Research Article: Development of Clause Complexity in Children with Specific Language Impairment/Language Development Disorder: A Longitudinal Study
Abstract:
This paper addresses the grammatical challenges associated with the development of clause complexity, focusing on the performance of a group of monolingual Spanish-speaking schoolchildren with Specific Language Impairment/Developmental Language Disorder (SLI/DLD) in a longitudinal corpus of oral narrative samples. The study examines the presence of interclause relations of subordination and equivalence (hypotaxis and parataxis) in language samples of two groups: an experimental group made up of 24 schoolchildren with SLI/DLD and a control group made up of 24 schoolchildren with typical development (TD). The results show that while both groups use parataxis as the most common relation between clauses in all school grades, there is a significant decrease in paratactic relations and a significant increase in hypotactic relations from first to fourth grade of primary education. Although the development patterns are highly similar, the SLI/DLD group shows greater difficulties in mastering more complex (hypotactic) relations in fourth grade compared to the control group, indicating that it is less sophisticated in the use of these types of complex relations. These findings suggest that focused support on the most complex structures is needed towards the fourth grade of primary education, given the demands of the school academic register from 6 and 7 years of age and the potential problems that the development of clause complexity can cause in school-age children.
Introduction:
Specific Language Disorder (SLI) or Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is a developmental disorder characterized by a set of difficulties that affect language acquisition [1]. This disorder manifests itself as an important limitation in the expression and/or comprehension of oral language [2], which affects communicative practices in speech and language processing [3,4]. The most frequent deficits in SLI/DLD are related to the morphosyntactic level of language [5,6,7,8,9]. These morphosyntactic difficulties are…
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