Sentence Repetition Challenges to Language Acquisition: Bilingualism and Language Impairment Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem Bar Ilan University

1. Child: Want other one spoon, Daddy 2. Father: You mean, you want THE OTHER SPOON 3. Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please. 4. Father: Can you say “the other spoon”? 5. Child: Other … one … spoon. 6. Father: Say … “other”. 7. Child: Other. 8. Father: “Spoon”. 9. Child: Spoon. 10. Father: “Other … spoon.” 11. Child: Other … Spoon. Now give me other one spoon? 12. (From Pinker1994, p. 281)

Elicited imitation as an experimental technique Filling the gap Word order Passive Relative clauses

Filling the gap (Slobin & Welsh 1973, from Lust et al. p. 58) Adult: The red beads and the brown beads are here Child: Brown beads here and red beads here

Word order (Lust et al. p. 59) Adult : When he sat down, Johnny read a book Child : Johnny read a book when he sat down,

Passive Adult: The boy was kissed by the girl Child 1: The girl kissed the boy Child 2: The boy kissed the girl Child 3: Boy kiss girl

Relative clauses (Friedmann & Lavi, 2006) נסיין: זו הילדה שסבתא נשקה ילד: זו הילדה שנשקה את סבתא

Sentence repetition as a linguistic evaluation tool How does SR work? (Bley-Vroman and Chaudron, 1994):  The subject hears the input, processes it, and forms a representation.  The representation includes information at various levels.  The representation is kept in STM  The subject formulates (and produces) a sentence based on the representation, comparing it to the model.

What influences success on SR? What does it check?  Verbal memory  Word length  Sentence length  Syntactic complexity  Predictability

Verbal memory span Devesovi, A. & Caselli, M. C Sentence repetition as a measure of early grammatical development in Italian. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 42, Subjects: 100 Italian preschoolers. Method: SR, spontaneous speech, verbal memory span Findings:  MLU, articles omission and use of the verbs in the sentence imitation task correlated with the same measures of their free speech.  Positive correlations between verbal memory span and performance of both the imitation task and the free speech.

Word length Willis, C.S. & Gathercole, S.E. (2001). Phonological short-term memory contributions to sentence processing in young children. Memory, 9,

Subjects: 30 children, 4-5 (Mean 4;6, SD, 4.28 months) Material: SR followed by picture selection with sentences containing either short or longer words (different in number of syllables), and varied in syntactic structure.

Repetition but not comprehension of the sentences was significantly influenced by word length.

Sentence length (Armon-Lotem et al. under revisions( Substitution with code interference: The baby laughed on the clown. Substitution with no code interference: The baby laughed to the clown. Omission with code interference: The elephant pulled *(down) the zebra's pants. Omission with no code interference: The baby laughed *(at) the clown.

Syntactic complexity Friedmann, N., & Lavi, H. (2006). On the order of acquisition of A-movement, Wh-movement and V-C movement. In A. Belletti, E. Bennati, C. Chesi, E. Di Domenico, & I. Ferrari (Eds.), Language acquisition and development (pp ). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press/CSP.

Subjects: 60 Hebrew speaking children aged 2;2-3;10: 21 children aged 2;2-2;9, 19 children aged 2;10-3;2, and 20 children aged 3;3-3;10. Task: SR - 80 sentences (8 categories by syntactic complexity), 4 words.

"No correlation was found between repetition of any of the movement types and age (Rpb < 0.22 for all the sentences with movement), and no significant difference in repetition was detected between the three age groups: For example, a 2;3 year old girl succeeded in repeating all the V-C sentences, whereas a 3;10 boy failed in them. Two girls aged 2;5 succeeded in repeating Wh sentences, whereas 4 children aged 3;7 failed in them." (p. 214)

Predictability Valian, V. Prasada, S. & Scarpa, J Direct object predictability: effects on young children's imitation of sentences. Journal of Child Language, 33, Predictability- It is easier to repeat sentences with highly predictable objects than sentences with less predictable objects. a. The dog chews a bone. b. The dog chews a crayon Subjects: 24/23 two-year-olds (mean 28 month, range 25-32) with TLD Task 1: Sentence repetition 6-8 morphemes. Task 2: Sentence repetition 6-8 morphemes + a stickers game

SR & SLI Gardner,H., Froud,K., McClelland,A., van der Lely,H. K. J. (2006). The development of the Grammar and Phonology Screening (GAPS) test to assess key markers of specific language difficulties in young children. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 41(5),

A significant effect of age group: F(4, 618)547.53, p,0.001

Preesntations Conti-Ramsden, G., Botting, N., & Faragher, B Psycholinguistic markers for specific language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 6, MERAV 6/12 Redmond, S. M Differentiating SLI from ADHD Using Children's Sentence Recall and Production of Past Tense Morphology. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 19:2, OLA 6/12 Stokes S.F., Wong A.M., Fletcher P., Leonard L.B Nonword repetition and sentence repetition as clinical markers of specific language impairment: the case of Cantonese. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 49(2): DORIT 6/12

BISLI Porat S The use of structures involving syntactic movement by English-Hebrew Bilingual children with SLI. Research Conference on Bilingualism and SLI, Jerusalem, Israel, February.

Subjects 31 preschool children (23 bilingual English-Hebrew and 8 Hebrew-speaking monolinguals), from same neighborhood and same (middle-high) SES, attending regular preschools or special “language preschools”. Bilingual children were screened for both languages using standardized tests (CELF Preschool for English, Goralnik for Hebrew), monolinguals were screened for Hebrew. The bilingual children are divided into:  Children with typical development in both languages (ALL-TD). Most attend regular school, 2 attend language preschool. This group without the latter two is called TD.  Children with Hebrew typical development (H-TD) - less than 1.5 SD on the Goralink, but more than 1 SD on the CELF.  Children with English typical development (E-TD) - less than 1 SD on the CELF, but more than 1.5 SD on the Goralnik.  Children with atypical development (A-TD) – more than 1 SD on the CELF, and more than 1.5 SD on the Goralnik.

Correct repetition: TD, HTD and ETD performed similarly Correct repetition: TD, HTD and ETD combined performed significantly better than ATD.

The group of bilingual children with SLI outperformed the group of monolingual children with SLI only on some of the tested categories, and performed equally on others.

The ATD group performed significantly worse compared to the typically developing groups mainly in sentences with V-C movement Monolinguals preformed worse on V-C movement (in transitive V-S and unergative V-S) topicalization and subject RCs, but this is only significant for topicalization.

Function vs. Content word errors