Verb morphology as clinical marker of specific language impairment: evidence from first and second language learners.
Listen for missing third-person -s in Dutch stories—it flags SLI in both monolingual and bilingual school kids.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ludo and colleagues listened to Dutch stories told by school-age kids.
Some kids had specific language impairment (SLI). Some were bilingual. Some were typical speakers.
The team counted how often each child left off the -s ending on third-person verbs like "he runs."
What they found
Missing -s endings showed up far more in kids with SLI.
Bilingual children with SLI made even more of these mistakes.
The pattern held for both groups, so the error works as a quick red flag for SLI in Dutch.
No numbers were reported, but the difference was clear enough to trust.
How this fits with other research
Helland et al. (2017) looked at the same age range but focused on pragmatic language, not verb endings. They found that pragmatic gaps drive behaviour problems in both SLI and ASD.
Ludo’s team did not study behaviour, so the papers sit side-by-side: one gives you a grammar marker, the other reminds you to also check social use of language.
Titlestad et al. (2019) used a similar quasi-experimental setup with deaf children. Both studies show that small language samples can spotlight clinical groups, even if the target skill differs.
Why it matters
If you assess Dutch-speaking children, simply ask them to tell a short story and note every time "he run" or "she play" slips out.
A high count of missing -s endings warns you to probe deeper for SLI, especially in bilingual kids.
Pair this quick screen with Andersen’s pragmatic check to catch both grammar and social-language needs in one intake package.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The goal of this study was to search for verb morphology characteristics as possible clinical markers of SLI in Dutch as a first and second language. We also wanted to find out to what extent bilingual children with SLI are additionally disadvantaged in comparison to monolingual children with SLI, on the one hand, and to typically developing bilingual children, on the other hand. Therefore, we examined the use of verb morphology in the narratives of four groups of 7- and 9-year-old children: native Dutch (monolingual) children without SLI, bilingual children without SLI, native Dutch (monolingual) children with SLI, and bilingual children with SLI. The narrative performance in Dutch as measured by mean length of utterance and number of ungrammatical sentences was found to be generally worse for children learning Dutch as a second language, for children suffering from SLI, and for younger children. Furthermore, omission of an agreement marker in the third person singular verb form can be seen as a clinical marker of SLI in both first and second language learners. Bilingual children with SLI were found to be in an additionally disadvantaged position as far as their use of L2 verb morphology.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2011 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.01.001