Tense-Marking Errors in Spontaneous Speech of Japanese Children With Specific Language Impairment

Abstract

Tense-marking errors are often observed in spontaneous speech of English-speaking children with specific language imparement (SLI), and a set of morphemes that marks tense are said to be clinical markers of SLI in English-speaking children. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the tense-marking errors are also observed frequently in spontaneous speech of Japanese children with SLI, and whether tense-markers also can be considered as candidate clinical markers of SLI in Japanese-speaking children. The participants were 7 SLI children (from 6;4 to 12;0) and 45 typically developing children (from 2;3 to 6;3). Spontaneous utterances of these children were gathered and analyzed. In 7 children with SLI, the percentage of tense-marking errors ranged from 0% to 0.8% (mean percentage was 0.4%). Tense-marking errors were not observed in the 45 typically developing children. The errors observed in SLI children were all substitutions. These results show that both the percentage and the type of errors in Japanese children with SLI were different from their English counterparts. These findings were discussed from clinical and cross linguistic points of view.