Abstract
There are few studies on the linguistic knowledge of Japanese children with specific language impairment (SLI). The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of case-marker errors in the utterances of 2 Japanese children with SLI, focusing on the structural ("ga", "o" and "ni") and inherent (case-makers except "ga", "o" and "ni") cases. The participants were 2 children with SLI. Child A was 10 years old and Child B was 9 years old. Case-marker errors in spontaneous speech were identified and analyzed. The results were as follows. In both Child A and B, the number of errors was significantly higher in structural cases than in inherent cases. These results were consistent with those in hearing-impaired children reported previously. However, in both Child A and B, the number of errors in structural cases showed no difference between those mistakenly taken for other structural cases and those taken for inherent cases. These results were not in accordance with those which were reported for hearing-impaired children. In children with hearing impairments, few errors in structural cases mistakenly taken for inherent cases were observed. These results suggest that in children with SLI, knowledge of the difference between structural and inherent cases is not so acquired as in hearing-impaired children.
