Linked Life Data

9187060

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/9187060

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
3
pubmed:dateCreated
1997-7-15
pubmed:abstractText
This study investigates the intrasentential assignment of reference to pronouns (him, her) and anaphors (himself, herself) as characterized by Binding Theory in a subgroup of "Grammatical specifically language-impaired" (SLI) children. The study aims to (1) provide further insight into the underlying nature of Grammatical SLI in children and (2) elucidate the relationship between different sources of knowledge, that is, syntactic knowledge versus knowledge of lexical properties and pragmatic inference in the assignment of intrasentential coreference. In two experiments, using a picture-sentence pair judgement task, the children's knowledge of the lexical properties versus syntactic knowledge (Binding Principles A and B) in the assignment of reflexives and pronouns was investigated. The responses of 12 Grammatical SLI children (aged 9:3 to 12:10) and three language ability (LA) control groups of 12 children (aged 5:9 to 9:1) were compared. The results indicated that the SLI children and the LA controls may use a combination of conceptual-lexical and pragmatic knowledge (e.g., semantic gender, reflexive marking of the predicate, and assignment of theta roles) to help assign reference to anaphors and pronouns. The LA controls also showed appropriate use of the syntactic knowledge. In contrast, the SLI children performed at chance when syntactic information was crucially required to rule out inappropriate coreference. The data are consistent with an impairment with the (innate) syntactic knowledge characterized by Binding Theory which underlies reference assignment to anaphors and pronouns. We conclude that the SLI children's syntactic representation is underspecified with respect to coindexation between constituents and the syntactic properties of pronouns. Support is provided for the proposal that Grammatical SLI children have a modular language deficit with syntactic dependent structural relationships between constituents, that is, a Representational Deficit with Dependent Relationships (RDDR). Further consideration of the linguistic characteristics of this deficit is made in relation to the hypothesized syntactic representations of young normally developing children.
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
C
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Mar
pubmed:issn
0010-0277
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
62
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
245-90
pubmed:dateRevised
2006-11-15
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
1997
pubmed:articleTitle
Binding theory and grammatical specific language impairment in children.
pubmed:affiliation
Department of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. h.vanderlely@psyc.bbk.ac.uk
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Comparative Study, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't