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The acquisition of relative clause comprehension in Hebrew: a study of SLI and normal development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2004

NAAMA FRIEDMANN  and
RAMA NOVOGRODSKY
NAAMA FRIEDMANN
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv
RAMA NOVOGRODSKY
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv
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Abstract

Comprehension of relative clauses was assessed in 10 Hebrew-speaking school-age children with syntactic SLI and in two groups of younger children with normal language development. Comprehension of subject- and object-relatives was assessed using a binary sentence-picture matching task. The findings were that while Hebrew-speaking children with normal development comprehend right-branching object relatives around the age of 6;0, children with syntactic SLI are still at chance level in object relatives by age 11;0. The four-year-olds were also at chance on object relatives. Comprehension of subject relatives was good in the SLI group, similar to the six-year-olds, and significantly better than the four-year-olds. The syntactic impairment is interpreted as a selective deficit to non-canonical sentences that are derived by movement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , August 2004 , pp. 661 - 681
Copyright
2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The research was supported by Adams Super Center for Brain Studies research grant (Friedmann) and by the Joint German-Israeli Research Program grant GR01791 (Friedmann). We thank Vered Eliezri for drawing the beautiful pictures for the test, and Ruth Berman, Harald Clahsen, Heather van der Lely, Esther Dromi, Michal Biran, Aviah Gvion, Hagar Levy, and Ronit Szterman for discussions of previous versions of this manuscript.