Relationships among Components of the Grammar in Language Disorder

Abstract

This study (1) examined the relationship between the accuracy of repetition of syntactic structures and phonological sequences by language-disordered children, and (2) examined the effect of meaning on the phonological sequence repetition accuracy of a group of language-disordered and normal-speaking children. There was a significant correlation between the percentage of errors made by the language-disordered children in syntactic structure repetition and phonological sequence repetition if the sequences were in words, and there was a tendency in this direction if sequences were in nonsense syllables. The meaningfulness of the sequences affected degree of repetition accuracy for the language-disordered children and tended to do the same for normal-speaking children. In addition, the distinctive feature components of the segments in both words and nonsense syllables were better recalled than the segments themselves, and there was great similarity in the rank order of feature recall in each type of sequence. These findings lead to suggestions concerning the structure of the language to be presented to these children in therapeutic situations.