrate how seemingly erroneous productions emerge in a model, without being licensed in the grammar and despite the model aiming at conforming to grammatical forms. Our results show that bare form productions stem from a tension between two factors: (1) trying to produce a less frequent meaning (the past tense) and (2) being unable to restrict the production of frequent forms (the bare form) as learning progresses. Like children, our model goes through a stage of bare form production and then converges on adult-like production of the regular past tense, showing that these different stages can be accounted for through a single learning mechanism.

Sentence Repetition Performance Differences in Bilingual and Monolingual Children

PURPOSE

This study examined language group differences in English syntactic knowledge based on performance on a sentence repetition task.

METHOD

Fourth and sixth grade students who were monolinguals (n = 30), early bilinguals (i.e., simultaneous; n = 27), or late bilinguals (i.e., sequential; n = 29) completed an English sentence repetition task. Their responses were analyzed as a function of sentence length (short vs. long), sentence type (active vs. passive), phrase type (noun, verb, and prepositional), and word type (content vs. function).

RESULTS

Overall, early bilinguals' performance did not differ significantly from that of the monolinguals. However, these bilinguals recalled significantly more content words than function words on the long sentences. At each level of analysis, the late bilinguals' performance was less accurate than the other groups. The magnitude of these group differences was larger for passive sentences and prepositional phrases.

CONCLUSION

Findings highlight areas of syntactic development that differ among groups and should be targeted for additional instruction with English language learners in elementary school.

Cross-linguistic transfer between aspect in Cantonese and past tense in English in Cantonese-English bilingual preschool children

Purpose: This study addresses the question of whether sequential bilingual children's past tense marking development in their second language (L2) is affected by their knowledge of temporal marking in their first language (L1). We investigated whether Cantonese-English sequential bilingual children's knowledge of aspect markers in Cantonese (L1), along with external and internal factors, predicts their past tense marking in English (L2).Method: We examined 39 pre-school children's production of perfective aspect markers in Cantonese and regular and irregular past tense morphemes in English using a story-retell task administered in both languages.Result: The results showed that children produced significantly more irregular past tense verbs than regular past tense verbs in English. Their English irregular past tense use, but not regular past tense use, was predicted by their knowledge of aspect markers in Cantonese.Conclusion: Findings suggest that semantic transfer between Cantonese and English might contribute to the early stages of acquiring English past tense marking. Clinically, the results could potentially lead to more informed assessment procedures and better diagnostic decision making for bilingual children.

Input Issues in the Development of L2 French Morphosyntax

The aim of this article is to discuss the role of input characteristics in the development of French verb morphology. From a usage-based perspective, several cognitive and linguistic factors contribute to the ease or difficulty of processing input in L2 acquisition. This article concentrates on frequency, salience, and form–function association, factors that might influence what aspects of input are available to the learners’ attention. A presentation of French verb morphology from this perspective shows how these factors can contribute to the use of the regular -er verb paradigm as a default. A review of empirical studies confirms the influence of input characteristics. The results suggest that the dominant pattern of regular verbs and the scarcity of salient clues from irregular verbs contribute to the specificity of L2 French development. The conclusion addresses the question of enriching L2 classroom input with irregular verbs. Such an input could facilitate the perception of form–function association, and thus, contribute to a more efficient development of French verb morphology. The article concludes by suggesting other ways of studying the influence of input as well as avenues for future research.

Why jumped is so difficult: tense/aspect marking in Mandarin-English bilingual children

Learning to mark for tense in a second language is notoriously difficult for speakers of a tenseless language like Chinese. In this study we test two reasons for these difficulties in Chinese-English sequential bilingual children: (1) morphophonological transfer (i.e., avoidance of complex codas), and (2) interpretation of -ed as an aspect marker of completion, like the Mandarin -le. Mandarin-English bilingual children and age-matched monolinguals did a cartoon retell task. The verbs used in the stories were coded for accuracy in English, telicity, and suppliance of -ed or -le. The results were consistent with morphophonological transfer: the bilingual children were more accurate with irregular past forms in English than regular forms. The results were also consistent with the bilingual children's interpretation of -ed as an aspect marker: most of their production of -ed was on telic verbs. We discuss possible reasons for the children's interpretation of -ed as an aspect marker.

Do bilingual children lag behind? A study of morphological encoding using ERPs

The current study investigates how bilingual children encode and produce morphologically complex words. We employed a silent-production-plus-delayed-vocalization paradigm in which event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during silent encoding of inflected words which were subsequently cued to be overtly produced. The bilingual children's spoken responses and their ERPs were compared to previous datasets from monolingual children on the same task. We found an enhanced negativity for regular relative to irregular forms during silent production in both bilingual children's languages, replicating the ERP effect previously obtained from monolingual children. Nevertheless, the bilingual children produced more morphological errors (viz. over-regularizations) than monolingual children. We conclude that mechanisms of morphological encoding (as measured by ERPs) are parallel for bilingual and monolingual children, and that the increased over-regularization rates are due to their reduced exposure to each of the two languages (relative to monolingual children).

A multi-group approach to examining language development in at-risk learners

A battery of standardized language tests and control measures was administered to three groups of at-risk language learners - internationally adopted children, deaf children with cochlear implants, and children with specific language impairment - and to groups of second-language learners and typically developing monolingual children. All children were acquiring French, were matched on age, gender, and socioeconomic status, and were between age 5;0 and 7;3 at the time of testing. Differences between the at-risk and not-at-risk groups were evident in all domains of language testing. The children with SLI or CIs scored significantly lower than the IA children and all three at-risk groups scored lower than the monolingual group; the L2 and IA groups scored similarly. The results suggest that children with limited access to, or ability to process, early language input are at greater risk than children with delayed input to an additional language but otherwise typical or relatively typical early input.

Changes in English Past Tense Use by Bilingual School-Age Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study is to examine changes in English past tense accuracy and errors among Spanish-English bilingual children with typical development (TD) and developmental language disorder (DLD).

METHOD

Thirty-three children were tested before and after 1 year to examine changes in clinically relevant English past tense errors using an elicited production task. A mixed-model linear regression using age as a continuous variable revealed a robust effect for age. A 4-way repeated-measures analysis of variance was conducted with age (young, old) and language ability group (TD, DLD) as between-subjects variables, time (Time 1, Time 2) and verb type (regular, irregular, and novel verbs) as within-subject variables, and percent accuracy as the dependent variable. Subsequently, a 4-way repeated-measures analysis of variance was conducted to measure the overall distribution of verb errors across 2 time points.

RESULTS

Overall, children produced regular and novel verb past tense forms with higher accuracy than irregular past tense verbs in an elicitation task. Children with TD were more accurate than children with DLD. Younger children made more improvement than older children from Time 1 to Time 2, especially in the regular and novel verb conditions. Bare stem and overregularization were the most common errors across all groups. Errors consisting of stem + ing were more common in children with DLD than those with TD in the novel verb condition.

DISCUSSION

Contrary to an earlier report (Jacobson & Schwartz, 2005), the relative greater difficulty with regular and novel verbs was replaced by greater difficulty for irregular past tense, a pattern consistent with monolingual impairment. Age was a contributing factor, particularly for younger children with DLD who produced more stem + ing errors in the novel verb condition. For all children, and particularly for those with DLD, an extended period for irregular past tense learning was evident. The results support a usage-based theory of language acquisition and impairment.

Experiential Measures Can Be Used as a Proxy for Language Dominance in Bilingual Language Acquisition Research

Language dominance is a multidimensional construct comprising several distinct yet interrelated components, including language proficiency, exposure and use. The exact relation between these components remains unclear. Several studies have observed a (non-linear) relationship between bilingual children’s amount of exposure and absolute proficiency in each language, but our understanding of the relationship between language exposure and use and relative proficiency is limited. To address this question, we examined whether experiential-based measures of language dominance, operationalised here in the narrow sense of relative language proficiency, can provide an efficient alternative to the more labor-intensive performance-based measures often used in the literature. In earlier work, Unsworth (a) examined the relationship between relative proficiency and language exposure and use in a group of English–Dutch bilingual preschool children residing in the Netherlands. This study expands these findings by examining Dutch–English preschool children of the same age residing in the United Kingdom in order to cover the full dominance continuum. Participants were 35 simultaneous bilingual children (2;0–5;0) exposed to English and Dutch, 20 resident in the Netherlands and 15 in the United Kingdom. Relative amount of language exposure and use were estimated using a parental questionnaire. To obtain performance-based measures of language proficiency, children’s spontaneous speech was recorded during a half-hour play session in each language. The transcribed data were used to derive MLU (words), average length of the longest five utterances, the number of different verb and noun types. Single word vocabulary comprehension was assessed using standardized tests in both languages. Following Yip and Matthews (2006), relative proficiency was operationalised using differentials. In line with Unsworth (2016a), English-dominant children typically had less than approx. 35% exposure to Dutch and used Dutch less than approximately 30% of the time. Curve-fitting analyses revealed that non-linear models best fit the data. Logistic regression analyses showed that both exposure and use were good predictors of dominance group membership assigned using the same approach as Unsworth (2016a), that is, using SDs. Dominance groups derived independently using cluster analyses overlapped with the groups derived using SDs, confirming that relative amount of exposure and use can be used as a proxy for language dominance.

The roles of word-form frequency and phonological neighbourhood density in the acquisition of Lithuanian noun morphology

Four- and five-year-old children took part in an elicited familiar and novel Lithuanian noun production task to test predictions of input-based accounts of the acquisition of inflectional morphology. Two major findings emerged. First, as predicted by input-based accounts, correct production rates were correlated with the input frequency of the target form, and with the phonological neighbourhood density of the noun. Second, the error patterns were not compatible with the systematic substitution of target forms by either (a) the most frequent form of that noun or (b) a single morphosyntactic default form, as might be predicted by naive versions of a constructivist and generativist account, respectively. Rather, most errors reflected near-miss substitutions of singular for plural, masculine for feminine, or nominative/accusative for a less frequent case. Together, these findings provide support for an input-based approach to morphological acquisition, but are not adequately explained by any single account in its current form.

Separability of Lexical and Morphological Knowledge: Evidence from Language Minority Children

Lexical and morphological knowledge of school-aged children are correlated with each other, and are often difficult to distinguish. One reason for this might be that many tasks currently used to assess morphological knowledge require children to inflect or derive real words in the language, thus recruiting their vocabulary knowledge. The current study investigated the possible separability of lexical and morphological knowledge using two complementary approaches. First, we examined the correlations between vocabulary and four morphological tasks tapping different aspects of morphological processing and awareness, and using either real-word or pseudo-word stimuli. Thus, we tested the hypothesis that different morphological tasks recruit lexical knowledge to various degrees. Second, we compared the Hebrew vocabulary and morphological knowledge of 5th grade language minority speaking children to that of their native speaking peers. This comparison allows us to ask whether reduced exposure to the societal language might differentially influence vocabulary and morphological knowledge. The results demonstrate that indeed different morphological tasks rely on lexical knowledge to varying degrees. In addition, language minority students had significantly lower performance in vocabulary and in morphological tasks that recruited vocabulary knowledge to a greater extent. In contrast, both groups performed similarly in abstract morphological tasks with a lower vocabulary load. These results demonstrate that lexical and morphological knowledge may rely on partially separable learning mechanisms, and highlight the importance of distinguishing between these two linguistic components.

English Verb Accuracy of Bilingual Cantonese-English Preschoolers

Purpose

Knowledge of verb development in typically developing bilingual preschoolers may inform clinicians about verb accuracy rates during the 1st 2 years of English instruction. This study aimed to investigate tensed verb accuracy in 2 assessment contexts in 4- and 5-year-old Cantonese-English bilingual preschoolers.

Method

The sample included 47 Cantonese-English bilinguals enrolled in English preschools. Half of the children were in their 1st 4 months of English language exposure, and half had completed 1 year and 4 months of exposure to English. Data were obtained from the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (Rice & Wexler, 2001) and from a narrative generated in English.

Results

By the 2nd year of formal exposure to English, children in the present study approximated 33% accuracy of tensed verbs in a formal testing context versus 61% in a narrative context. The use of the English verb BE approximated mastery. Predictors of English third-person singular verb accuracy were task, grade, English expressive vocabulary, and lemma frequency.

Conclusions

Verb tense accuracy was low across both groups, but a precocious mastery of BE was observed. The results of the present study suggest that speech-language pathologists may consider, in addition to an elicitation task, evaluating the use of verbs during narratives in bilingual Cantonese-English bilingual children.

Early child L2 acquisition: Age or input effects? Neither, or both?

This paper explores whether there is evidence for age and/or input effects in child L2 acquisition across three different linguistic domains, namely morphosyntax, vocabulary, and syntax-semantics. More specifically, it compares data from English-speaking children whose age of onset to L2 Dutch was between one and three years with data from children whose age of onset was between four and seven years in their acquisition of verb morphology, verb placement, vocabulary, and direct object scrambling. The main findings were that there were no significant differences between the two groups in any of these areas and, with the exception of scrambling, current amount of exposure was the only factor significantly related to children's scores. The paper discusses the theoretical significance of these findings with respect to the role of input in the language acquisition process and the claim that there is a critical period ending within (early) childhood.

Quantifying the relative contributions of lexical and phonological factors to regular past tense accuracy

PURPOSE

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) frequently have difficulty producing the past tense. This study aimed to quantify the relative influence of telicity (i.e. the completedness of an event), verb frequency and stem final phonemes on the production of past tense by school-age children with SLI and their typically-developing (TD) peers.

METHOD

Archival elicited production data from children with SLI between the ages of 6-9 and TD peers aged 4-8 were re-analysed. Past tense accuracy was predicted using measures of telicity, verb frequency measures and properties of the final consonant of the verb stem.

RESULT

All children were highly accurate when verbs were telic, the inflected form was frequently heard in the past tense and the word ended in a sonorant/non-alveolar consonant. All children were less accurate when verbs were atelic, rarely heard in the past tense or ended in a word final obstruent or alveolar consonant. SLI status depressed overall accuracy rates, but did not influence how facilitative a given factor was.

CONCLUSION

Some factors that have been believed to be useful only when children are first discovering past tense, such as telicity, appear to be influential in later years as well.

The role of nonverbal working memory in morphosyntactic processing by school-aged monolingual and bilingual children

The current study examined the relationship between nonverbal working memory and morphosyntactic processing in monolingual native speakers of English and bilingual speakers of English and Spanish. We tested 42 monolingual children and 42 bilingual children between the ages of 8 and 10years matched on age and nonverbal IQ. Children were administered an auditory Grammaticality Judgment task in English to measure morphosyntactic processing and a visual N-Back task and Corsi Blocks task to measure nonverbal working memory capacity. Analyses revealed that monolinguals were more sensitive to English morphosyntactic information than bilinguals, but the groups did not differ in reaction times or response bias. Furthermore, higher nonverbal working memory capacity was associated with greater sensitivity to morphosyntactic violations in bilinguals but not in monolinguals. The findings suggest that nonverbal working memory skills link more tightly to syntactic processing in populations with lower levels of language knowledge.

Input-based structure-specific proficiency predicts the neural mechanism of adult L2 syntactic processing

This study used Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to explore the role of input-based structure-specific proficiency in L2 syntactic processing, using English subject-verb agreement structures as the stimuli. A pre-test/trainings/post-test paradigm of experimental and control groups was employed, and Chinese speakers who learned English as a second language (L2) participated in the experiment. At pre-test, no ERP component related to the subject-verb agreement structures violations was observed in either group. At training session, the experimental group learned the subject-verb agreement structures, while the control group learned other syntactic structures. After two continuously intensive input trainings, at post-test, a significant P600 component related to the subject-verb agreement structures violations was elicited in the experimental group, but not in the control group. These findings suggest that input training improves structure-specific proficiency, which is reflected in the neural mechanism of L2 syntactic processing.

The Language and Literacy Development of Young Dual Language Learners: A Critical Review

The number of children living in the United States who are learning two languages is increasing greatly. However, relatively little research has been conducted on the language and literacy development of dual language learners (DLLs), particularly during the early childhood years. To summarize the extant literature and guide future research, a critical analysis of the literature was conducted. A search of major databases for studies on young typically developing DLLs between 2000-2011 yielded 182 peer-reviewed articles. Findings about DLL children's developmental trajectories in the various areas of language and literacy are presented. Much of these findings should be considered preliminary, because there were few areas where multiple studies were conducted. Conclusions were reached when sufficient evidence existed in a particular area. First, the research shows that DLLs have two separate language systems early in life. Second, differences in some areas of language development, such as vocabulary, appear to exist among DLLs depending on when they were first exposed to their second language. Third, DLLs' language and literacy development may differ from that of monolinguals, although DLLs appear to catch up over time. Fourth, little is known about factors that influence DLLs' development, although the amount of language exposure to and usage of DLLs' two languages appears to play key roles. Methodological issues are addressed, and directions for future research are discussed.

The relationship between bilingual exposure and morphosyntactic development

PURPOSE

The study examined the effect of bilingual input on the grammatical development of bilingual children in comparison to monolingual peers.

METHOD

Spontaneous language samples were collected in English and French from typically-developing bilingual and monolingual pre-schoolers aged 3 years (n = 56) and 5 years (n = 83). Within each age group, children varied in bilingual exposure patterns but were matched on age, non-verbal cognition, maternal education and language status, speaking two majority languages. Measures included mean length of utterance (MLU) in words and morphemes, and accuracy and diversity of morphological use.

RESULT

Grammatical development in each language was strongly influenced by amount of same-language experience. Children with equal exposure to both languages scored comparably to monolingual children in both languages, whereas children with unequal exposure evidenced similarly unequal performance across languages and scored significantly lower than monolinguals in their weaker language. Scoring significantly lower than monolinguals in both languages may, therefore, be a sign of language impairment. Each language followed a strongly language-specific sequence of acquisition and error patterns. Five-year-old children with low exposure to English displayed an optional infinitive pattern, a strong clinical marker for Primary Language Impairment in monolingual English-speaking children.

CONCLUSION

Descriptive normative data are presented that permit more accurate interpretation of bilingual assessment data.

The ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition

This review article presents evidence for the claim that frequency effects are pervasive in children's first language acquisition, and hence constitute a phenomenon that any successful account must explain. The article is organized around four key domains of research: children's acquisition of single words, inflectional morphology, simple syntactic constructions, and more advanced constructions. In presenting this evidence, we develop five theses. (i) There exist different types of frequency effect, from effects at the level of concrete lexical strings to effects at the level of abstract cues to thematic-role assignment, as well as effects of both token and type, and absolute and relative, frequency. High-frequency forms are (ii) early acquired and (iii) prevent errors in contexts where they are the target, but also (iv) cause errors in contexts in which a competing lower-frequency form is the target. (v) Frequency effects interact with other factors (e.g. serial position, utterance length), and the patterning of these interactions is generally informative with regard to the nature of the learning mechanism. We conclude by arguing that any successful account of language acquisition, from whatever theoretical standpoint, must be frequency sensitive to the extent that it can explain the effects documented in this review, and outline some types of account that do and do not meet this criterion.

Caregivers' suffix frequencies and suffix acquisition by language impaired, late talking, and typically developing children

Acquisition of regular inflectional suffixes is an integral part of grammatical development in English and delayed acquisition of certain inflectional suffixes is a hallmark of language impairment. We investigate the relationship between input frequency and grammatical suffix acquisition, analyzing 217 transcripts of mother-child (ages 1 ; 11-6 ; 9) conversations from the CHILDES database. Maternal suffix frequency correlates with previously reported rank orders of acquisition and with child suffix frequency. Percentages of children using a suffix are consistent with frequencies in caregiver speech. Although late talkers acquire suffixes later than typically developing children, order of acquisition is similar across populations. Furthermore, the third person singular and past tense verb suffixes, weaknesses for children with language impairment, are less frequent in caregiver speech than the plural noun suffix, a relative strength in language impairment. Similar findings hold across typical, SLI and late talker populations, suggesting that frequency plays a role in suffix acquisition.

Types e tokens na aquisição típica de linguagem por sujeitos de 18 a 32 meses falantes do português brasileiro

OBJETIVO: analisar comparativamente a mudança em types e tokens e na taxa de type/token em crianças, de ambos os sexos, entre 18 e 36 meses, falantes nativos do português brasileiro, quanto à classe gramatical e à medida total e segmentar. MÉTODO: foram gravadas e transcritas as falas de 60 crianças com desenvolvimento típico de linguagem em atividades lúdicas com as mães ou professora. A seguir, efetuaram-se os cálculos da taxa de type/token (TTR) e de types e tokens (ty/to), na forma total e segmentar, com sua distribuição em classes gramaticais. Os resultados foram analisados estatisticamente, por meio dos testes t-student e análise de variância (ANOVA). RESULTADOS: o número de types e tokens totais apresentou vantagens sobre o segmentar em termos de descrição de classes gramaticais e na diferenciação estatística das faixas etárias de 18, 24 e 32 meses. Evolutivamente substantivos surgem primeiro do que verbos, advérbios e adjetivos e demais classes gramaticais que se completam até 32 meses. CONCLUSÃO: não houve diferença estatística quanto ao gênero. A análise isolada dos types e tokens é mais efetiva do que a divisão dos mesmos (TTR), tendo validade estatística na diferenciação das faixas etárias de 18, 24 e 32 meses. O número de types e tokens segmentar é menos efetivo na descrição gramatical considerando faixa etária e gênero.

Bilingual children's acquisition of the past tense: a usage-based approach

Bilingual and monolingual children's (mean age=4;10) elicited production of the past tense in both English and French was examined in order to test predictions from Usage-Based theory regarding the sensitivity of children's acquisition rates to input factors such as variation in exposure time and the type/token frequency of morphosyntactic structures. Both bilingual and monolingual children were less accurate with irregular than regular past tense forms in both languages. Bilingual children, as a group, were less accurate than monolinguals with the English regular and irregular past tense, and with the French irregular past tense, but not with the French regular past tense. However, bilingual children were as accurate as monolinguals with the past tense in their language of greater exposure, except for English irregular verbs. It is argued that these results support the view that children's acquisition rates are sensitive to input factors, but with some qualifications.

Frequency drives lexical access in reading but not in speaking: the frequency-lag hypothesis

To contrast mechanisms of lexical access in production versus comprehension we compared the effects of word frequency (high, low), context (none, low constraint, high constraint), and level of English proficiency (monolingual, Spanish-English bilingual, Dutch-English bilingual) on picture naming, lexical decision, and eye fixation times. Semantic constraint effects were larger in production than in reading. Frequency effects were larger in production than in reading without constraining context but larger in reading than in production with constraining context. Bilingual disadvantages were modulated by frequency in production but not in eye fixation times, were not smaller in low-constraint contexts, and were reduced by high-constraint contexts only in production and only at the lowest level of English proficiency. These results challenge existing accounts of bilingual disadvantages and reveal fundamentally different processes during lexical access across modalities, entailing a primarily semantically driven search in production but a frequency-driven search in comprehension. The apparently more interactive process in production than comprehension could simply reflect a greater number of frequency-sensitive processing stages in production.

Factors affecting accuracy of past tense production in children with specific language impairment and their typically developing peers: the influence of verb transitivity, clause location, and sentence type

PURPOSE

The author examined the influence of sentence type, clause order, and verb transitivity on the accuracy of children's past tense productions. All groups of children, but especially children with specific language impairment (SLI), were predicted to decrease accuracy as linguistic complexity increased.

METHOD

The author elicited past tense productions in 2-clause sentences from 5- to 8-year-old children with SLI (n=14) and their typically developing peers (n=24). The target sentences varied in the type and obligatory nature of the second clause and the number of arguments.

RESULTS

On average, 85% of the responses across all groups and sentence types contained 2 clauses. Fewer 2-clause sentences were produced in the complement clause condition than in the other conditions. Sentence type and clause order, but not argument structure, influenced use of past tense. Children with SLI had a similar but less accurate profile as compared with the age-matched group. The younger mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched group reflected decreased accuracy with each additional source of linguistic complexity.

CONCLUSIONS

Increased syntactic difficulty decreases use of morphology for all children, supporting the hypothesis that processing demands influence morphological accuracy. MLU-matched children, but not children with SLI, were more affected by changes in linguistic complexity. Further work on age-related changes in sentence production is necessary.

Reproduction of inflectional markers in French-speaking children with reading impairment

PURPOSE

Children with reading impairment (RI) experience difficulties in oral and written production of inflectional markers. The origin of these difficulties is not well documented in French. According to some authors, acquisition of irregular items by typically developing children is predicted by token frequency, whereas acquisition of regular items is predicted by type frequency. The authors hypothesized that acquisition of inflectional markers in French depends on the distribution of irregular, invariable, and regular (transparent) items within a grammatical category.

METHOD

Fifteen children with RI age matched with 15 children with typical reading development repeated and read aloud sentences containing adjectives inflected for gender and verbs inflected for number. Inflected adjectives and verbs were matched for token frequency and phonological complexity, whereas distribution of invariable, transparent, and irregular items differed within each grammatical category.

RESULTS

Results show higher error rates in the RI group, who produced more errors in reading than repetition, and more errors on inflected verbs than adjectives. Error distribution varied with the proportion of invariable, irregular, and transparent items within each grammatical category, confirming the authors' hypothesis.

CONCLUSION

The authors concluded that morphological difficulties of children with RI group originated from a delay in extracting systematicity in verb and adjective inflectional marking.

Sex differences in past tense overregularization

Hartshorne and Ullman (2006) presented naturalistic language data from 25 children (15 boys, 10 girls) and showed that girls produced more past tense overregularization errors than did boys. In particular, girls were more likely to overregularize irregular verbs whose stems share phonological similarities with regular verbs. It was argued that the result supported the Declarative/Procedural model of language, a neuropsychological analogue of the dual-route approach to language. In the current study we present experimental data that are inconsistent with these naturalistic data. Eighty children (40 males, 40 females) aged 5;0-6;9 completed a past tense elicitation task, a test of declarative memory, and a test of non-verbal intelligence. The results revealed no sex differences on any of the measures. Instead, the best predictors of overregularization rates were item-level features of the test verbs. We discuss the results within the context of dual versus single route debate on past tense acquisition.

Limitations on reliability: regularity rules in the English plural and past tense

Two studies investigated 3- to 5-year-olds' trust in a reliable informant when judging novel labels and novel plural and past tense forms. In Study 1, children (N = 24) endorsed the names of new objects given by an informant who had earlier labeled familiar objects correctly over the names given by an informant who had labeled the same objects incorrectly. In Study 2, children (N = 24) endorsed novel names given by an informant who had earlier expressed the plural of familiar nouns correctly over one who had expressed the plural incorrectly. But children overwhelmingly endorsed the regular plural and past tense forms of new words provided by the formerly unreliable labeler (Study 1) or morphologist (Study 2) rather than irregular forms of those words provided by the formerly reliable informant.