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Differentiating between SLI andchild SLA: Focus on functional

categories

Johanne Paradis

University of Alberta

GASLA, Banff, April 2006

Child SLA and SLI

• What is SLI?

• Similarities in French and Swedish between child L2 andSLI morphosyntax (Crago & Paradis, 2003, Grüter, 2005; Paradis & Crago, 2000, 2004;Paradis, 2004; Håkansson, 2001)

– Similarities problematic clinically for differential diagnosis

– L2-SLI similarities inconsistent with some theories of SLI and SLA

• Purpose of this programme of research:– L2 and SLI in English

– Inform assessment practices with L2 children

– Inform theoretical accounts of SLA and SLI

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Are English Child L2 and SLI Similar?

Dulay & Burt, 1973; 1974; Haznedar, 2001; Ionin &Wexler, 2002; Lakshmanan, 1994

Bedore & Leonard, 1998; Leonard, Eyer, Bedore &Grela, 1997; Oetting & Rice, 1993; Rice, 2003a-b; Rice& Wexler, 1996, 2001; Rice, Wexler & Cleave, 1995;Rice, Wexler & Hershberger, 1998; Rice, Wexler &Redmond, 1999

•Some tense morphemes acquired later thannon-tense

•Errors with tense and non-tensemorphology mainly omission (notcommission)

•Tense morphemes less accurate than non-tense morphemes in production (veryprotracted development of tense)

•Errors with tense and non-tensemorphology overwhelmingly omission (notcommission)

L2SLI

Are English L2 and SLI Different?

Lardiere, 1998, 2000; Haznedar, 2001; Haznedar &Schwartz, 1997; Ionin & Wexler, 2002; White, 2003

Rice, 2003; Rice & Wexler, 1996; Rice, Wexler &Cleave, 1995; Rice, Wexler & Hershberger, 1998;Rice, Wexler & Redmond, 1999; Wexler, 1994,1998,2003

•Variable use of inflection = accessproblem; representational functionalstructure intact

•Variable use of inflection not restricted totense morphemes

•No random or faulty use of morphology(systematic commission errors?)

•Selective deficit on feature tense optional omission of tense morphemes

•Deficit in representation and production

•(E)UCC = omission errors only; immatureand impaired grammars only

L2: Missing SurfaceInflection (MSI)

SLI: Extended OptionalInfinitive (EOI)

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Research Questions

• Are child ESL grammars EOI or MSI?– Study 1: Direct ESL-SLI comparisons– Study 2: ESL over time

• If MSI, then what explains variable use of inflection?– Study 3: Input type and token frequency and the

emergent lexicon (Bybee, 2001, 2002)

Participants, Procedures, andTarget Morphemes

Common ground for all three studies

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ESL Children

7;36;106;46;05;6Age

R5

34MOE

R4

29MOE

R3

21MOE

R2

15MOE

R1

9MOE

24 English L2 children from new Canadian families

L1s: Farsi, Spanish, Romanian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean,Ukrainian, Arabic, Japanese, Dari

Procedures

• Spontaneous speech samples• Elicitation probes (TEGI: Rice & Wexler, 2001)

– Picture description (3SG & Past tense)– Question elicitation with stuffed animals and a

puppet (BE and DO)

• Grammaticality judgment task (TEGI: Rice & Wexler, 2001)

– Children asked to judge if speech of “moon guys” is“good” or “not so good”

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Morphemes from Spontaneous Samples and Probes

She is in the house

She is in a house

non-tensearticlesDET

She is walkingnon-tenseprogressiveING

She is in the housenon-tenseprepositions in/onPREP

Two dogsnon-tenseplural [-s]PLU-s

Does he want some juice?tensedo-support “do”DO

She is walking

He is tired

tenseauxiliary and copula “to be”BE

She walkedtenseregular past tensePASTR

He walkstensethird person singular [-s|3 S-s

ExampleTypeDescriptionCode

Morphemes in Grammaticality Judgment Tasks

He is jump-Ønon-tense

ungrammatical omissionof [-ing]

Drop-ing

He am way up herenon-tense

ungrammatical subject-verb agreement

Bad AGR

OI-BE: He Ø running away; HeØ behind the box

OI-Lex: He want-Ø a drink

tenseungrammatical omissionof a tense morpheme

OI/DropTNS

ExampleTypeDescriptionCode

NB: Grammatical targets also included in task

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Study 1: Comparison of SLI andESL (Round 1)

Are child ESL grammars EOI or MSI?

Paradis, Rice, Crago & Richman (2004)

Predictions of EOI and MSI

MaybeNot necessarilyNo - production mainlyMSI

RareYesYesEOI

Commissionerrors?

Tense-markingselectivelyaffected?

Both production andrepresentational knowledgeimplicated?

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Participants

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24

24

N

3.292;11MLU

3.805;8SLI

3.165;6ESL

MLUwAge

ESL: mean exposure to English = 9 months = Round 1

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Correlations between Probe and GJ Scores

.313.024.013.341GJ-OI-LEX

.284.075.040.366GJ-OI-BE

DOBEPASTR3S-s

ESL

.522**.424*.520**.419*GJ-OI-LEX

.529**.664**.388.572**GJ-OI-BE

DOBEPASTR3S-s

SLI

Errors with BE

• All groups: omission > commission, but…• ESL more commission errors with BE than SLI or MLU• ESL use of wrong BE forms not random - “is” ➞ “are”• Overgeneration of BE unique to ESL (cf. Ionin & Wexler, 2002)

1. Yes, but if I was hurt my teeth. (RMLM)2. And I’m sit down on my spot. (GSYN)3. But sometime we are try something (CNDX)4. I’m got sevens (playing cards) (SHHN)5. And playtime I’m play on the paint (GSYN)

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Study 1: Conclusion

• There are similarities between ESL, SLI andMLU, but the differences between ESL andSLI/MLU support MSI

Study 2: ESL tense and non-tenseover time

Are child ESL grammars EOI or MSI?

Paradis & Crago (2005)

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Motivation for Study 2

–Production ≠ r epresentation

– Errors with both tense and non-tense

–Higher proportion of commissionerrors in L2

–Variable tense marking

–Tense < non-tense

–Omission errors predominate

Differences between L2 and SLISimilarities between L2 andSLI

☞Are the differences due to L2 having just 9 months exposure, ordo they persist over time?

Participants & Procedures

• 24 ESL children, Rounds 1 to 5• Composite scores for production:

– Tense Composite (TC) - spontaneous– Non-tense Composite (NTC)- spontaneous

• PLU, PREP, ING, DET

– Elicited Grammatical Composite (EGC) - TEGIprobes

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Tense and Non-tense in Production:Compare to SLI

• Tense < non-tense, but gap smaller for L2 than SLI– SLI = non-tense at > 90% when tense 30-60%– L2 = when NTC > 90%, TC/EGC = 84% (34MOE)

• Protracted development of tense in SLI but not L2– SLI = 3 years between plural [-s] and tense composite reaching

between 80-90%– L2 = 8 months (plural = 79% at 21MOE; TC/EGC = 79% at

29MOE)(For SLI: Rice, 2003a, 2003b)

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Grammaticality Judgements:Compare to SLI

• For SLI, significant difference between OI/DropTNS and Bad AGR/Miss ING, but not for L2

• Correlations between BE probe from TEGI andA-primes for DropTNS(BE) and BadAgr:

(For SLI: Rice, Wexler & Redmond, 1999)

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Errors: Compare with SLI

• L2 = SLI: omission errors predominate• Commission errors negligible proportion for SLI,

but not negligible for L2, at 9MOE in particular• Substitution errors with BE and DO rare in SLI

but more common than omission for ARE andDOES in L2

(Rice, 2003a-b; Hadley & Rice, 1996)

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Study 2: Conclusion

• Differences between English L2 and SLIpersist over time

• More support for MSI account

Study 3: Acquisition of L2inflection: Input frequency and the

Network Model of the lexiconWhat explains variable use of inflection?

Paradis & Sorenson (in preparation)

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Motivation for Study 3• MSI is the preferable characterization of L2

acquisition of grammatical morphemes/functionalcategories

• Residual Questions:

– Why is there variable use of inflection at all?

– Why is there a sequence between tense and non-tense?

☞ Input factors?

Network Model• Multi-morphemic words stored fully inflected and inter-connected by

– Phonological form– Semantic features

• Token frequency in input and output = increases lexical strength ofstem and stem +morpheme constructions

• Type frequency (number of unique stem+morpheme constructions inlexicon) increases schema strength

– Schema = rules like [noun [-s]] = plural noun– Types frequency = critical mass for productive and accurate use of

inflectionBybee (2001; 2002)

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Participants & Procedures

• 15 ESL children• Data from Rounds 1(9 MOE), 3(21 MOE) and 5(34 MOE)• PL= Plural [-s] & 3SG = Third person singular [-s]• Spontaneous and Probe data from children

– Morpheme accuracy– Type and token frequencies of /stem+s/ in output

• British National Corpus– Type and token frequencies of /stem+s/ in input

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Predictions

• Given prior research, accuracy with PL > 3SG• Therefore:

– Stems with PL (types and tokens) > stems with 3SG ininput

– Stems with PL (types and tokens) > stems with 3SG inchildren’s lexicons

– Differential frequencies for allomorphs in the input ➞ inchildren’s lexicons and acquisition sequences

/s/ [z], [s], [\z]

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Study 3: Conclusion

• Type and token frequency in the input predicts ESLchildren’s lexical knowledge and acquisition ofinflection

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General Discussion• Child SLA of grammatical morphemes points to

access/production problem rather than deficit inrepresentation of functional categories: MSI

• Variable Inflection = Network Model Gradualness in accuracy over time Key determinant of acquisition sequences = type freq Error patterns: both omission and commission

• Could type and token frequency also explain tense>> non-tense in L1 (TD and SLI)?

Many thanks to co-authors Martha Crago, Mabel Rice, Tamara Sorenson,and Allen Richman, and to student assistants Lisa Brown, Julie Coutu,Heather Golberg, Lindsay Griener, Laura Marcon and Cinnamon Suyal

This research was funded by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for MedicalResearch and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of

Canada

johanne.paradis@ualberta.ca

http://www.ualberta.ca/~jparadis/