Parsing the passive: comparing children with Specific Language Impairment to sequential bilingual children

Marinis, T. and Saddy, D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8501-6076 (2013) Parsing the passive: comparing children with Specific Language Impairment to sequential bilingual children. Language Acquisition, 20 (2). pp. 155-179. ISSN 1048-9223 doi: 10.1080/10489223.2013.766743 (special issue: Language Acquisition in Bilingual and Atypical Populations: Focus on Developmental Comparisons)

Abstract/Summary

25 monolingual (L1) children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), 32 sequential bilingual (L2) children, and 29 L1 controls completed the Test of Active & Passive Sentences-Revised (van der Lely, 1996) and the self-paced listening task with picture verification for actives and passives (Marinis, 2007). These revealed important between-group differences in both tasks. The children with SLI showed difficulties in both actives and passives when they had to reanalyse thematic roles on-line. Their error pattern provided evidence for working memory limitations. The L2 children showed difficulties only in passives both on-line and off-line. We suggest that these relate to the complex syntactic algorithm in passives and reflect an earlier developmental stage due to reduced exposure to the L2. The results are discussed in relation to theories of SLI and can be best accommodated within accounts proposing that difficulties in the comprehension of passives stem from processing limitations.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/31201
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Neuroscience Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Clinical Language Sciences Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Language and Cognition
Publisher	Taylor & Francis
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